M A I N   N E W S

2000 villages with no drinking water
By Gobind Thukral
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, April 30 — Punjab, the country’s richest state, cannot provide safe drinking water to over 2000 villages. In fact, if the minimum standard of 40 litres of potable water per person is taken, this number goes up to 5,132 villages.

Government documents reveal that in 1,417 villages and 674 inhabitations, there is no water supply worth the name. Women and children have to traverse over four to five kilometres to fetch drinking water. The situation may not be as bad as in states like Rajasthan and Gujarat but in the Kandi areas and some arid areas of the Malwa belt where the water level has fallen, pumping out water from the tubewells has become very difficult. In other areas, the level has risen due to water logging and potable water is just not available. It is all saline water that often leads to water-borne diseases. This is in addition to the acute problem faced by some 50 lakh people in the problem areas.

The rural water supply scheme was launched in 1954. Eight thousand five hundred and eighteen villages out of 12,402 villages were identified as problem villages and plans were drawn up. In the last 36 years, an all-out effort has been made by successive governments but the state is still to reach the desired level of water supply. If the saline and poor water quality is taken into consideration, independent probes indicate that half of Punjab’s population of 2.5 crore does not have sufficient good quality drinking water.

What is worse, the state government starved of funds, has been eating into the allocations meant for rural water supply. The main worry of the Public Health authorities is not to add to the list of safe drinking water villages, but to somehow manage the minimum level of just 40 litres of water per head in the rest of the villages. The Tribune carried pictures and stories of the villages in the Malwa and kandi areas of Hoshiarpur detailing where the water supply system had gone heywire. In certain villages despite the supply system being intact, not a drop of water reaches the pitchers and buckets. Water tanks are dry and the lack of funds has forced several villages to pool voluntary resources to help the Public Health Staff to at least have water cleansing chemicals.

But it is not that the government does not know all this. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has chaired several meetings and Public Health Minister Raja Narinder Singh has been giving assurances of sufficient funds for good drinking water. But all the promises have remained on paper.

Take the Ninth Five-Year Plan targets. Last year, that is third year of the Plan, the government earmarked Rs 520 crore, but could provide barely Rs 191 crore. A year earlier showed an equally dismal picture. The plan allocation was Rs 369 crore and the actual amount spent was Rs 179 crore. When Mr Badal took over, the allocation was pegged at 378 crore, and the government gave just Rs 171 crore. The whole Ninth Plan target of Rs 5,073 crore would remain elusive, the officials have no doubt. “We may end up getting just 40 per cent”, they bemoaned.

What is worse since Punjab could not provide matching grants, some of the aid from the Centre too lapsed. For one particular scheme, the Centre had promised Rs 169 crore during the past three years, but released only Rs 107 crore. This remains largely true about other schemes. Under the much touted minimum needs programme, there has been a shortfall ranging from 25 to 50 per cent during the past five years.

Here is what a government document has finally to admit: “During the first three years of the Ninth Plan against an approved outlay of Rs 1,156 crore, expenditure of Rs 610 could be incurred up to February 2000, which is 53 per cent of the provisions. However, this expenditure is only 11.87 per cent of the Ninth Plan approved outlay. As a result of low allocation and release of funds, only 153 habitations could be commissioned against a total of 42.3 habitations.”

“Also during the first years of the Ninth Plan against an projected outlay of Rs 2,695 crore under augmentation expenditure of Rs 483 crore could be incurred. This is 14.61 per cent of the projected outlay of Rs 3300 crore of the Ninth Plan. As a result of low release only 389 habitations could be commissioned, against a target of 689,” the document stated.

The document also said: “Reasonable promptitude is not shown by the state government in releasing the funds to the department after receiving the same from the Government of India. Much less amount is released to the department than is received from the Government of India, thus severely affecting the targets and utilisation of funds.”