Hitherto the role of the government was that of a service provider, with minimum involvement of the community in the planning process and the implementation activities. With the increase in demand due to public aspirations and decrease of availability of safe water it was considered essential to involve the community in the programme.
To achieve this, there was a paradigm shift and the Framework for implementation of National Rural Drinking Water Programme was revised in 2009. The Department appropriately addressed the soft issues related to facilitating the active participation of PRIs in the process of planning, implementation and operation of schemes to achieve the goal of long term sustainability. It also ensured that the community gets continuous support and handholding so that they are empowered to take up the role of planning and implementing the systems also in addition to operating and maintaining them.
Resources for Promoting Sustainability
Under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) 20% of the allocation to each state is earmarked for Sustainability component, which is provided as 100% grant-in-aid to States, for taking up various works related to sustainability of drinking water sources and schemes. These include constructing structures to use rainwater for storage and re-charging of drinking water sources.
Delivery Mechanism
The Department of Drinking Water Supply provides policy guidance and financial and technical support to the states with online monitoring through IMIS, State and district level Missions/Committees set up to strengthen the PRIs so that the ultimate objective of empowerment of PRIs in the drinking water and sanitation sector can be realized. For this not only has an appropriate institutional set up been defined, but the Department has even brought out guidelines for effective functioning of these State and district level mission and also laid down the indicators for functioning of village level water and sanitation committee (VWSC).
