The idea that rural water schemes are only sustainable if small

It’s time to question the age-old and universal bias among water professionals, policymakers, and funding partners altogether of Asia, et al. within the developing world, that rural water schemes are only sustainable if small, simple and locally managed. This is often a bias that has disproportionately thwarted the agricultural water sector so far and deprived rural people of the upper service standards that urban citizens can deem granted.

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This was a move to be warmly welcomed, since only 18% of rural people in India have a household water connection. For this to enhance and India to realize the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 target of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable beverage for all by 2030, such a concerted focus is required.

Recently, once I led a team to organize a large-scale rural water development in India, I found several biases from multiple stakeholders. Here are the three most prevalent:

Bias 1: Rural schemes must be small and straightforward. While designing rural or urban water schemes we must ensure appropriate and least-cost solutions supported a lifecycle analysis. But this could not end in many small-scale schemes. In only one district of West Bengal, we found 211 beverage schemes in 2017 that either the state or communities were managing. This doesn’t bode well either for efficient use of resources or operational sustainability.

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Most policymakers still think household connections for rural areas are a luxury. But they're a requirement in ensuring health benefits and conservation. One among the best public health threats in India is from naturally elevated levels of arsenic and fluoride in groundwater. India’s Ministry of beverage and Sanitation in May 2018 estimated around 27 million people in India were in danger from arsenic and fluoride. Beverage with high concentrations of arsenic within the future can cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, while chronic exposure to fluoride may cause dental or skeletal fluorosis and bone diseases.

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Some 82% of rural communities in India receive water through public stand-posts. A survey commissioned by the general public Health Engineering Department in Madurai district of West Bengal in 2016 showed that such public stand-post-based schemes may end in people continuing to drink from contaminated on-premises sources.

The “small is better” approach leads to rural schemes designed for block-level habitations instead of for a basin or a neighborhood. The results are suboptimal use of water resources and loss of economies of scale. Citizens could also be happier with long-term plans that assist in guiding development and connecting existing and future systems into a grid-based supply.