WaterHealth Centres launched in Bengaluru - 20 litres of drinking water at Rs 5
India is a country where more people have access to television than to tap water. Water is a problem common to both rural and urban India. Although we have made drastic improvements to both the availability and quality of municipal drinking water systems, many rural areas have been left out.
According to The Water Project, over 21 per cent of India’s diseases are water related. Furthermore, only 33 per cent of the country has access to traditional sanitation. Children in 100 million of our homes lack water, and one out of every two children are malnourished.
Drinking water too remains a major concern across the country. Quality of drinking water has become an unforeseen situation due to the chemical, electronic, and biological wastes generated by industries and urban areas. Yesterday, as we celebrated World Water Day, we marked one more year of failure in bringing environmental justice to our own people.
However, with legislature focus drifting towards water and sanitation, and the multiple NGOs working in the sector across the country, there is still hope left. The institutional, government, and private partnerships these smaller organisations have been able to synchronise shows that there are serious and committed people working to solve the problem of water in India.
In Bengaluru, Tata Trusts (one of India’s oldest and largest philanthropic organisations), Jaldhaara Foundation, and WaterHealth International have joined hands to provide an innovative solution to address the growing concern of water in the city.
The partnership has started 15 WaterHealth Centres in the city and another 50 WaterHealth Centres in North Karnataka to provide safe and assured drinking water to quality-affected areas. The WaterHealth Centres deliver 20 litres of safe drinking water at just Rs 5. The pricing has been done to make the centres self-sustainable. These centres are meant to provide 96.5 crore litres of safe drinking water by 2018 and scale up to around 698 crore litres by 2033.
Fifty of these WaterHealth Centres are coming up in North Karnataka. According to the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, the drinking water crisis in North Karnataka looms large in over 4,000 villages and 38 towns, which have been contaminated with nitrates and fluoride. Though drinking water supply facilities are in place in some villages in this region, these are either not well maintained or the quality of the treated water is unreliable. This results in women and children having to travel long distances to fetch (so called potable) drinking water.
Similarly, Bengaluru city has high level of contamination of fluoride and total dissolved solids (TDS) in groundwater and urban slums/peri-urban areas have either little or no access to safe drinking water systems. The need for safe and purified drinking water therefore exists in both the urban and rural communities of this region to prevent them from water borne diseases, said a joint press release by Tata Trusts and Jaldhaara Foundation.
These WaterHealth Centres are designed and managed by WaterHealth International (WHI), Headquartered in Irvine, California. WHI, a global leader in decentralised water purification systems, are a key initiative under Tata Water Mission. This flagship programme of the Trusts aims to explore technology solutions to bring potable water to the marginalised communities and create a healthy future through access to safe, assured and adequate drinking water while also improving sanitation and hygiene.
Jaldhaara Foundation is a not for profit organisation with a goal to deliver integrated community-based Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) solutions and reach out to the unaddressed, isolated bottom of the pyramid communities globally.
Speaking about the initiative, Arun Pandhi, Programme Director of Tata Trusts, said, “Improving access to safe water and environmental sanitation has been a key focus area for Tata Trusts for many years. The Tata Water Mission has been launched to facilitate a more rigorous and focussed intervention in mission mode, and make a significant difference in a sustainable manner. I am delighted to inform that our efforts under the mission have already reached out to more than 1.5 million people across eight states of Gujarat, Uttarkahand, Nagaland, AP, Telangaha, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Karnataka. The results of our interventions have been quite encouraging and made substantial improvement in the lives of the communities we serve; specifically women and children. The focus of our partnership with Jaldhaara Foundation advocates a community-centric approach to achieve the goal of promoting innovative technological and economically sustainable solutions.”
Vikas Shah, Chief Operating Officer of WaterHealth International, added, “WaterHealth International is pursuing the goal of providing access (globally) to clean and safe water to 100 million people by 2020, which clearly requires a significant scale up of Company’s operations and footprint. Also pursuing such an ambitious target requires close co-operation and partnership with other institutions like Tata Trusts and Jaldhaara Foundation, who share the same vision as WaterHealth; WaterHealth therefore plans to strengthen these partnerships to scale greater heights by providing safe water access to the unserved communities in India.”
Jacqueline Lundquist, Spokesperson of Jaldhaara Foundation, added, “There is nothing more thrilling than to be out in the field on World Water Day to see first-hand the meaningful work Jaldhaara Foundation and WaterHealth International are doing in collaboration with the vision and generosity of Tata Trusts. Traditionally, most community water programmes and efforts have been directed towards rural areas in India; however, the urban ‘underserved’ areas are as much in need of safe and clean water as the rural communities, if not more. It is therefore no surprise that like-minded organisations have partnered to alleviate the water needs to the urban unserved communities, a much neglected area. It is only through such partnerships that we can effectively provide solutions to one of the world’s most critical issues”.
With this initiative, the partnership hopes to make a sizeable difference to the existing crisis in curbing water-related diseases and bringing greater environmental justice to the marginalised.