Jal, Jeevan and Panchayats: Learning From The Past, For a Sustainable Future

The recent Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) announced by the government has the ambitious target of 'har ghar jal'. What can we learn from earlier programs, especially Swajaldhara, that aimed to provide drinking water in rural areas? Can we use JJM as an opportunity to strengthen community voice and citizen participation in creating sustainable futures, asks Rajesh Tandon in this blog.  

On December 25, 2019, Prime Minister Modi launched the operational guidelines of a new flagship program -- the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) with a focus on ‘har ghar jal’ (water in every home). Coincidentally, 17 years ago to this very date, on December 25, 2002, then Prime Minister Late Shri Atal Behari Bajpayee had launched ‘Swajaldhara’, a national program for providing drinking water in every household in rural India.

Provision of drinking water in rural areas is not new. It began as a ‘Mission’ in 1986, was reconfigured in 1999 as Accelerated Rural Water Supply Program (ARWSP), a pilot of ‘community-managed projects involving gram panchayats’, which three years later became Swajaldhara.

Swajaldhara was presented as a departure from the past supply-driven approach to provision of drinking water in villages. It was described as a community managed and locally owned drinking water storage and supply program, with extensive community participation. The guidelines emphasised key principles of ‘demand-driven, full participation of community in choosing scheme, design, planning, implementation, finance and management of assets’. Under the program, each state government signed an MOU with the central government committed to create an ‘enabling environment’, which required panchayats to be vested with functions and finances, and supported with functionaries to carry out the responsibilities of drinking water supply scheme planning, designing, implementation, operation, maintenance and management; and setting up of Village Water and Sanitation Committees in each gram panchayat. State governments needed to enact and implement laws on effective ground water extraction control, regulation and recharge, and integrate water conservation and rain water harvesting schemes with drinking water supply schemes.

What can we learn from the past, to improve JJM guidelines so that its mission of ‘har ghar jal’ may be achieved by the target date of 2024? In a consultation on ‘Role of Panchayats in JJM’ held in Delhi last week, co-convened by Samarthan and Water Aid, several speakers shared experiences from Swajaldhara. Three sets of issues emerged.

First, the decision-making structure and control over local village projects was not in the hands of panchayats under Swajaldhara. Water user associations (popularised by the Andhra Pradesh government in the late 1990s) competed with standing committees of panchayats to ‘oversee’ the implementation of local projects. Gram sabhas became ‘rubber-stamps’ to plans and decisions made by the Public Health & Engineering Department (PHED) and other line departments at the district level. Funds allocated for awareness generation of the community to take responsibility for water and capacity building of panchayats for design and implementation of schemes were under-utilised or delayed. Other tiers of panchayats—block level Panchayat Samiti, district level Zila Parishad and District Planning Committee (DPC)—had no role in practice.

Second, previous village water harvesting and storage practices were completely undermined in the zest to bring in piped water scheme in each village and hamlet. Reviving traditional wells, ponds, hand pumps, baolis, etc., which had fallen in dis-use, and local water harvesting practices were ignored. Despite the emphasis on integration, push for piped water resulted in selection of the most expensive projects (both from investment and maintenance point-of-view), which could not be maintained and sustained locally.

Third, the Mission-mode project management structure (National Mission, State Mission, District Mission), invented in 1986, was re-imposed in Swajaldhara. Each level received targets, money and guidance from the top. Staffing of Missions at each level was elaborately designed within the bureaucracy. Comparable staffing and capacity in Panchayati Raj Institutions was ignored. As a consequence, reporting and accountability was upwards, not sideways to panchayats or downwards to community (in whose name the scheme was modelled).

Discussions in the consultation highlighted precisely how these lessons have been ignored in the JJM guidelines.
• While fancy language of community participation and centrality of panchayats is used, it is clear that plans, targets, finances and monitoring would be top-down. The proposed Mission structure is not much different from previous programs, and is a replica of the recently concluded Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). In fact, the mind-set, systems and leadership of JJM is an extension of SBM.
• The guidelines ‘re-count’ the same problems which Swajaldhara had identified – ‘less community involvement’, ‘poor organisation and management’, ‘coordination challenges’. How these are being addressed under JJM is rather unclear, since the design of the delivery system is similar to that of Swajaldhara.
• Despite eulogising Panchayati Raj Institutions as constitutional bodies responsible for water, the new guidelines equate panchayats with water user groups, pani samitis and other non-statutory community level bodies. Village Action Plans for JJM are seen as standalone plans, with separately convened Gram Sabhas. These are not integrated into the process of preparing the Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDPs), as mandated by the 14th Finance Commission.
• Roles and responsibilities of all the listed stakeholders are not clearly defined. Certain tiers of institutions, like Panchayat Samiti, Zila Parishad and DPC, have been ignored once again. Inter-departmental coordination remains opaque, without specifying accountability to Panchayati Raj Institutions.
• Despite a huge five year allocation, it is unclear how such resources will be mobilised and deployed in a manner that supports local plans. Many national schemes like MNREGA are already experiencing slowing of funds flow. Added to this, synchronising and harmonising contributions of state government, MPLAD and MLALAD funds, CSR funds and panchayat’s own resources may become a highly complex effort.
• Recharging of existing sources and water bodies, and integrating previous local water harvesting and storage systems have been left as an add-on. Without focusing on the totality of use of water in a village community—drinking, household, animals, agriculture, etc—ownership and equitable distribution of water in the local community is unlikely to occur.
• There are several other questions about governance of water in the country today. Some community-driven water projects seem to have excluded the marginalised, poor and tribals, and especially the landless, in rural areas. Given that water is a natural resource, covered under PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas) in tribal-dominated districts, its governance has to be entirely in the hands of the local tribal community, under scrutiny of Gram Sabha. How has this been considered in the JJM guidelines?

Given the increasingly centralising tendencies in the governance of Indian democracy these days, it is unlikely that principles of local control and management of drinking water in rural India would come under the governance of Panchayati Raj Institutions. Since ‘full coverage’ of rural households under JJM is likely to be ‘pronounced’ in 2024 anyways, it might be useful to also consider strengthening community voice and panchayat capacity, even if in smaller jurisdictions, in this endeavour of bringing water to every Indian’s home.

Dr Rajesh Tandon, Founder-President, PRIA

February 2020

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