The pursuit of water security in rural India extends beyond the provision of household tap connections. While access to piped water is an important step, a water-secure village also requires reliable, year-round availability of safe water for drinking, domestic use, and livelihoods. Addressing this challenge calls for a shift away from an infrastructure-centric approach towards one grounded in hydrological realities and supported by governance systems that account for equity, ecological sustainability, and livelihoods.
These concerns were at the centre of a session titled “Rural water security: Concept and practice”, held at the IWMI–Tata Partners Meet in December 2025. The session brought together practitioners, researchers, and development organisations to reflect on what it would take to build genuinely water-secure villages across diverse rural contexts. It included a conceptual presentation followed by a panel discussion, with a focus on developing a coherent, field-grounded framework to guide rural water security efforts.
Participants from organisations such as Gram Vikas, Watershed Organisation Trust (for WoTR), and Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), Tata Water Mission, and INREM discussed the idea of water security as a continuum, ranging from basic access to seasonal reliability, water quality assurance, equitable allocation, and strong local governance. While acknowledging the progress made in infrastructure rollout, the discussions also highlighted persistent gaps in long-term sustainability and community ownership. The overall objective of the session was to work towards a practical, context-specific roadmap for achieving truly water-secure villages.
The session opened with an introductory presentation by Sangram Mane from International Water Management Institute (IWMI), who detailed what a water-secure village truly means. “A water-secure village is one where every household has assured, sufficient water for drinking, domestic, and agricultural use, where water meets quantity and quality standards across all seasons, with communities empowered to govern their own water. Crucially, all planning must be rooted in hydrological realities and not simply in "guesses or hopes", says Mane.
The presentation emphasised that achieving such security requires integrating four interlinked dimensions like governance, equity, ecology, and livelihoods, and confronting persistent challenges related to operation and maintenance, financing, and institutional sustainability. This framing set the stage for a panel discussion featuring practitioners from the organisations working directly with rural communities on water governance, watershed management, and livelihoods.
The panel discussion explored how a conceptual framework for water-secure villages translates into practice on the ground, particularly in regions facing groundwater stress, water quality challenges, and livelihood vulnerability. It featured representatives from Gram Vikas, Watershed Organisation Trust (for WoTR), and Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN). A recurring theme was the need to treat water as a shared resource, governed collectively rather than accessed individually. Panelists highlighted that community-level institutions such as gram sabhas, village water teams, and women’s collectives play a central role in managing demand, resolving conflicts, and ensuring equitable access, especially for marginalised households.
Several speakers stressed that water security cannot be reduced to infrastructure performance. Instead, it must account for seasonal reliability, aquifer limits, water quality risks, and livelihood needs. As one panelist noted, local hydrology and geology fundamentally shape what is feasible; approaches that work in one region may not translate directly to another without adaptation.
The discussion also underscored the importance of situating village-level water planning within broader challenges such as climate variability, river basin health, and regional development dynamics.
Gram Vikas: Water security at the gram panchayat level
Gram Vikas works at the gram panchayat scale to embed water security within local governance systems, with the Gram Sabha and Palli Sabha playing a central role in decision-making and accountability. Its approach treats water as a shared resource and prioritises inclusion, equity, and long-term financial and institutional sustainability. A key operational feature of this approach is the use of village-level water data to support collective decision-making. By grounding planning in an explicit understanding of local water availability and seasonal demand, communities are better equipped to manage trade-offs between drinking water, domestic use, and livelihoods and to take informed decisions on water use and protection.
WOTR: Stewardship and governance
The Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) works on strengthening water stewardship and governance in rural, agrarian regions, with a particular emphasis on managing groundwater as a shared, finite resource. "Its approach responds to the reality that water-related conflicts often arise from unregulated extraction and weak collective decision-making. Rather than focusing only on infrastructure or environmental protection, WOTR’s governance work is anchored in everyday livelihood and drinking water needs." said Eshwar Kale, Head, Water Resources and Governance, WOTR.
By encouraging villages to assess their own management practices across institutional, supply, demand, and equity dimensions, the approach helps communities identify gaps, prioritise actions, and track improvement over time. From a systems perspective, this governance lens also enables external actors, such as government programmes, donors, and CSR initiatives, to make more informed, outcome-oriented investments, while reinforcing the broader shift from private water use to collective stewardship.
PRADAN: Women-centric irrigation and livelihoods
Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN)’s work on rural water security is rooted in strengthening women’s collectives in tribal and rain-dependent regions where livelihoods are highly vulnerable to climate and water stress. By organising women farmers as the primary institutional actors, the approach links water management directly with agricultural productivity, household income, and long-term resilience. Operating in ecologically fragile landscapes with declining rainfall reliability, PRADAN’s interventions focus on enabling communities to plan and manage water as a productive asset rather than a seasonal constraint. This emphasis on collective decision-making and locally grounded planning has been critical in contexts where smallholder agriculture remains predominantly rainfed and highly exposed to risk.
The invisible crisis of water quality
Water quality is a crucial aspect of water security. Organisations are making efforts to integrate water quality into watershed management. A significant problem, highlighted by Sundarrajan Krishnan, Executive director of INREM, is that water quality issues are often invisible. For instance, in villages where Gram Vikas works, nitrate contamination is present, but the community perception is "that all is well". He says, “This lack of awareness can lead to severe health and livelihood impacts. Changing the community perception about water quality takes time and needs a dedicated effort to ensure the message is delivered effectively and reinforced continuously.”
The depth vs. scale dilemma
The challenge of depth versus scale is persistent in integrated water and watershed management. While organisations can create hyper-local solutions, the question remains: how to scale these successful models without losing the context-specificity and equity focus? “The local context, including underlying hydrology and geology, matters immensely. For instance, Gram Vikas's focus on smaller, cohesive habitations in the hard rock terrain of the Eastern Ghats of Orissa is effective precisely because the aquifers are limited in scope in that context,” noted Siddharth Patil, Gram Vikas.
Institutional sustainability and governance
A key debate centred on how to build institutional sustainability59. The answer lies in creating local human capital—water-literate, capacitated youth known as Jal Sevak(a)s. WOTR, for example, advocates for a village watershed management team in every village, though it is informal rather than a formal management committee. Strong community institutions are key solutions.
The need for better indicators
Manas Satpathy, Executive director of Professional AssistanceFor Development Action (PRADAN) addressed the localisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), criticising current indicators used for local governance as "ridiculous". “The ten key indicators used to assess a Gram Panchayat's performance on water security and sanitation focus on four critical areas: financial utilisation, infrastructure, water quality, and governance. Specifically, indicators such as the percentage of MGNREGS expenditure dedicated to NRM, the percentage of households with water tap connections, the number of public buildings with functional rainwater harvesting structures, the percentage of water bodies taken up for desilting/deepening or special repair or checking for 100% testing of drinking water sources using Field Testing Kits, and whether the Gram Panchayat has been declared "Har Ghar Jal certified" or "ODF plus certified" often miss the core goal of water security," says Manas Satpathy. He argued that cropping intensity and income are better indicators than the mere number of structures built.
Funding, equity, and decision support
Funding remains a challenge, particularly in ensuring equity. Organisations like WOTR have leveraged substantial public finance for their programmes. They also use a modular approach with a 100-mark scoring analysis to create action plans for villages and incentivise donors and investors. This is done through a decision support system with a 300 GP (Gram Panchayat) data set, which helps donors and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arms choose where to invest. Equity principles dictate that very poor farmers should be given preference when leveraging public financing.
Another access issue mentioned by Indira Khurana, Chairperson of the Indian Himalayan River Basins Council (IHRBC) is that while farm ponds are pivotal, drinking water is often sourced via private water tankers, underscoring the need to understand these access dynamics properly. Khurana, who works in the Indian Himalayan River Basin, also emphasised that solutions must look at larger developmental issues and climate change when addressing water scarcity, with river revival being one root strategy for groundwater improvement.
The session underscored that achieving rural water security requires a fundamental shift in mindset and practice. It is about moving from an ad hoc, infrastructure-driven approach to a holistic, integrated framework that addresses governance, equity, ecology, and livelihoods. The ultimate goal remains to co-create a practical, context-specific roadmap that addresses the persistent challenges of O&M, financing, and scaling, ensuring every village in rural India becomes truly water-secure.