Jal Jeevan Mission: A women-driven campaign

Women’s water woes have been one of the major concerns across the globe. It affects women in multitude of ways, irrespective class, age, colour. The Jal Jeevan Mission attempts to address these challenges. It enables and encourages women to deal with their problems on their own. Recognising women’s social rights has been a lengthy and challenging journey; nonetheless, gender parity for basic rights like access to safe drinking water is no longer a pipe dream.

Water is required for a variety of critical applications such as industry, agriculture, drinking, sanitation, and hygiene. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight “clean water and sanitation”(SDG 6.1 and 6.2) by achieving sustainable and equitable access to water for everyone, and recognises the importance of access to water. It is also well known that a family’s lack of access to resources has a negative impact on them. Women are disproportionately affected by exposure to unsafe water. Every year, women in India spend an average of 150 million workdays fetching water, time that could have been spent on education, skill development, and/or her own physical and emotional health.
Several studies conducted over more than two decades around the world have concluded that when men and women are equally involved, there is a significant improvement in leadership, transparency, and sustainability of water supplies, compared to cases where women are marginally or not involved at all. In fact, according to a World Bank study, simply incorporating women in water projects can enhance their efficacy by six to seven times compared to those that do not.

Vision and mission

Jal Jeevan Mission’s main goal is to start a women-led revolution that will decentralise the system and empower the community, particularly women, to deal with their own water issues. As it confronts the long-standing concerns of water security in India, the Jal Jeevan Mission aims to raise a generation of water-aware citizens. Today, rural women are taking up roles that usually rested with males such as plumbers, masons, and electricians, as well as testing water quality and updating results on the portal.

Responsibility of a woman

Collecting water is said to be a woman’s duty in India and there is no respite, even if she is menstruating, ill, or otherwise occupied. Photographs of women in lines with colourful plastic water containers in urban areas draw attention to water scarcity and the enormous lines that people face waiting for water tankers to arrive in cities.
Women in urban areas, particularly on the outskirts of towns and in slum regions, bear a disproportionate share of the burden of water scarcity. Water is occasionally delivered in the middle of the night in some locations, causing these ladies to lose sleep, affecting their productivity. Indeed, in the global south, there are women who are denied an education just because they must collect water rather than attend school. According to a study, every year about 23 per cent of Indian girls drop out of school on attaining puberty due to lack of clean water to cater to their
hygiene needs.
Moreover, UNICEF figures suggest, girls and women spend an estimated 200 million hours every day collecting water. It is the females who are tasked with dragging large cargo over incredibly challenging terrains in 8 out of 10 households without running water.

Jal shakti to
‘Matra shakti’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi via Jal Jeevan Mission enumerates ways towards safe sanitation and access to water, and involving women in the process, thus empowering ‘Matra Shakti’. The Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India, has devised a dedicated dashboard, the Jal Jeevan Mission Water Quality Management Information System (JJM WQMIS), in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and launched a mobile application for water quality management and surveillance. It aims to empower women to lead water quality surveillance through technology. Moreover, this unique initiative has already trained nearly 1,24,988 women so far from four states namely, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. As per a report featured in the daily guardian, Haryana (32740), Punjab (37461), Himachal Pradesh (27102) account for a number of women trained so far in handling Water Quality Testing Kits/Field Testing Kits in respective states.

Other Initiatives

• Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) presented a new participatory approach that is ‘Women Time Usage Analysis,’ which maps time use data of women by the women themselves in an open gathering. This was followed by a group ‘Water Use Analysis/Water Budgeting’ activity. Women should be instrumental to undertake water budgeting because arranging water for the household is typically regarded a woman’s business. It was discovered that on average, women and girls spend 5 hours a day gathering water from nearby Tankas. Piped tap water provided by the Jal Jeevan Mission will allow them to make better use of their time, particularly in exploring chances to enhance their socioeconomic status by engaging in government projects.

• According to the Jal Jeevan Samvad 2022, the Government of Manipur intends to provide tap water to all rural homes in the state by 2022. Around 2.84 lakh (63 per cent) of the state’s 4.51 lakh rural households have access to running tap water. Five women from every village have been schooled to use Field Testing Kits (FTK) to test water quality. A number of training programmes for water quality testing in villages has been conducted with the help of Implementation Support Agencies (ISAs) and district officials. Over 70 per cent of the villages have been served so far. The department is enlisting the help of all current Self Help Groups (SHGs) in the state, as any committee or group made up of 90 per cent to 100 per cent women always has a good outlook on things.

Through this involvement, the designated ladies who actively participate in the identification and improvisation of the kits will gradually assume full responsibility for the mission’s advancement. Members of various community-based organisations, such as SHGs, Village and Water Sanitation Committees, and ASHA, as well as community-level workers such as teachers, may serve as community facilitators.

Conclusion

The Jal Jeevan Mission is providing handholding support to women all over the country, particularly in rural areas. They are now involved in planning the layout of their village’s water pipeline, monitoring quality of the water, handling grey water via kitchen gardening, receiving training as plumbers and technicians, expanding their knowledge and skillset, and improving their health and cleanliness. When women gain income and articulation of their strategic and practical needs, social norms about women’s dependency and muted voice tend to diminish. Their voices are heard more in the family and the community. When women are empowered with safe water for themselves and their families at home, they are empowered to change their world.