Every drop of water is precious for Sadakwadi villagers in the remote Mokhada taluka of Palghar district in Maharashtra. There is one well catering to the needs of about six hamlets nearby and in peak summer the struggle for water intensifies. This time, along with summer, there is a coronavirus. Regularly and thoroughly washing hands with soap and water to keep Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, away is a daunting task for many of the villagers in this locality. They have to walk miles for a pot of drinking water as they don’t have taps that supply water into their households.

According to data by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, submitted before the Lok Sabha on March 5, out of a total 17.87 crore rural households in India, only 18 per cent or 3.27 crore households had tap connections for piped water supply as of April 1, 2019, while 14.60 crore households -- that is 82 per cent of households -- are without tap connections for water supply. The data presented by the government is based on reports submitted by the States as on April 1, 2019.

In West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, only 1 per cent of rural households have a tap connection for piped-water supply while Bihar has 2 per cent of its households in this category. Sikkim (99 per cent), Gujarat (78 per cent) and Himachal Pradesh (56 per cent) are the top three States, with the highest number of tap connections for piped water. Other than these three States, Punjab and Haryana have more than 50 per cent of rural households getting piped water supply.

Women worst affected

As the hunt for water is the normal routine for the majority of rural households, the most affected are women. On average, a rural woman walks more than 14,000 km a year just to fetch water, according to a report on women and water by the National Commission for Women.

Along with availability of water, quality is another concern in rural areas. Per data from the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, 16 States have a rural population of more than one lakh depending on metal-contaminated water. More than four crore people in rural India drink water contaminated by heavy metals, fluoride, arsenic, and nitrate.

The Government of India, in partnership with States, has launched the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), which aims to provide potable water at a service level of 55 litres per capita, per day to every rural household through a Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) by 2024, at an estimated cost of ₹3.60 lakh crore.

But today, with the Covid-19 outbreak, rural folks are fighting the battle on many fronts, and getting water to wash their hands is proving to be a major challenge.

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