Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM)

Why in NEWS ?

• Over 2.5 crore rural households have been provided tap connections under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) since it started in 2019, with Telangana and Bihar emerging as leading states, shows data available with the Jal Shakti Ministry.

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• Goa has become the first state in the country to provide a tap connection to all rural households.
• The data available on the mission dashboard shows that Telangana is the top performing state in terms of providing tap connections to a maximum proportion (69.56%) of rural households, providing about 38 lakh tap connections.
• Bihar, which is at second place, has covered 54.38% of rural households, followed by Goa (24.3%), Mizoram (23.19%), Haryana (21.12%), Manipur (20.78%), Himachal Pradesh (19.99%), Maharashtra (15.4%), Uttarakhand (14.97%), and J&K (14.94%).
• West Bengal is at the bottom of the list of 32 states and Union territories, covering only 1.44% of rural households since the start of the mission.
• The others at the bottom of the list are Karnataka (1.4%), Kerala (1.78%), Ladakh (2.25%), Assam (3.39%), Jharkhand (3.36%) and Rajasthan (3.69%), among others.

Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM)

• Government of India launched Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in August, 2019.
• The JMM aims at providing a functional household tap connection to every rural household by 2024 i.e. providing potable water at service level of 55 litre per capita per day (lpcd) to every rural household through Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) by 2024.
• It aims to create local infrastructure for rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and management of household waste water for reuse in agriculture.
• The Jal Jeevan Mission is set to be based on various water conservation efforts like point recharge, desilting of minor irrigation tanks, use of greywater for agriculture and source sustainability.
• The Jal Jeevan Mission will converge with other Central and State Government Schemes to achieve its objectives of sustainable water supply management across the country.
• The fund sharing pattern between the Centre and states is 90:10 for Himalayan and North-Eastern States, 50:50 for other states, and 100% for Union Territories.

Need for and significance of the mission

• India has 16% of the world population, but only 4% of freshwater resources.
• Depleting groundwater level, overexploitation and deteriorating water quality, climate change, etc. are major challenges to provide potable drinking water.
• It is an urgent requirement of water conservation in the country because of the decreasing amount of groundwater level.
• Therefore, the Jal Jeevan Mission will focus on integrated demand and supply management of water at the local level.