Indore women ensure clean drinking water, promote Jal Jeevan Mission

As Madhya Pradesh continues to struggle to procure safe drinking water, women are serving as change agents for effective water management and WASH practices under the JalJeevan Mission.

Ensuring the effective implementation of the JalJeevan Mission,WaterAid India empowers women to work for their respective communities by ensuring access to safe drinking water. Together with the project team, these women work with rural communities to enable them to plan, operate, manage, maintain and sustain the piped water supply schemes. The women + water alliance team has been supporting the government as a technical support partner since 2019 and ensuring the effective implementation of the JalJeevan Mission.

Pointing out the challenges the people from her community face, SunitaRaikwal, an ASHA worker from Mankund Village, Dewas, says, “Women in the village had to walk kilometers daily to fetch water from local wells and handpumps to meet the household needs, several times a day. The larger the family, the more the trips and ensuring water availability was the only priority.”

To bring about a change, Sunita volunteered to be trained in water quality testing and soon she was leading the efforts in her village on generating awareness aboutthe importance of water quality. She would visit houses and encourage the women and adolescent girls of the community to learn water quality testing and would take time out from her busy schedule on weekends to train her fellow women on the use of field-testing kits (FTKs).

She maintains a register at the village level with details of all sources which have been tested and with support from the panchayat has established a routine for mandatory water quality testing of all drinking water sources in her village twice every year.

Recalling her past experience, another volunteer named BabitaLiloriya from Nayapura Village, Dewas says, “Earlier there were several visits to the doctor because my family members used to sufferfrom dysentery, diarrhea, etc. Ever since I have learned how to test water, safe practices in keeping the water source clean and boiling the water before consumption, my visits to the doctor have significantly reduced. Unless there is some other ailment in my family, we do not go to the doctor at all.”

Today, Babitahas been actively involved in data collection and is undertaking household surveys for the preparation of a water security plan. She also learned to calculate the average water wasted by every household in her village and began advocating for water conservation at the household level.

For bringing about a revolution at the grassroots level,WaterAid India won an award for its interventions in 3 villages including Mokalgaon, Khandwa, and Dhaboti in Sehore District of Madhya Pradesh under the Best Water NGO: Water Education category in 2022. WaterAid India teameducated communities to enable them effectively manage their village piped water supply schemes with minimal external support.