The plus of additional professionally treated drinking water, Telangana & Andhra Pradesh

The water challenge in the past half-century has been mainly driven by development needs, most importantly concerned with the most immediate human health crisis related to reasonable and affordable access to drinking water. The State Governments responsible for water supply, supported by the Government of India through a number of programmes delivering both funding and management approaches for sustainability, particularly decentralised community management, have delivered impressive levels of access. However, the need to access the most immediately available water, usually groundwater accessed for 'single- village schemes', has led to the supply being vulnerable to chemical and biological contaminants. In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the widespread prevalence of fluoride is adversely affecting human health by causing dental and skeletal fluorosis. With a rapidly growing population and increasing demand for quality potable drinking water innovative solutions have been emerging to support to this new drinking water crisis.

This situation provides a strong rationale for the role of professionally-managed communityowned/influenced decentralised drinking water delivery. Various players have emerged in the last two decades in both rural and urban areas. For the purpose of the case study we have studied the following organizations: Bala Vikasa, the Naandi Foundation and the Safe Water Network. These organizations have been chosen for documentation because of their pre-dominance of community involvement in their ongoing service delivery.

These three slightly different approaches to delivering potable drinking water support communities needs complementary to the ongoing support from the state water agencies: Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Telangana and Department of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, Andhra Pradesh, who have constructed the base level water service and have deliver varying degrees of ongoing support to communities.

Of the potable water facilitators, Bala Vikasa has a demand responsive approach whereas Naandi and SWN - MARI approach the communities where the source of drinking water is unsafe.

All three organisations use Reverse Osmosis Technology for purifying the water and the safe water is sold at the outlets in jerry cans/containers, some through automated systems, some through sales staff. The water committees though informal in their establishment in this context, have been trained capacitated to the extent where they can handle the administration, management, operation and maintenance. There are various tools that have been developed by the support entities to guide the water committees such as separate bank account, registry of operational information, book-keeping, addressing minor issues etc.

The Summary Cost Table (see full report) shows the extent of support which is necessary for this combined approach, demonstrating the community's willingness to pay for the additional quality of potable drinking water in addition to their more marginal contributions to the conventional water supply. The extent to which communities will be able to manage their sophisticated treatment plants over time, particularly as membranes fail and NGOs press for full transfer of responsibility, is the outstanding question. At present the systems studied are delivering successful community management of water, both potable and conventional supply, but at a total cost over 50% higher than the median of the 20 case studies investigated during this research project.