From Bharat Lal, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, New Delhi

Posted 31 August 2010

We are nearing the end of the process of preparing the Strategic Plan for Rural Drinking Water up to the year 2022. We thank community members for their inputs. In this final discussion, we request you to send your inputs on the plan’s implementation as per the questions below. We welcome your responses even if you have written earlier, and request others who have not written so far, to do so.

Please refer to the discussion paper (ftp://203.124.149.174/public/wes/cr/res-04061001.pdf) that provides the relevant details and the template (ftp://203.124.149.174/public/wes/cr/res-04061002.pdf) which gives our approach. We seek your inputs on three broad areas -

Management and finance-related issues

• How will different schemes be managed in terms of maintenance and service delivery by gram panchayats?
• How much should be recovered from users for each type of intervention? How can we ensure that Finance Commission funds are transferred to GPs mandatorily, and leverage the 10 per cent incentive funds under NRDWP for handing over schemes to PRIs? How can we set up a revolving fund?
• Under IMIS, what should be the lowest level of data entry: GP, Block, sub-division or district and what sort of IT system can link all the states?

Institutional issues

• How can we strengthen the District Water and Sanitation Missions and Water Supply and Sanitation Organisations? How can social audits be introduced for better transparency, who will do them and how can they be certified?
• What is the experience or policy in your state regarding regulation of water?
• How can we build a committed group of officers that are technically competent?

Service delivery

• How can we ensure testing of all water quality sources regularly and what regulatory mechanism, if any, can we use to ensure adequate supply of water for domestic purposes and protecting water quality?
• How can we use mobile phones to monitor, redress grievances, obtain community feedback, etc.
• How to use award schemes, say like the Sajal Gram Puraskar, to achieve these objectives?

In the two earlier discussions we had covered aspirations, status and strategies. If you want to add more to your earlier response, or respond afresh, please refer to this link (ftp://ftp.solutionexchange.net.in/public/wes/cr/res-31081001.doc) for more information and address the questions listed there.

Please see attachment below for the responses.