Though water and sanitation are state subjects, over the years the central government has been attempting to nudge state and city governments to invest in water and waste infrastructure through various programmes. Centrally sponsored programmes with substantial fund allocations have become popular since 2005, with the launch of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), and incentivise states and cities to take reform measures.
To start with, the reform focus was very comprehensive, but has become increasingly specific with attention on a handful elements over time. Under the flagship Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), which defines the course of investment in the urban water and sanitation sector, state governments have been empowered to identify projects under a bottom-up approach wherein cities prepare service-level approval plans, which get reviewed and aggregated to become state annual action plans (SAAPs). The SAAPs further get approved for funding under the mission.
AMRUT
Launched in 2015, AMRUT covers 487 cities as well as about 60 per cent of India’s urban population and involves an investment outlay of Rs 1 trillion. Of this, Rs 500 billion is to be funded by the central government and remaining by state governments and urban local bodies (ULBs). The mission’s aim is to provide access to potable water to every household in the mission cities, substantially improve sewerage treatment coverage and capacity, develop city parks, implement reforms, and build project implementation capabilities in cities. At AMRUT’s inception, the government had reported that urban areas had a water supply and sewerage network coverage of 64 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.
Progress so far
About 4,672 projects worth Rs 776.4 billion have been approved as part of the SAAPs under the mission. Of these, 1,208 are water supply projects whereas 836 are sewerage projects. The projects involve an investment of around Rs 710 billion. Other areas covered under the mission include stormwater drainage, parks and urban mobility projects. The government has targeted the installation of 13.9 million water supply connections and 14.5 million sewerage connections to ensure substantial coverage of these services under the mission. So far, about 8.5 million water supply connections and 5.2 million sewerage connections (including households covered under septage management) have been provided under AMRUT.
NRW management
Earlier missions such as the JNNURM focused on the measurement and reduction of non-revenue water (NRW) or unaccounted-for water (UFW). The cities were expected to provide a baseline assessment of NRW and UFW and provide annual targets for the reduction in these parameters. However, focus areas under AMRUT include increasing water supply and sewerage coverage and introducing energy efficient practices. The mission emphasises the importance of water audits, though these are yet to be taken up in earnest. To undertake water audits, it is crucial for cities to have metered connections as the data from temporary or portable meters tends to be inaccurate. Besides, water auditing is not a one-time exercise, but needs to be undertaken to continuously monitor water flow and make interventions to reduce water losses. NRW reduction was identified as one of the smart features under the proposal of the Smart City Mission (SCM) cities. However, nothing materialised beyond the conceptual stage. Very few cities have actually taken up NRW reduction for implementation under the SCM. Further, past efforts of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to develop model performance-based contracts in select cities for NRW reduction have not been pursued further. Therefore, there is a need to leverage the past effort made at the conceptual stages of these missions and address the issue of UFW in the subsequent programmes.
Covid-19 impact
An essential service, water supply continued to be provided during the pandemic. However, the outbreak did impact project implementation and fund utilisation in the sector due to the exodus of labour and the stringent lockdown. Besides, the virus outbreak has added to the funding constraints of ULBs due to a decline in revenues, further impacting project execution. There have been signs of recovery in several cities but pre-Covid levels are yet to be achieved. The sector continues to suffer from chronic execution challenges due to issues such as uncertain revenue streams and lack of expertise/dedicated staff for network management during the ongoing situation.
Emerging opportunities
The key focus of the government should be on water distribution management through the creation of district metering areas (DMAs), which is a modular approach towards improving services. Besides, there is need for better monitoring of the water network to assess NRW levels in a bid to reduce them. However, metering is seldom seen in cities – neither at bulk distribution points nor consumer connections. This is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed by the government. The setting up of DMAs will create opportunities in the areas of leak detection and pressure management in the water sector.
Further, increasing water tariffs and user charges often does not have a substantial impact on the financials of ULBs as the billing and collection systems are quite archaic and have low coverage and collection efficiencies. The reported collection efficiencies are higher as a handful of consumers are billed for water and sewerage services, leaving out a large number of consumers. There is a need to focus on extending the billing coverage to all consumers. Further, cities need to encourage on-site wastewater recycling and reuse. Building plans need to have a provision for a parallel plumbing system to carry the recycled wastewater and use it for non-potable purposes. Once the recycling and reuse of wastewater becomes a mainstream activity, this eco-friendly way of managing water and wastewater will be a new business area for entrepreneurs as well as technology providers.
The road ahead
Going forward, there is need for a sustainable reform path to substantially empower ULBs. Institutional reforms and fund allocation should be predictable and certain so that ULBs can plan for a multi-year programme for performance improvement. Besides, there is need to have dedicated staff for providing water supply and sewerage services. Often, cities are not aware of the amount they spend on water services due to the absence of separate accounts for water supply and sewerage. Therefore, it is one of the key elements that needs to be put in place along with good metering, billing and collection systems. Finally, though there has been an increasing focus on public-private partnerships for water and sewerage management services, ULBs still need to be drivers of service improvement while the private sector can only supplement the process.
Based on a presentation by AbhayKantak, Director, Urban Practice, CRISIL, at a recent India Infrastructure conference