Chapter 11 - Re-Imagining the Future: Experiencing Sustained Drinking Water for All

Abstract

Although I have just completed my first field assignment in India, after more than a decade of living and working abroad, I am yet to fully comprehend the scale and depth of the transformation that some visionary and smart governance has done to the rural water supply situation in the country. Refusing to believe the glowing media accounts I had read, I was determined to see for myself and “uncover the truth,” which had been the hallmark of my earlier work in India. But in village after village (I visited a total of 100 Gram Panchayats across 10 states in 6months); a truly astonishing picture was emerging. The people had enough water for domestic use (drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing), their livestock had water, and emergency water supply in trains and tankers during summer scarcities and droughts were a thing of the past. The community-managed systems were supported by government departments working in close coordination with each other and this combination has helped them to address the various problems encountered en route to their common goal. While this had been unheard of in the earlier India I knew, where a few “islands of excellence” survived, the reasons for the success were in the details. And it was these details that the other developing countries in Africa wanted, in order to learn from India's remarkable success in overcoming a decades-old problem. This in brief was my assignment, and here are the highlights, extracted from the voluminous report that had been submitted to the funding agency.