India WASH Summit

Published on: 05/02/2015

WaterAid and the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation and Ministry of Urban Development are organizing a 3-day India WASH Summit from 16-18 February, 2015, at the India International Centre, New Delhi. The first event of its kind, it will bring together some 300 participants including thought leaders, the private sector, government officials and NGOs working to make a clean India a reality by 2019.

IRC is a partner organisation of the India WASH Summit and will take part in the following session:

Session I: Water Security for Swacch Bharat - How can communities become water-secure - on 16th February from 2-5pm.

This session will examine the concept of water security at the watershed level taking quality, quantity and source sustainability into account. It will address the issue of water scarcity and how it has affected actions on ensuring water for drinking, sanitation and hygiene. Speakers will suggest solutions for source sustainability, feasibility of water security plans, the key drivers such as politics, scarcity, decentralization, water conflicts, the role of women and access.

The session will attempt to answer the following:

1. What are the elements of water security planning? How can it become a people-centric process?
2. What are the key challenges in watershed level water security for water stressed and quality affected areas and how can they be addressed?
3. What resources and systems are required to effectively address source sustainability, quality, quantity and resilience in the face of disasters and climate change?

IRC India Country Director Dr. Kurian Baby will give a presentation entitled:

Water security – Sanitation Nexus: Key to sustainable future - Lessons from Kerala, India

Presents the case study of an innovative community led- government facilitated action research of cost effective harvesting of rainfall using a menu of simple technologies to make a large network of open wells perennial in an over exploited coastal district of Kerala where 70% of the people depends on well water for drinking.

The experiment started in 2008 could so far recharge 17500 open wells benefitting a population of over 122500. The experiment implemented by the author has resulted in significant improvement in water quantity. However near 90% of the recharged wells are found to have been bacteriologically contaminated though out the year, making it unsafe to drink. In the project area toilet coverage is over 95%, however mostly deep pit latrines leaching into the wells. To make matters worse, in the absence of any septage treatment, there is flourishing business of emptying of pits and illegal dumping in water bodies.

It is argued that water security and sanitation are complementary and inseparable. Swatch Bharat Abhyan if driven on hardware coverage without technology choice and construction quality assurance simply amounts to deferred open defecation – high coverage with low health outcome.