Bihar pioneered water supply connections to every rural household under the Mukhya Mantri Gramin Peyjal Nishchay Yojana. The scheme implemented over the years from 2016-2024 has a coverage of over 90% of the rural households in the state as per the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) dashboard. If systems are not properly maintained, it is not long before they go defunct. And to avoid this, in June 2021, the Government of Bihar issued guidelines for the operation and maintenance (O&M) of water supply schemes - Dirgh Kaalin Anurakshan Niti (Long term maintenance policy, Letter No- 2935, dt 22-6-2021).
AKRSP(I) has been working in the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar on various developmental issues including on water and sanitation. AKRSP(I) had played a role in building capacities of the block and gram panchayat (GP) level functionaries when the water supply schemes were being implemented. When the government orders on O&M came out, AKRSP(I) saw an opportunity to demonstrate participatory operation and maintenance of water supply schemes. In February 2022, AKRSP(I), Water For People and Arghyam (partners) came together and created a program in partnership with the Panchayati Raj Department of the Government of Bihar.
The program’s objective is to operationalise and demonstrate a scalable model of participatory operation and maintenance covering all the 548 water supply schemes in Sakra, Bandra and Muraul blocks in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. In these 3 blocks, the partners will put in limited resources to understand the design, processes and strengthen the capabilities of the existing human resources. In the remaining blocks of Muzaffarpur and all the water supply schemes in the districts of Nalanda and Sheohar, the partners will work with the government to deploy the model with government’s own resources available in the system.
Overall, this would cover about 7000 water supply schemes over a period of 2 years. This could offer a method, tools, templates and set of practices that could help and guide O&M of Mukhya Mantri Gramin Peyjal Nischay Yojana schemes in Bihar and Jal Jeevan Mission schemes across the country.
The three main objectives of the program are:
The program entails a relatively large-scale deployment with modest resources. It called for a different way of working and the partners decided to kick off the program with a workshop to understand the overall landscape of the program and align on design principles which would guide the program design and implementation.
The principles were arrived at with the context of demonstration of participatory operation and management at scale with the government as a partner.
While choosing technology solutions, the program will select solutions that generate data as the activities are carried out on the ground. This will ensure that the data is trusted and provides a single source of truth to all the stakeholders. Anurakshaks should not have to spend additional time and effort in capturing the data from the activities on the ground.
While executing the project, we hope to be guided by these design principles when confronted with choices, and take the right decisions. We will revisit these principles at the beginning of the second year.
Manu Srivastava, Director, Partner Engagements, Arghyam, Bangalore
Dr. Umesh Desai, Director (Water Resources) & CTO, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Vivek Sharan, State In Charge - Bihar, Water For People
This article is one among a series of articles on the project partnered by AKRSP(I), Water For People and Arghyam for sustainable operation and maintenance of the drinking water supply schemes established across wards in rural Bihar under the Mukyamantri Gramin Peyjal Nishchay Yojana