As is common in the summer months, rural water-supply has again emerged as a problem. According to a newspaper report, in some tribal belts of Andhra Pradesh, women have to forgo their daily wages as they spend around three hours a day fetching water from another tandha (small tribal village) as all water sources in their thanda has dried up. Groundwater levels are so down that digging bore-wells have also not yielded any results .

The situation continues to worsen despite initiatives like the National Rural Drinking Water Program (NRDWP). In many thandas, providing water through tankers does not work because of their location in remote and at times inaccessible locations.

The drinking water problem is also rife in the sub urban areas and small towns. There is almost a cyclic relationship between the summers and the monsoons- while some measures are taken during the summer, the water supply points are damaged in the floods during the monsoons. There are reports of families now depending on the percolation pits dug in the river beds. A recent report states that in village Laxmipuram, 10 kms from Kurnool town, the entire population is dependent on percolation pits in the Hundri river bed. Villagers spend an hour every day to fetch water from the pit. While many have piped water supply at home, the quality of water is so poor that it cannot be consumed.

As India lauds itself for its economic achievements, access to drinking water continues to be a major problem for a huge part of the population. According to the Human Development Report, 2009, around 89 percent of the Indians are using improved water sources (2006 data). However, given that according to the same report, 75.6 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. (http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_IND.html). These two figures really do not go very well together as the access of the poor to safe drinking water is likely to be impaired.

There is also the issue of contamination with most water sources reportedly contaminated by sewage and agricultural runoff. India has made progress in the supply of safe water to its people, but gross disparity in coverage exists across the country. Also, although access to drinking water has improved, the World Bank estimates that 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water. In India, diarrhea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily (http://water.org/projects/india/)

Given the situation, it is important to take urgent measures to improve access to safe drinking water. Given that it is intrinsically linked with overall health and nutrition of the people, it is an issue that needs immediate interventions if we are serious about human development.

What can be done to improve access to safe drinking water?