Access to Clean Drinking Water for All in India – A Matter of Sustainability of Technological and Other Interventions

Close to 0.3 million children under the age of five (U5) die every year in India just due to infectious diarrhea. These children are mostly from socio-economically vulnerable communities. Drinking water that is contaminated with fecal pathogens and living in poor sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions are the main causes of diarrhea. Primordial preventive measures including sustained access to microbially safe drinking water, proper use of toilets and handwashing with soap can prevent these meaningless deaths. Technological and other interventions by the public and private sectors to tackle the WASH challenge have achieved commendable success in improving the WASH situation in India over the last decade. Yet, half of India’s population still does not have access to safely managed drinking water, and around the same number continues to defecate in the open. Improvement in the health outcomes including reduction in diarrheal deaths among U5 children has not been dramatic either. This article presents a snapshot of the status of drinking water quality and the prevalence of diarrhea among U5 children in India. The appropriateness of some of the commonly used drinking water disinfection technologies for the vulnerable population has been assessed. While providing clean water through concerted public and private interventions, the critical role of communities has been emphasized. Fresh design thinking is seen as necessary to ensure sustainability of efforts. Providing access to safe drinking water and WASH environment to the masses in India are no doubt complex, with multi-sectoral challenges. But, without securing these there can be no sustainable development. Public Health systems that are not built on the foundations of primordial prevention will continue to remain fragile.