Allocation for Jal Jeevan Mission may be doubled in upcoming Budget

Ministry hopeful of uptick in activity; may take Rs 12k-crore loan from Nabard

Allocation for the Jal Jeevan Mission is expected to rise two-fold in the upcoming Union Budget to over Rs 22,000 crore, as the programme gathers momentum post the Covid-19 pandemic, according to sources.

The total allocation for the programme in financial year 2020-21 (FY21) was Rs 11,500 crore, up from Rs 10,000 crore in the previous year. So far, about Rs 7,050 crore worth of expenditure has been incurred.

The Jal Shakti Ministry is expecting “a dramatic improvement” in the household tap connections in the January-March 2021 period, and it will utilise the rest the remaining funds.

“Physical progress usually picks up in the last quarter. We will give the money to the states based on the progress of the programme in their districts,” a senior official said.

The cost of the Jal Jeevan Mission is estimated to be around Rs 3.6 trillion, of which the central share is Rs 2.08 trillion.

The ministry is so hopeful of an uptick in Jal Jeevan Mission activity that it may also consider accessing extra budgetary resources of Rs 12,000 crore through a loan from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard).

“Covid had slowed down the work and the fiscal condition was also not very encouraging...We will see an improvement now,” the senior official added.

A recent press statement by the Jal Shakti Ministry also said all the works were badly affected due to the nationwide lockdown and construction activity had suffered in most parts of the country.

The government is also trying to work out a monitoring mechanism for water consumption. So far, the Jal Jeevan Mission does not cover the expenditure of installing water meters in households. The Centre, however, has asked states to make provisions for installing a sensor-based monitoring system — like a water meter — in rural households.

The government is concerned that for a country the size of India, the cost of monitoring could become very high. There are over 600,000 villages and over 1.7 million habitations.

The ministry is planning to rope in international experts to help access the right technology at affordable cost to measure water supply and usage.

Almost 34 per cent of the rural households now have a functional tap water connection, half of which has come through the Jal Jeevan Mission. As on August 15, 2019, when the programme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, out of approximately 189.3 million rural households, 32 million or about 17 per cent of households had tap water connections. The target for next year is to improve this to 45 per cent. Since August 2019, 30 million households have been provided tap water connections.

Punjab and Tamil Nadu have become the first states to provide every school with tap water supply. 

So far, Goa and Telangana are the only states in the country with 100 per cent coverage. Bihar and Puducherry are expected to reach full coverage by the end of 2021.