Jal Jeevan Mission in Uttar Pradesh: Tap water cools off worries, but adaptation an issue in Bundelkhand
Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), a central government initiative to ensure drinking water supply to rural households across the country by 2024. «Our bahus (daughters-in-law) will benefit from the scheme now, we have lived our lives worrying about water,» she says.
Around a hundred kilometres away in Jhansi, a motley group of local singers and dancers brought together by a NGO stage a spirited performance in a temple, sending the message that tap water holds the promise of elevating quality of life and keeping diseases at bay.
The central scheme heralds the promise of a fast-moving mission to end the water-related distress faced by generations in the region but comes with a challenge of convincing people to adapt to the change.
BUNDELKHAND ON PRIORITY
Uttar Pradesh has so far provided about 62% of its targeted 26 million households with tap water connections. The seven districts of drought-prone Bundelkhand region, which has battled water crisis for decades, along with two districts of Vindhyachal were prioritised by the state government and taken up for implementation in the first phase, with the result that the seven districts have achieved an average coverage of 91%, with Mahoba leading at 97.5% coverage, followed by Lalitpur at 96%.
So far, 1.29 million households have been provided with tap water connections in the Bundelkhand region. To be sure, the statistics do not mean all the covered households are being provided regular water supply as that will start only by November-end, even if the JJM dashboard shows them as receiving water, officials said.
Water sourced from perennial sources like rivers Betwa, Yamuna and Som along with 35 dams passes through a multi-layered process of purification to get potable water which is
