Diarrhea alone causes more than 1600 deaths each day - more than any other disease.

And 75 out of 100 children below 5 years of age needlessly die early because of the water they consume. Their homes and millions like theirs continue to drink unsafe, contaminated water. It is this shame - and the fact that not only us but 73 per cent Indians feel it deeply as well - that triggered the birth of the safe drinking water initiative.

A unique decentralised safe drinking water supply model has been designed by us together with village communities and technology providers presently Waterhealth International, a US based water solutions provider, and Tata Projects of the Tata group of companies.

Details about the technologies in use   

This model integrates the purification and distribution of chemical-free and pathogen-free water along with education on health and hygiene to bring in healthier lifestyle changes in rural areas. The pilot was launched in Bomminampadu village covering 730 households, in the Krishna District of AP, which has high population suffering from water borne diseases.

This project works with the local village governing body - the panchayat, and draws water from the local water resource, purifies it of contaminants and offers it to households at a nominal purification fee of 10 paise per litre.

This affordable purification fee makes the project sustainable as all maintenance and servicing of the plant including the salary overheads of the staff (who are recruited from the village itself) are taken care of from within this collection.

But it has been proven that providing purified drinking water at affordable rates cannot, on its own result in a reduction in exposure to environmental risks that lead to waterborne diseases. To make this happen we have taken on the mission to facilitate the following:

Health + Hygiene education: We work through intensive campaigns on health and personal hygiene to educate rural communities on the need to store water carefully, adopt hygienic sanitation practices and avoid contaminating water resources. This in turn helps to influence conventional rural mindsets to adopt safe water and creates demand from villages / panchayats to implement the Safe Drinking Water programme for their villages.

Technology transfer: We constantly network and explore partnerships that facilitate the transfer of cutting edge, competitive, affordable technology that can address various challenges across the country in making water potable.

Raise funds: Enable global citizens, corporates, philanthropists and others to join hands with the Panchayats, adopt villages, and become partners by contributing resources so every habitation in India is equipped with its own Community Safe Drinking Water programme.

Reduction of diseases caused by chemical and pathogen contamination, better health conditions and general well-being have been some of the observations from families using this water.

In the pipeline: Regeneration of the existing water resources. We realise that there will soon be no water available to purify if we do not actively regenerate our drinking water resources and ensure that villages continue to have their own drinking water sources. In this effort we are planning to initially in through pilots take up the regeneration activities of ponds and other drinking water sources in a few villages so that to the tried and tested water purification model we can add the regeneration component and make this programme more robust and sustainable for communities.

Could this project be the answer to providing safe drinking water to all in the country?

Most likely, because it integrates the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP)’ principles and includes dissemination of appropriate information to the rural communities and prospective beneficiaries on the need to adopt safe water and hygienic sanitation practices. The Project has the potential to become the Single Largest Non-Government Water Initiative owned and managed by the Communities, hence fully and truly meeting the BOP Construct^.

This programme is being up-scaled to more villages every year as word about its effectiveness and service is spreading from village to village and to newer states as well.

With villages contributing to a percentage of the purification unit setting up costs and the rest of the resources being raised from philanthropists or as loans from financial institutions (who are be paid back from the purification cess collections) this model of reaching safe drinking water technologies to Indian villages and making it affordable to even the poorest of the poor families, might just be the answer the country has been looking for, for its people.

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