Analyzing rural drinking water services for district planning in Maharashtra, India

Abstract

India has made good progress toward meeting basic standards of access to safe drinking water, but improved planning methods are needed to prioritize different levels and types of water service needs for public investment. This paper presents a planning approach for collecting, analyzing, and mapping drinking water service data at the village, block, and district levels in Pune district, Maharashtra, India. The planning approach created a mobile application for data collection by gram sevaks at the village level. It employed ranking methods developed with district officers to prioritize villages with the greatest needs, cluster analysis to distinguish different types of needs, and geographic information system (GIS) mapping to visualize the spatial distribution of those needs. This analysis shows that there are high levels of spatial heterogeneity in water services within, as well as between, blocks but also that there are broad patterns of priorities for planning and policy purposes. These priorities include water service needs in the Western Ghats, a combination of water source and service needs in dissected plateau lands, source strengthening in the eastern plains, and local hot spots in peri-urban areas. Based on this Pune district case study, the Government of Maharashtra is testing the approach in five additional districts.

Conjoint assessment of rural water security and system sustainability in Nagpur, India

“…Although the IMIS database is comprehensive, retrofitting its data for overall water security assessment is still difficult. To bridge these gaps, lessons could be derived from the approach of Singh et al (2020), wherein the development of a mobile app facilitated data collection through Gram Sevaks at the village level.…”

“…In each GP (comprising around one to ten villages, depending on the total population), the establishment of a village water and sanitation committee (VWSC, standing committee of GP) is mandated for the implementation and monitoring of water supply schemes (Ahmed and Araral, 2019). Empowered by the Government of India’s 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1993, the Panchayat Raj system thus provides a strong legal foundation for facilitating localized implementation and administration of water programmes and projects (Singh et al , 2020).…”

District Drinking Water Planning for Sustainability in Maharashtra: Between Local and Global Scales

“…These tools help visualize priorities for groundwater source strengthening, infrastructure investment, O&M support, and water management support. Singh et al have published an example of this analysis [34].…”

“…Other leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Babasaheb Ambedkar were more critical of village conditions and governance. This research surveyed revenue village drinking water conditions and problems in four districts, with a response rate of over 80% in each case [34]. For planning purposes, this constitutes a successful demonstration of village data collection by local gram sevak officers.…”

A macrohistorical geography of rural drinking water institutions in India

“…Jalswarajya literally means "water self-rule," which consciously resonates with the swarajya ideology of Shivaji's Maratha self-rule movement. International, national, and state funds have been generous, but they have come with specific expectations of village operation and maintenance, accountability, and fiscal reforms through metering, monitoring, and planning(Bassi et al 2014; Sangameswaran 2014;Singh et al 2019). Jalswarajya also follows a new World Bank financing instrument called Program for Results (P4R), in which disbursements are made upon pre-agreed results documented by an Independent Verification Agency.…”