Only 17% of India’s Rural Homes Have Piped Water. Target For 2017 Was 50%

 

In 2011, India’s ministry of drinking water and sanitation envisioned that by 2017, half the country’s rural households would have piped water. However, no more than 17% of rural households had piped water in July 2017, according to the ministry’s own data.

 

Nearly all rural households in Sikkim, India’s second-smallest state by population, get piped water, while in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, less than 1% of rural households have piped water.

 

A new plan now envisages that 90% of rural households will have piped water by 2022, according to this reply given on July 7, 2017, to Parliament’s upper house, the Rajya Sabha.

 

Rural water supply is a state subject, although the Centre funds 30% of such spending.

 

Source: Rajya Sabha
Note: Data are as of July 11, 2017. Goa has not reported data since 2014-15.

 

After Sikkim, Gujarat does best, with 73% households connected to piped water; Himachal Pradesh is next (57%), followed by Puducherry (50%).

 

At the bottom of the table, as we said, is Uttar Pradesh, but West Bengal (0.67%), Meghalaya and Bihar (1%) and Assam and Tripura (2%) also do badly.

 

In 18 of 29 Indian states, the proportion of rural households with piped water is lower than the national average of 17%.

 

(Nair, a graduate in economics and statistics from Mumbai University, is an intern with IndiaSpend and FactChecker.)