GUWAHATI: Government of India’s ambitious plan to water connections to all rural households of the country has fallen short of reaching even half the population of Assam and Meghalaya as on World Water Day. Assam is the worst performing among the Northeastern state, slightly behind the state of Meghalaya as per the official numbers.
The Jal Jeevan Mission is a very ambitious project of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government in India to provide drinkable tap water to all rural households of the country. The project was launched in 2019 and the target of completion is 2024.
Among the state of the Northeastern region of the country, Assam had the largest population and more than 67 lakh households of the region need to be connected via the Jal Jeevan Mission. But as of Wednesday only 46.20% of these rural households have received this connection.
Mizoram is the best-performing state in this regard with 80.43% of the household having a proper connection. Manipur has 76.31%, Arunachal Pradesh has 72.93%, Nagaland has 62.01%, Tripura has 60.08% and Meghalaya has 46.89% which is below the halfway mark.
“When JJM started in Assam, the state had less than two per cent tap water coverage. Over the last three years, we have covered 44%. But many states in the country had started allotting water supply under JJM with an extremely high percentage of coverage already. They are obviously in a much higher completion rate,” said the director of Jal Jeevab Mission Assam, Kailash Karthik N, about the bad performance in terms of water supply. He added that projects are in the advanced stage in quite a few parts of the state and that a good percentage of the same will be completed by the end of 2023.
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