European Union Supported Programme on Water Quality in India
Civil society voices, vulnerable communities and localized platforms for addressing Water Quality
Fluoride and Arsenic are two major problems of Safe drinking water in India
affecting 100 million people as a whole in more than 20 states.
This project aims to address these two problems of drinking water in the
most vulnerable areas of our country by connecting the needs of affected
communities with the respective district administration thereby ensuring
delivery of services and their maintenance.
INREM Foundation is the lead applicant in this 4 year programme on Water
quality supported by the European Union from January 1, 2018. Along with INREM,
the Co-Applicant to this programme is SaciWATERs. The total programme budget is
EUR 1.2 Million out of which the European Union contributes EUR 1 Million over this
4 year period. INREM and SaciWATERs here represent the Water quality networks (for fluoride and arsenic),
that bring together a wide set of stakeholders on the issue. Local associate partners such as the
Biome trust(Karnataka),Water Action(Bihar), SAMTA(Bihar) and GRASS (Telangana) will also participate in this action.
The project specifically aims at establishing District level people-centric platforms in 8 districts of 6 states –
Rajasthan(Dungarpur), Karnataka(Chikballapur), Telangana(Nalgonda) and Odisha(Balasore) for fluoride; and Bihar (Buxar, Bhagalpur)
and Assam (Nalbari) for Arsenic, respectively. These platforms will enable convergence between different government departments
such as Water supply, Health, and women welfare, along with ensuring that local citizen’s involvement is maximized. It will emphasize
on sustainable solutions that are ecologically sound, address the most marginalized people, and at the same time can be scaled up within
the respective districts.
As a whole, the project aims at reaching out to around 1200 habitations within these 8 districts, reaching to roughly 1.2 lakh population.
The broader ambition is to present these District Water quality mitigation models to the respective state and national programmes of the
government such as the National water quality sub-mission (NWQSM) and other related programmes, for example, the National Programme for
Prevention and Control of Fluorosis (NPPCF), as best examples of tacking these complex problems facing us
The project will utilize new technologies to scale up its efforts, which apart from new Water treatment innovations, will also focus on
the Data and Education fronts. These will enable the creation of a broader platform on Water quality issues, and thereby bring both know-how
and problem identification within the easy reach of a larger number of people.The project also has envisaged a fellowship programme called Water
quality fellowships to be awarded to students for innovative ideas on different thematic fronts each year. The objective here is to encourage an
atmosphere of innovation for bringing in the next generation of ideas to the sector.
This EU supported programme will bring much visibility to Water quality problems, through films, social media communication and other means.
We invite all interested stakeholders to be joint promoters and supporters, and together help address these problems affecting a large number
of people of our country.
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