Other than the availability of water, which is central to growth of the economy, the quality of the available water is equally crucial. Consumption of contaminated water is the major cause of diarrheal diseases claiming over 1.6 million deaths every year. Over 90 per cent of the victims are children under the age of 5. Africa and South Asia are home to more than 80 per cent of child deaths due to diarrhea. According to WHO, globally safer water can prevent 1.4 million child deaths from diarrhea, 0.8 million deaths from malnutrition and 0.5 million deaths from malaria.

Given the substantially positive impact of safe drinking water on the maintenance of good health of the population it is critically important to make investments to provide 24x7 piped supply of safe drinking water to each household. However, as this project will take a lot of time to be established, in the meantime the emphasis must be laid on providing adequate water purification solutions to individual households.

To address the issue of lack of safe drinking water, it is necessary to adopt a science-market-policy framework to analyse it from several perspectives. Affordable and appropriate technology options to deal with this problem are lacking. While a lot of funding support is available for the technology research, very little of it translates into products that can be used especially by the BoP populations. Most of the research remains in libraries as papers and publications and does not reach the people who could benefit from there. What is needed is the creation of an ecosystem of supply and demand encompassing technology supply systems and delivery models, and enabling policy environment to bridge this gap.

In case of the few technologies that have reached the market, the lack of appropriate delivery channels prevents their mainstreaming. Logistics of supply pose a challenge due to the lack of adequate civic infrastructure. Water purification products can be classified as push-products that require intense efforts to promote and scale demand. The delivery models used in pushing these products are very important because the target market is socio-economically and culturally diverse and complex. The lack of ability and/or the willingness, on the part of the people, to pay for these products and services further retards access. Markets need to develop a better understanding of the target audiences to be able to service them.

The water policy of South Asian governments focuses mainly on water availability with a limited emphasis on its quality. Water purification solutions available in the market as well as new technologies being introduced are not regulated. Currently no norms are prescribed pertaining to disclosure of information for this sector. Information on the shelf life, service life, precautions, safety issues, replacement of filters, end of life indications and disposal ethics is rarely mentioned. Quality, safety, health and environmental concerns of the new technologies need to be scrutinised far more closely. Thus, there is an urgent need to address the issues of Science, Markets and Policy for ensuring access to safe drinking water to all.

It is critical to make communities water positive through construction of check dams and rain water harvesting among other solutions like, for example, installing solar based pumps to provide water. An example is Govind Nagar, Datia. Till two years back, this tribal village was severely water stressed because its only well is situated 2-3 km away so women had to walk long distances every day to fetch water. A complete transformation has taken place with the establishment of a solar power based piped drinking water system that supplies water to households and community water-posts. The infrastructure is owned and managed by the community through a Pani Panchayat, and households pay a nominal fee for the service. Today, the village enjoys a round the year access to water.

It is equally important to ensure an acceptable quality of water. Several approaches have been tried and tested so far with varying degrees of success. These water purification solutions can be broadly divided into the following two categories:

a. Devices/Flasks and Tablets: These are generally consumable disinfectant products that are mostly chlorine-based, sometimes in combination with a flocculent. They are distributed in a liquid or tablet form. Some of the examples are Unilever PUR and Aqua+. Durable water filters also come under this category as they include offline water filters that use a replaceable cartridge to purify water. Some of the examples are TATA Swach and PureIt. These are appropriate and cost-effective solutions for populations in small villages where water does not require any complex treatment. They are promoted by NGOs and commercial players in areas with a limited or no reliable public water service.

b. Plants and Kiosks: These are mini-water purification plants with installations to deal with more heavily polluted and/or brackish water. They are suitable for small towns and villages, Sarvajal and Spring Health being examples of plants which are cost-effective in the areas with a relatively high population (rural or urban) and where water is brackish/ heavily polluted. These solutions are promoted and operated by social entrepreneurs often in collaboration with the local or regional authorities.

The above solutions need to be customised to cater to the local context of the problem but they are basically market based approaches that require the consumers to buy ‘safe water’.

However, there is also a category of consumers who are unable to pay for water so it is important to connect them with government schemes that make provision for safe drinking water. These schemes should be used to construct check dams, to reduce soil erosion and increase the water table. They also include provision of community tap stands to ensure adequate supply of water to the community. Rain water harvesting is another such option that the government is actively promoting. There are also options available for people with low/no paying capability to purify their drinking water. These include the chlorine tablets provided by local governments free of cost. The households can contact their local anganwadi/health centres to get access to these tablets. q