COVID-19 brings up the importance of safe, cheap water in India
By Marisa Xhafa, Safe Water Network*
The groundwater for drinking and cooking, which residents of villages and towns in India rely upon, has very high levels of fluoride, salinity, nitrates and other contaminants. These lead to fluorosis, blue baby syndrome, cholera, hepatitis, diarrhea, jaundice, typhoid and other water borne diseases, many resulting in loss of life especially for children.
The socio-economic impact of polluted water includes loss of income due to sick days, time spent by women on caring for the sick, girls missing school, and the hard labor involved in water collection.
Over the past decade, through its iJal program, Safe Water Network (SWN) has been providing 1.3 million people in over 330 communities in Telangana and Maharashtra, with cheap, clean water and thereby improving public health.
The water stations at these communities source water from local wells and tanks. Depending upon the quality of the source water, processing and purification varies from simple chlorination to a six stage filtration process — sand, carbon, micron filter, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet filtration, chlorine and pH if required — ridding the water of contaminants.
Safe Water’s customers earn below the Global Poverty line of $1.9 (Rs.150) per day. They spend less than 3% of their income on the purchase of iJal drinking water. They use other free local sources of water, like handpumps, for bathing, washing clothes and other household tasks.
The stations are operated by local social entrepreneurs and women’s self-help groups, with the support from the local government. The focus is on encouraging women entrepreneurs through a combination of online training in local languages and onsite practical training. Safe Water provides the entrepreneurs with chemicals and supplies as well as maintenance and repair services.
Filling up a 20-liter costs about five Rupees (7 cents) in rural areas and about 10 Rupees (14 cents) in urban areas. Typically, the price for a similar quantity of water from a competing supplier like commercial tanker owners, is four to five times as much; and as much as 10 times more for bottled water.
The small enterprises backed by SWN provide safe water at a price that is affordable to many low-income families. The stations are also a sound business for the entrepreneurs who earn about $1200, and up to $3,000 a year in a few locations. In all cases, there’s a focus on ensuring a sustainable value chain, with maintenance and service support, which is provided by SWN, paid from water revenues.
From March 2020 up until a few weeks ago, movement was largely restricted due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. As a result, during this period, it was a major challenge to ensure that the SWN stations continued to provide safe water without interruption. How to ensure the maintenance services and supplies to keep the water stations running?
“During the lockdown and thereafter, we have seen a 11% increase in the volume of water consumed at our stations, compared to 2019 levels. This was possible since over 98% of our stations continued to operate at capacity,” says Ravi Sewak, India Country Director of SWN. “We are thus able to provide reliability and peace of mind to our consumers during a major healthcare crisis.”
The rise in demand at SWN’s stations show that the COVID-19 pandemic made more consumers realize the need for safe, affordable water supply — for handwashing, good hygiene and managing illness, in addition to drinking and cooking.
A major part of SWN’s solution, to keep operating during the pandemic, comes from its use of technology. The stations are equipped with cashless, contactless smart-card systems which dispense water 24 hours a day. So personal contact between station operators and customers is eliminated.
The stations are also fitted with remote monitoring systems so that operators can chat by video with SWN’s maintenance staff to fix any technical and other problems that arise.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, local administrations declared water distribution to be an essential service. So SWN’s service staff were able to deliver supplies and carry out repairs at the water stations, though at times constrained by varying local regulations.
Safe Water Network, with its main office in New York, was co-founded in 2006 by the actor and philanthropist Paul Newman.and prominent civic and business leaders. It operates in India and Ghana, with field offices in New Delhi and Accra.
SWN has several funding partners from national and global corporations, government, and foundations, including Oracle, Honeywell, Bharat Heavy Electricals and Sir Ratan Tata Trust; solutions partners, such as IIT Delhi, Merck, and Tata Strategic Management group, that provide specialized skills; and three field partner organizations in India and Ghana for specialized local knowledge.
The problem of access to clean water was already huge in India, before it got worse during the pandemic. More than 163 million people, including 65 million living in urban slums, have little or no clean water. Also, several major cities in India face ground water depletion.
Since the pandemic began, SWN is coordinating and sharing solutions with other similar organizations, under the Safe Water Enterprise Alliance. Together these groups operate purification plants in twenty Indian states, aiming to provide clean water to nearly 90% of Indians. In addition, SWN partners with seven other groups to operate Water Knowledge Resource Centers in 14 cities, providing clean water access to 600,000 people.
“Communities that use the water supply from our stations are seeing their medical bills cut in half, a 73% reduction in school absenteeism, and 60% reduction in loss of work days,” says Poonam Sewak, vice president of Safe Water Network, India. “At our stations, the ‘burden’ of water collection now falls on the men and the young boys of the households, rather than women.”