Provisioning of water and sanitation services has become the key determinants of sustainable development. This review focuses on the trends in water and sanitation services and reforms in India and Ghana over the last two decades. The findings reveal that access to water has improved in India and Ghana at 81.5 and 92.7%, respectively. However, access to sanitation continues to be a challenge in both countries, with the currently reported coverage being 59.5 and 18.5%, respectively. The index of sustainable development goal (SDG) performance of Ghana and India stands at 65.4 and 61.9 with global rankings of 100 and 117, respectively. The adverse impacts of poor access to sanitation increasingly reflect on rising numbers of population suffering from water-borne diseases. From the policy perspective, the paper highlights the need for framing pro-poor water and sanitation policies; focusing on women and girls’ education; promoting affordable water and sanitation services; promoting the collaboration of stakeholders involved in the rural water and sanitation sectors; and increasing budgetary allocations by local governments.

Over the past few years, many nations have implemented a variety of initiatives, including policies and programs, with the sole purpose of enhancing the quality of drinking water to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 targets. Even though water seems to be often easily accessible, the poor quality is mostly as a result of environmental factors and subterranean minerals that contaminate the water. This paper attempts to compares two rural water supply sources in Nagla Chandi village in Uttar Pradesh, India: untreated groundwater available via borewells and RO water from a water filtering system. The study discovered that subterranean minerals are the primary pollutants of unprocessed water derived from borewells, that serve as the main supply of drinking water. Even though the water from the alternative systems, the Jivamritam water filter (RO) met all the requirements for water purity, it frequently breaks down, forcing the community members to drink untreated water from the hand dug wells. The study also reveals a high incidence of water-borne illness. It further makes recommendations for maintaining and operating the RO system effectively. For the Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSC) and other neighborhood organisations to regularly assess the quality of the water and take appropriate corrective action, the paper recommends lowering the cost of water testing for villages.