It was the first day of Diwali, and Rupali Hukire (name changed), a 42-year-old beautician, hurriedly cleaned big buckets and steel pots. She draws water from her neighbour's borewell at a cost of Rs 100 for 30 minutes of pumping. Though her home, in Khandavi village in the Barshi tehsil of Maharashtra’s Solapur district, has a water connection provided by the gram panchayat, she gets tap water for only 45 minutes, once a week.

It is worse in summer, when they get tap water once in two weeks, says Hukire. Sometimes, it is too dirty to use and they have to buy water. The family pays Rs 100 as panipatti (fees for water connection) to the panchayat and Rs 800 to the neighbour every month. She earns Rs 15,000 per month through her beauty clinic.

In India, the right to clean drinking water is a fundamental right, broadly under ‘right to life’ as well as specifically, as courts have held over the years. The union government, in partnership with the states, launched the Jal Jeevan Mission in 2019 with the stated mission of providing water to every rural household by 2024. The mission's slogan – “Har Ghar Jal” – stood for an ambitious goal that every house would have a functional tap connection and an assured supply of 55 litres of water per capita per day of the prescribed quality. The timing of the supply was to be decided by panchayats and village water and sanitation committees.

But the scheme has not met its target of providing water for all rural households. When the scheme was announced, only one in six rural households in India were reported to have tap water connections, according to the government's JJM dashboard. Over five years later, about 80 percent of households across India now have tap water connections. In Maharashtra, that figure is 88 percent as of January 16. In the state's Solapur district, where Hukire stays, 99.9 percent of the households have tap connections.

The numbers are impressive, but as pointed out earlier, against the mandated 55 litres of water per capita per day, households in the region get water only once a week.

“Local bodies have to finalise water sources like a well or pond or a borewell that have the capacity to supply water to the respective villages for the next 30 years,” an engineer from the Palghar Zila Parishad told IndiaSpend. "Local bodies would have to lay pipelines from the water source to each household in the village.”

Households invest time, money for water

Kausalya Dashrath Solannar, 60, from Khali village in the Gangakhed taluka of Maharashtra’s Parbhani district, which is part of the drought-affected Marathwada region, points to water gushing from a broken pipeline on the road in front of her house. “I buy 1,000 litres of water from a farmer, paying Rs 200 per month, as the gram panchayat does not supply water daily,” she said.

According to the JJM dashboard, in Gangakhed, only 26 of the 105 villages have tap water connections.

“I am spending money on water, which we were supposed to receive at a nominal cost. In addition, we buy jars of drinking water – a jar of 20-30 litres costs Rs 20-30. I have to spend 1-2 hours per day just for water management,” Kausalya says.

Charges for water under JJM are nominal. According to Jal Jeevan Mission guidelines, communities will contribute towards 10 percent of the capital cost in cash and/or kind and/or labour. In hilly and forested areas, northeastern and Himalayan states, and villages having more than 50 percent Scheduled Caste and/or Scheduled Tribe population, the contribution would be five percent of the capital cost.

JJM is a good idea, but it needs to be thought through to ensure sustainability of water sources like dams, aquifers, said Himanshu Kulkarni, scientist emeritus and co-founder of the Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management. “Sources should be managed in an integrated way as agriculture and industry also rely on the same water sources. There is competition for the same sources. Source sustainability depends on resource sustainability,” he said.

According to a 2022 state-wise functionality report, 83 percent of the households in Parbhani were receiving more than or equal to 55 LPCD of water, 96 percent were receiving it regularly and 73 percent got potable water. The report also showed that in Maharashtra, around 84 percent of the sampled households were found to be paying service delivery charges.

“We have completed 80 percent of the work for Har Ghar Jal,” says Shiva Pawar, village head of the Khali gram panchayat. As per JJM dashboard, 94 percent of 304 households in the village have tap water connections. “The village soil is black and soft. Pipelines laid for water get broken because the soil is unable to support them. We have one government well as a source of water,” said Pawar.

In May 2024, IndiaSpend reported that JJM needs to move away from the legacy of previous schemes that focus on just building infrastructure for water supply and instead also focus on sustaining water resources.

“Almost every house has plastic water tanks in the village,” social activist Onkar Pawar, of Parbhani district, points out. “Villagers have to spend Rs 2,000-5,000 to buy water tanks, as the gram panchayat supplies water only once a week.” 

Even that is without purification, he said. “People purify the water they get by using Jivanu pouches sold in shops, or using chlorine.”

In September 2022, IndiaSpend had reported similar circumstances in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh where there was no piped water flowing despite taps getting installed.

Private players make a killing

Given the paucity of government water supply, private players who sell water in cans of 30 litre capacity for Rs 30, in the small towns and villages across Maharashtra, have made a killing.

“We have water purification set up,” says the owner of one water supply operation, on condition of anonymity. “We purify and sell drinking water in jars of 15-20 litres for Rs 15-20. We sell 150 such jars per day.” There are, he said, at least 30-35 such private purification centres in Barshi.

“Many villages cannot supply water as there is no groundwater due to various reasons,” Pawar, the village head points out. “Some villages are at a height and hence the rainwater flows down the slopes and doesn’t get percolated. Drought-affected villages have no water in summer.”

India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world, and most of it is used for irrigation. By 2050, per capita water availability is estimated to fall to 1,140 cubic metres, bringing India closer to becoming water-scarce.

“Farmers or residents have laid private pipelines from their borewells to nearby households without informing local bodies. They supply water to households in the villages, charging a few hundred rupees per month. There are no government rules regarding private pipelines,” Onkar Pawar added.

Manik Kadam, a social activist from Parbhani, said, “Har Ghar Jal scheme is nothing but a scam. This scheme is being run to make contractors rich. The quality of work, like laying pipelines, is poor. The government claims it has supplied water connection to all houses. However, many pipelines are already broken and besides, gram panchayats are unable to supply water daily due to scarcity.”

In a December 2024 response in Parliament, the union government said that the Maharashtra government had “taken a policy decision to distribute for new project water through Pipe distribution network (wherever feasible) in lieu of open canal system to minimize leakage.” The state government had instituted a water audit mechanism to ensure efficient use of available water resources, the response added.

Poor monitoring, maintenance of infrastructure

When the JJM was announced in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hoped to reduce the drudgery faced by women. He said, “Mothers and sisters have to travel 2, 3, 5 km carrying the load of water on their heads. A large part of their lives is spent in struggling for water.”

But for 40-year-old Adivasi woman Hira Bai, in Devali village in Palghar district, the drudgery continues. She gets her water from a well about 1 km from her home. The trek to and fro, plus the time she spends waiting in line to draw water, means she cannot work a full day, and therefore gets only half a day's wages of Rs 200.

Only 68 percent of households have got water supply as yet. Thousands of tribals from Palghar participated in a protest during which they removed poorly laid pipelines.

“The government had laid a pipeline to supply water in over 100 villages in Palghar including Devali,” says Vivek Pandit, social activist and founder of the Shramajeevi Sanghatana that works for tribals in Palghar, Nashik, and nearby districts. “As per government rules, pipelines should be laid below three feet underground, but private contractors have not followed the rule. We have therefore taken out pipelines that were not laid as per the rule, from over 100 villages in Palghar.”

Saurabh Singh, an environmental activist who has been working on drinking water issues through Inner Voice Foundation for the last 20 years, said that the government may have installed taps but there is no water or in some cases, tap water was available for a few months or weeks. And since then there has been no water supply due to non monitoring and lack of maintenance, he said.

While water scarcity is an issue, water quality adds to the problem, said Singh.

“Government has installed water purification ROs but they are not functional as there is no monitoring or maintenance,” he adds.

Rajasthan, Tamil Nad and Maharashtra have some of the highest incidences of nitrate contamination, with over 40 percent of water samples exceeding the permissible limit, said a 2024 union government’s ground water quality report. At least seven districts in Maharashtra had nitrate concentration exceeding the permissible limit of 45 mg/L, said the report.

IndiaSpend reached out to the director, Water Supply Board of Maharashtra, and the Zila Parishad in Palghar, for comment on why households were not getting the promised water supply. We will update this story when we receive a response.

This report is republished with permission from IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

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