SPM-NIWAS: How an institution seeks to transform water and sanitation services to millions

Access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene is the most basic human need for health and well-being. Sustainable management of water resources and access to safe water and sanitation are essential for driving economic growth and productivity and provide significant leverage for existing investments in health and education. The UN Sustainable Development Goal six ‘Ensure access to Water and Sanitation for All’ goes beyond drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene to also address the quality and sustainability of water resources, which are critical to the survival of people and the planet.

The Government of India has been implementing transformational programmes to enhance ’ease of living’ by ensuring basic facilities and essential services like housing, electricity, toilet, cooking gas, financial inclusion, social security, affordable healthcare, roads, broadband connectivity, tap connection etc. Such programmes have gone on to deliver the ‘twin’ mottos of ‘no one is left out’ and bridging the urban and rural gap while providing basic facilities and services. Water and sanitation being part of the basic services are undergoing a major transformation in the country coinciding with the UN’s International Decade (2018-2028) for Action “Water for Sustainable Development”.

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The prime minister in his first Independence Day speech mentioned that dignity of women is society’s collective responsibility and on 2 October 2014 launched Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) to achieve universal sanitation coverage and make India ‘open defecation free’. This mission gave women and girl child, the promised dignity and freedom from open defecation anathema. The SBM now has graduated to SBM 2.0 to sustain the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status of villages and to improve the levels of cleanliness in rural areas through solid and liquid waste management activities, ensuring villages sustain ODF Plus status.

Exactly five years later in 2019 on Independence Day, Jal Jeevan Mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a total outlay of Rs 3.60 lakh crore ($43.43 billion) to make provision of potable tap water supply to all rural households by 2024.

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The mission, requiring quadrupled speed and scale vis-à-vis the progress achieved in the last 70 years of Independence at the time of launch, focuses on quantity, quality, regularity and affordability of water supply on a regular and long-term basis and is designed as a decentralized demand-driven one, with communities playing a major role in its management. Since the commencement of the mission, it has come a long way in terms of its rural household tap water coverage from a mere 16.71 per cent to 55.91 per cent (adding about 7.59 crore tap connections) in the last three years.

Underlying both these transformation missions is the need for competent public health engineers and efficient water and sanitation managers as well as well-functional utilities. Given the challenges of diversity in the country viz., spatial and temporal variation in water availability across the country leading to difficulty in sustaining the drinking water sources.

Taking adaption measures for challenges thrown by climate change, geographical divergence, presence of geogenic contaminants in groundwater, the requirement of long-distance water transfer for water-scarce areas, testing the quality of water supplied at regular intervals, constraints imposed by externalities from sectors like agriculture (excess fertiliser and water use), industry (pollution), governance issues, treatment of sewage/ grey water and their reuse, handling the animal waste, staying in tune with technology development and innovation etc., calls for intensive capacity building efforts throughout the country.

Water and Sanitation/ Water Supply/ Public Health Engineering departments and parastatal organisations, Rural Development/ Panchayat Raj Departments in states/ UTs/ responsible for water supply and sanitation are currently largely staffed with personnel with civil engineering skills and there is a need for them to evolve into more holistic public health engineers focusing on assured water and sanitation service delivery and utility management in the long term.

The institutional support to the water and sanitation sector to address the above issues is currently inadequate and needs to be established and nurtured in an organic manner. The academic programmes in the drinking water and sanitation sector also need to be realigned with the above new realities and challenges.

To look beyond engineering aspects of water supply and sanitation, SPM-NIWAS has been set up under Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation with an initial investment of Rs 100 crore as an autonomous institution. It is registered under the Societies Act and is expected to play a lead role and develop as an apex institution for drinking water and sanitation of international repute, undertake academic activities, research work, training and capacity development of public health engineers and other stakeholders.

Further, the institute would address various technological challenges faced in providing potable drinking water and sustain sanitation and act as a solution bank. The centre would also provide consultancy services/ solutions to developing countries in the WASH sector and is poised to become truly a referral centre.

The NIWAS will have vibrant interactions with Water Supply/ Water and Sanitation/ Public Health Engineering (PHE) Departments of various States/ UTs and other nodal implementing agencies established by State’s statute. It would collaborate with select reputed institutions such as NEERI, IITs, NUJS (NLU), Kolkata, AIIH and PH, Kolkata, BIS, etc.

It is also envisaged to partner with the Knowledge Resource Centres (KRCs), Centres of Excellence (CoEs) and Jal Jeevan Mission – Professor Chairs set up across the country and work in a hub-and-spoke model. It will also take up monitoring and evaluation of water and sanitation programmes/ schemes in rural/ urban areas and address critical water quality issues across the country.

NIWAS, for this purpose, will have multi-disciplinary personnel headed by the Director and consisting of eminent WASH experts, field professionals, scientists, etc. On the infrastructure side, it would have state-of-the-art laboratories for innovation and research, an academic training centre, a modern hostel, office infrastructure, etc.

In the long-term, the institute would be developed as an ‘Institute of National Importance’. The NIWAS will be recognised as the pivotal player in developing highly skilled personnel in water and sanitation sector within the country. It will also function as a fully endowed hub to support and guide institutions in water and sanitation across all States.

The institute is envisaged to provide technical knowhow and training, etc,. to other developing countries. In the long term, the SPM-NIWAS would be a new VISWAS (hope) and would shine as global centre of eminence in WASH fulfilling the Bharatiya ethos as mentioned in Yajur Veda:

“Amirtham va aapaha; amirthesya natharithai”

i.e “Let the water be ever present; without getting destroyed.”

The author is Secretary, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India. Views expressed are personal.

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