Drinking and other Domestic Uses

Featured Articles
December 21, 2022 While drinking water coverage in rural India has improved, has it also improved reliability and safety of drinking water? This CEEW brief explores and analyses the available data to find out.
Adequate and safe drinking water, a valuable resource in rural India (Image Source: McKay Savage via Wikimedia Commons)
December 16, 2022 In this article, we will understand how the WQM course is continuing to influence the needs of learners that come from diverse backgrounds. The course model also offers core insights to many others who would like to engage in a virtual training program.
During a WQM course, a field team member from INREM facilitating a demonstration
December 13, 2022 WaterAid India’s partnership with USAID and Gap Inc. benefits 2400 villages across 7 districts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra

WaterAid has focused on establishing community-led water quality monitoring & surveillance (Image: Anil Gulati/India Water Portal Flickr)
August 19, 2022 Better access to clean water coupled with health education to bring about changes in behaviour are critical to prevent exposure to dangerous cholera bacteria that lurk in untreated waters.
The hidden threat of cholera in India (Image Source: IWP Flickr photos)
July 20, 2022 This study found a high concentration of trihalomethanes (THMs) in water treatment plants in Delhi that were associated with increased risk of cancer.
What's in your tap water (Image Source: India Water Portal)
May 25, 2022 Enabling a culture of data sharing between programs and reuse of data
Participatory programs such as JJM require a large amount of village-level information on water (Image: Arpit Deomurar, FES)
Unravelling Kuttanad’s drinking water paradox
Floods such as in 2018 could take the situation downhill causing severe drinking water crisis. Posted on 24 Feb, 2020 12:55 PM

Surrounded by vast expanses of water, the Kuttanad region in Alleppey district, Kerala faces severe drinking water scarcity due to infrastructure failure and civic body inaction.

Lack of sufficient quality water, poor pipe connectivity and frequent breakdown of existing pipelines are common in the area (Image: Jayasree Vaidyanathan)
Community water purification system in a Delhi urban slum
Women swipe clean drinking water through an automated dispensing unit at the Lalbagh slum. Posted on 22 Feb, 2020 12:38 PM

It’s a dull reality that the state of water in the urban slum of Lalbagh near Azadpur in north Delhi was awful till a few years back. Hoards of people would queue up to get water from the public taps or the tankers along the road. Life was tough here and people got access to piped water supply only recently.

Once selected for the role, the women entrepreneurs were trained to run the community filtration plant and overlook all operations ranging from the management of customers to the plant finances. (Image: India Water Portal)
Indian Standard for Drinking Water as per BIS specifications (IS 10500-2012) (Second Revision)
This presentation gives details of the permissible and desirable limits of various parameters in drinking water as per the BIS standard specifications for potable water. Posted on 20 Feb, 2020 10:28 AM

Arghyam has compiled a brief presentation which gives details of the permissible and desirable limits for various parameters in drinking water as per Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) specifications for potable water

Drinking water quality and health (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Tangled bones, children unable to move and lives cut short
Fluorosis has turned out to be a chronic public health problem, with millions of people at high risk due to lack of clean drinking water. Posted on 19 Feb, 2020 11:45 AM

I am in the middle of nowhere, out on a field visit to understand how fluoride, a deadly contaminant in groundwater has been afflicting people in some of the worst affected villages in Nalgonda, Telangana. I am thirsty as hell and would do anything to find a seemingly elusive little glass of water, but I can’t.

INREM Foundation has helped develop protocols on designing proactive action on safe water and nutrition to help mitigate fluorosis (Image: Vikas Ratanjee)
Decentralised groundwater governance to deal with the groundwater crisis
Decentralised groundwater governance frameworks that integrate democratic institutional mechanisms are needed to deal with the current groundwater crisis in India. Posted on 17 Feb, 2020 05:43 PM

The challenges to sustain groundwater dependency in India are many where groundwater over extraction is not only leading to rapid depletion of the resource, but also giving rise to water quality issues in a situation where the response at the level of policy continues to be lukewarm.

The need for decentralised governance to deal with the current groundwater crisis (Image Source: ACWADAM)
Overcoming heavy odds to emerge as a WATSAN model
How women came together in a Junagadh village to tackle drinking and domestic water shortage effectively. Posted on 17 Feb, 2020 04:18 PM

Kotda village provides an inspiring example of how a village suffering from teething troubles in the critical areas of water and sanitation can emerge as a model water and sanitation village. Located in Mangrol block of Junagadh district, from a distance this village presents a lush green appearance because of an abundance of coconut trees.

AKRSP has promoted rainwater harvesting to address the issue of scarce potable water at Mangrol. By encouraging households to collect rainwater using pipes on their roofs which then drain into an underground tank they have been able to promote water security. (Image: Aga Khan Foundation Flickr)
Budget 2020: Is the allocation enough to meet the piped water dream
Experts discuss if the budget has enough funds for water access and security. Posted on 09 Feb, 2020 09:25 PM

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget announcement on February 1, 2020 made a push for piped rural drinking water supply and promised full coverage of all households by 2024.

Just 21.4 percent of India’s households have access to piped water, as per NSSO data (Image: Niyantha Shekar, Flickr Commons; CC BY-NC 2.0)
Jal Jeevan Mission receives Rs 11,500 crore allocation in Budget 2020-21
Policy matters this week Posted on 06 Feb, 2020 10:07 PM

Government allocates Rs 11,500 crore to Jal Jeevan Mission for 2020-21

In the budget 2020-21, the Finance Ministry has allocated Rs 11,500 crore to the Jal Jeevan Mission for the year for 2020-21.

Women filling water from a tap (Source: IWP Flickr photos)
Banning RO purifier use when water conforms to BIS norms - Comments invited
RO purifiers can lead to huge wastage of water. A draft notification by the Environment Ministry seeks user’s views on banning RO purifiers in areas where water conforms to BIS norms. Posted on 06 Feb, 2020 05:18 PM

The use of reverse osmosis (RO) purifiers has become a contentious issue, mainly because of the amount of water that is wasted following its use.

Water filter use, safety or luxury? (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
What's there for water in the budget kitty?
Budget fails to allocate enough to turn the rhetoric of tap water to each household into reality. Posted on 02 Feb, 2020 01:46 PM

Union Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman presented the decade's first union budget in the parliament on 1st February 2020. While presenting budget for 2020-2021, she started with the country’s vision for the decade in which she emphasised on water management and clean rivers as one of the 10 points of vision for the country.

The budget allocation suggests that the predominant focus of the Ministry of Jal Shakti continues to be on water resources development rather than water resources governance or management (Image: Brian Gratwicke, Flickr Commons, CC BY 2.0)
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