An Overview of Water & Sanitation

Background:

Despite large fund allocations towards providing safe drinking water and sanitation in India, access to safe and sustainable drinking water to majority of rural population remains incomplete. The inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure and poor service delivery and unsafe behaviours are collectively responsible for high diarrhoea incidences especially in children. In 2015, Atmashakti initiated to work towards water and sanitation issues prevalent in rural tribal areas of Odisha in 6 blocks of 5 districts.  The initiative started with the support of Arghyam to bring about some policy level changes.

During the most intense phase of MGNREGS and food security campaign, OSM decided that if one need to constructively work on malnutrition then issue of water and sanitation should be equally worked upon. It is closely linked with the previous interventions and an everyday story of the masses in the operational area. Hence OSM began to train the people’s collective through community leaders on water rights and entitlements. Trainings were impaired on how these assets could be mobilised through Sangthan.

The objective of our intervention is to bring sustainability in water & sanitation for common people and to bring behavioural change towards sanitation. Gradually, local sangathan’s’ started escalating safe drinking water issues form other blocks/districts, resulting in immense pressure on local, district and state administration to deliver on people’s demand as per the water and sanitation related rights and entitlements.

Initially, we began with 6 blocks namely – Koraput block of Koraput district, Mathli block of Malkhangiri district, Baliguda& K-Nuagaon block in Kandhmal district, Hemgir block in Sundargarh and Jamankira block in Sambalpur but now we are working in 14 districts on water and sanitation related issues. OSM believes that the issue of addressing water and sanitation problems in the villages is less challenging in comparison to the questions of employment guarantee or food security. In fact, prior to taking up the issue of water and sanitation in an organised manner, it was already taken up along with MGNREGS while entering a new village. However, in the later phase it became a key component of intervention. In many villages in the operational area, water and sanitation related entitlements have been taken up and water sources have been repaired, new sources have been established and new toilets constructed.  Slowly Water and contamination became an integral part of all event and activities of the sangthan from the initial stage itself.

Demand for Safe Drinking Water:

As a pilot initiative we chose to work in 1240 villages covering 9514 households in 6 blocks of 5 districts in 4 districts of OSM intervention. Out of this 200 villages are core while the remaining 1040 villages are peripheral villages. We are demanding Safe Drinking water for all, and this culminated into state-central level campaign linking water to “Right to Life” (Article 21). In August 2015, the Right to safe drinking water campaign was launched in 6 blocks of 5 districts in which, we had given training to 1000 village cadres in water testing, writing demands and petitions. We tested water samples from different sources to know the status of quality of drinking water.  The results were surprising. In Malkhangiri, 37 water samples out of 150 in Jamankira, 6 samples out of 28, 6 samples in Baliguda out of 32, had iron beyond the permissible limit, which is very hazardous for human consumption.

From the given table one could find that 70 % of the total household depends on hand pump for drinking purpose. This raises the need to check if the water being used for drinking purpose is safe or not. For this purpose, trainings were impaired to the village leader/ volunteer in all the regions. One of the key trainings surrounded around water testing methods. A total of 772 volunteers were trained from all the six blocks of five districts. In all 28 trainings were conducted after which the volunteers reached out to 279 villages covering 14832 households. Table-8 gives a brief of this outreach.

The preliminary study revealed several other facts too. In Baliguda and K. Nuagaon of Kandhamal, out of total 368 villages, Self Employed Mechanic (SEM) were only active in 116 villages, rest of the population have never heard anything such. Out of the total 506 villages in Malkangiri and Koraput, only 435 villages have SEM. Interestingly, however it’s just on paper none of them are functional. The inhabitants of the remaining 20 villages are not even aware of SEM. 

Impact of Training

The immediate impact of the training is that the villagers came to know about the quality of water, they also learned about the consequences of consuming water with contents of iron beyond permissible limit. Secondly they learn about the methods of purifying water by means of mixing the water and then allowing the impurities to settle down and then consume the water after transferring it to another utensil. Third and the most important impact is that they come up with an idea of writing applications to the Sarpanch, the JE and other concerned people for washing and repair of hand pumps. But in places where bacterial contamination is found, instances being very few the people are also demanding for new sources of water like solar water units, piped water supply units and repair of existing hand pumps. 

Most of the leaders who meet the administration have developed the attitude of demanding a copy of receipt of the applications that are submitted to different offices; some of these applications are also retained in the office as documentary proofs. The applications for repair and installation are not only submitted to the Sarpanch but a copy is also submitted to the Executive Engineer RWSS, and the Junior Engineer RWSS.

Water testing results have led to the opening of eyes of the government for multiple reasons. The testing came up with startling information on the level of water contamination in each of the villages and the sources they use for drinking purpose. The process is on and efforts have been made to avail safe drinking water to the people.

Block wise study on extents of water contamination 

1. In Koraput samples of iron in number of villages were found but at a permissible level. However, in Badamput and Mahadeiput gram panchayats, iron level was found beyond the permissible level. As a result, people started using drinking water from other sources. People also took the immediate action by submitting memorandums to Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) office.
2. In Mathli   micro-biological contaminations were found in five villages. Here people were educated and instructed to treat water through boiling.
3. In Hemgir permissible level iron was found in 22 villages.
4. In Baliguda a large population use Chua (stream) water, though cases of chemical contamination had not been registered. But almost most of the open sources (such as Chua) water had micro-bacterial contamination. Despite hand pump had been leveraged, but still local community presumed that hand pump water is tasteless. Hence they prefer using Chua water for drinking purposes. So, people were told to boil water for drinking purposes, if they are taking water from Chua.
5. In K. Nuagaon permissible iron samples were found in 32 villages. However, like Baliguda community have been using Chua water for drinking purposes. To demonstrate, we have tested Chua water, resulted micro-biological contamination. Hence people were educated to boil water for drinking purposes.
6. In Jamankira cases of iron beyond permissible level were found in Sarda Panchayat, hence community stopped using the contaminated sources.

As part of the intervention on providing safe drinking water, many hand pumps were repaired, some restored and a few new ones were installed too. Solar water plants were constructed in some blocks based on the need as well as the utilitarian value.

People’s Dependency and Perception on drinking water

Details of water testing training provided to volunteers

Block	No of training conducted	No of village covered	No of householdd covered/ beneficiary	Male Volunteers/Leaders	Female Volunteer/Leaders	Total  Participants
Baliguda	1	48	3921	52	22	74
K.Nuagaonn	3	99	8630	66	64	130
Koraput	6	32	646	107	82	189
Mathli	14	83	1146	207	92	299
Jamankiraa	1	8	408	10	9	29
Hemgir	4	9	81	41	10	51
Total	28	279	14832	483	279	772

Gradually, after the campaign, people started culminating water issues from others areas of the state as they started realizing the need for pure water. Thus, Atmashakti decided to organize Padyatra in Kandhmal and Malkhangiri which started on 14thNovember, 2016 and concluded after 27 days.

After Padyatra, many parts of the state specially Kandhmal and Malkhangiri, people started bringing their issues by themselves, they were then capacitated to write applications and petitions through our people’s collective.

We covered 285 villages during 27-day long Padyatra and we reached out to 66280 HHs. We identified 1031 issues related to malnutrition, livelihood and water& sanitation.
Apart from day-to-day activity

Our consistent follow-ups and demand for safe drinking water has started influencing the state administration as government of Odisha has launched a new scheme in both rural & urban area named ‘BASUDHA’ with the cost of Rupees 1000 Cr. to ensure water is available to all.

Currently, we are working towards bringing behavioural changes in the community towards good sanitation practices, through school children, as they are the change makers of the community. We are focusing on use of toilets change, hand wash practices, using boiled water to drink.

We are now preparing grassroots leaders, who have been trained in last 2 and half years to sustain the momentum of escalating grassroots issues and demanding policy level intervention.