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Around 62% of rural households in India had fully functional tap water connections within their premises, according to a survey commissioned by the Union Ministry of Water Resources to assess the functioning of the government’s marquee Jal Jeevan Mission.

Highlights:

• Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, and Puducherry reported more than 80% of households with fully functional connections, while less than half the households in Rajasthan, Kerala, Manipur, Tripura, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim had such connections.
• Close to three-fourths of households received water all seven days a week and 8% just once a week. On average, households got water for three hours every day, and 80% reported that their daily requirements of water were being met by the tap connections.
• The water quality in some of the households was tested and revealed 95% of households to have within acceptable limits of pH values.
• More than 90% of village-level institutions, such as schools and anganwadi centres, were getting potable water.
• More than half (57%) of the sampled households reported purifying water before drinking. Only around 3% of the households reported using reverse osmosis treatment for water purification prior to drinking.
• Goa, Telangana and Haryana have achieved 100% tap connectivity to all households.
• Union Territories like Puducherry, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu, have also provided 100% of their households with tap water connections.

What do you mean by fully functional tap water connection?

• A fully functional tap water connection is defined as a household getting at least 55 litres of per capita per day of potable water all through the year.

About Jal Jeevan Mission:

• The Jal Jeevan Mission aims to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
• The Jal Jeevan scheme has a financial outlay of ₹3.60 lakh crore, with the Centre funding 50% of the cost with States and Union Territories, except for Union Territories without a legislature, where it foots the entire bill, and northeastern and Himalayan States and Union Territories with legislatures, where it funds 90% of the bill.