The Hindu : Users to maintain water projects

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 23, 2002

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National

Users to maintain water projects

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Nov. 22. Having achieved only about 30 per cent utilisation in people's participation in water sector reforms, the Centre today announced changes in guidelines. As part of reforms in the sector, the Government wants people in rural areas to pay 10 per cent towards the cost of construction of a project and then take the responsibility of operation and maintenance.

Admitting that utilisation in this scheme had been only Rs. 178.66 crores of an allocation of Rs. 590.30 crores since its inception in 1999, the Union Rural Development Minister, Shanta Kumar, said the scheme now named "Swajaldhara'', had been extended to 67 districts of 21 States.

The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, will launch the scheme on December 25.

The key changes in the scheme are instead of being top-down it would now be demand-driven and with a community participation approach. Secondly, the administrative unit for the implementation would now be the blocks/ gram panchayats/ village/ habitation instead of the whole district.

Shanta Kumar said panchayats and communities would plan, implement, operate, maintain and manage all drinking water projects. The partial capital cost sharing would be 10 per cent in cash payable by communities. There would be a 50 per cent concession in gram panchayats and villages where half the population comprises Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The full ownership of drinking water assets would be with gram panchayats or community or the beneficiary groups who would be given funds directly for the project.

At present, about 15,000 habitation in the country have no potable drinking water, while two lakhs are partially covered and 2.17 lakh villages are identified with problems with the quality of water.

The Minister said the gram panchayats and blocks adopting the reforms principle would be eligible for the "swajaldhara'' projects.

The total outlay for the 67 projects sanctioned so far is Rs. 2,060.45 crores, of which the Centre's share is Rs. 1,922.85 crores. Of the Rs. 590.30 crores released and Rs. 178.66 crores spent, Rs 32.14 crores has been given by about 20 lakh contributors. More than 8,000 schemes have been completed under the programme and about 7,000 had been taken up for operation and management by the communities themselves.

Still, the Government is not satisfied with the progress the scheme has made. At a conference held about six months ago with States, the then Rural Development Minister, Venkaiah Naidu, had urged States to improve their performance in three months, lest the scheme would be scrapped.

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