ASHWAS - A people's survey of water and sanitation in Karnataka (2009)

Share 1 Posted by ashis on November 5, 2009 - 16:17
A report that includes the findings of the ASHWAS survey- a peoples' survey where the surveyors were selected from the respective communities.

ASHWAS - Arghyam

This report includes the findings of the ASHWAS  survey (A Survey of Household Water and Sanitation),  a participatory survey carried out by Arghyam, that  included  28 districts of Karnataka covering more than 17,200 households across 172 gram panchayats (GPs). This was a peoples' survey, and the surveyors were selected from the respective communities that included students, women from self help groups, local NGO partners and other volunteers.

Arghyam who conducted the survey,  worked with over 18 partners from August 2008 across Karnataka. These partners mostly included local NGOs, who have worked extensively with the communities in the respective districts. Partnership was  from planning, designing and implementing the program, to developing the questionnaires, executing the survey and analysis and report generation.

The ASHWAS survey design and methodology was  arrived at after consulting the experts (including Government officials) and referencing some of the past surveys in this domain. Except Bangalore Urban district, all the other 28 districts were covered in the sampling for the survey.

For more info, and to download the Gram Panchayat, District and State-level reports, please see here.

 

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Sub-categories: 
Data
News and Articles
Topics: 
Governance
Voluntary Citizen or Civil Society Sector
Informal Sector
Sanitation and Hygiene
Water Management
Regions: 
Political
Karnataka
Languages: 
English
Author(s): 
Arghyam
Source(s): 
Arghyam
Year: 
2009

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ashis's picture
ashis Posted 1 year 3 months ago.

(Comment received from Sekhar Raghavan, over email)
Dear Sunita Nadhamuni,

I would like to congratulate the team from Arghyam, which was responsible in preparing the ASHWAS report. It provides very useful information to all those who are involved in water and sanitation issues in the entire country. I shall send a similar note on the sanitation part later.

I have gone through the report (part dealing with water) carefully and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I wish similar reports are made for all the other states in India.

Since our organization is involved in both water and eco-sanitation, I found some of the information to be very useful. I have put down my queries, comments and observations on the this report in a small note below.

I would greatly appreciate receiving your answers to some of the queries and comments mentioned in the note.
 
Regards,
Sekhar Raghavan

  1. What is ‘mini water supply’?
  2. What is ‘using public stand posts as the primary source of water’?
  3. What is ‘water from the field’?
  4. What is the logic behind these four groups into which the 28 districts are distributed? What is common among each one of the groups?
  5. What is the difference between hand pump and bore well? In Tamil Nadu, we have two different kinds of hand pumps. The ones with a short handle are meant to draw water from the Municipal water lines and the ones with a longer handle are meant to pump groundwater from bore wells.
  6. In Hassan and Udupi mention is made of “Public tap”. What is the difference between that and piped water. In rural areas of Tamil Nadu, piped water is supplied only through public taps located in street corners.
  7. In Dakshin Kannada, 1% source their water from traditional wells. How different are they from open wells (37%)? Why this distinction?
  8. In Uttara Kannada, 1% has been mentioned as tanker? What does it mean? Is it private or govt? Where does the tanker get water from?
  9. In Bangalore rural and Chikballapur mention is made of “others”. What are these others?
  10. Udupi district does not seem to have bore wells at all? Is there any reason for it?
  11. In villages, where Flouride, Nitrate etc. was found to be present in groundwater, was the sample drawn from open well or bore well?
  12. In TN there were traditional surface water sources exclusively for domestic use. They were called Ooranies. I am sure Karnataka would have had such sources. What were they known as? What is the present condition of them and whether any attempt has been made to revive them?
  13. It would have been interesting to find out the sources for piped water.
  14. In addition to Flouride, Nitrate etc., measuring the TDS would have indicated the potability levels. This could have been done with a hand held digital read out metre.
  15. Eight different kinds of water sources have been listed. How many of them are at the macro level and how many at the micro level?
  16. These eight sources can be broadly divided into two – surface and sub-soil sources. This kind of classification will help us to take appropriate steps to sustain them.
  17. Dharwad, Gadag, Chikballapur, Chithradurga, Davangere, Kolar and Ramnagaram are the seven districts, which do not depend on open wells at all. What is the reason for it?
  18. There is a printing mistake in page 59. Piped water has been mentioned as 22 instead of 62.