SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF DRINKING WATER COVERAGE IN THE RURAL AREAS OF UTTARAKHAND HIMALAYA: A GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

of FHTC and PWS facility whereas some districts such as Dehradun, Chamoli, Bageshwar etc have good facility. The study suggests that all the villages and households should be covered equally under PWS and FHTC facilities to ensure basic water security.


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al., 2020). So far, the GOI has made three national water policies to govern and manage the available water resources for sustainable development. The first national water policy was developed and accepted in 1987 and later on, it was revised and updated in 2002 and 2012 (Lalitha and Siromony, 2014). To provide a basic water facility in all the villages of India, the GOI is working on it since independence (Cronin et. al., 2016). The main sources of drinking water in the villages of Uttarakhand are springs, rivers, rivulets, well etc. In the study area, the rivulets (locally known as gadhera) and springs are used for domestic purposes and have about 48% and 14% of total water supply schemes, respectively (Kumar et. al., 2019). Uttarakhand state is rich in terms of freshwater resources. The main freshwater sources of Uttarakhand are glaciers, rivers, lakes, rivulets, springs etc. Uttarakhand state has total 968 glaciers which cover about 10% area of the state and many glacial-fed rivers are also originate from these glaciers (SSAP, 2018).

Materials and Methods:-
Uttarakhand state has been chosen as the study area. For the completion of this research paper mainly the secondary data is used. The secondary data is obtained from the integrated management information system (IMIS) portal of the department of drinking water and sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India. The piped water supply (PWS) and functional household tap connection (FHTC) data are analyzed here to find out the current status of basic water coverage in the villages of Uttarakhand state. The location and thematic maps are constructed in QGIS and Arc GIS software using spatial analysis tools.

About the Study Area:-
Geographically the study area lies in the Central Himalaya region of India. The study area is located in between 28°7' N to 31°4' N latitudes and 77°7' E to 81°1' E longitudes having total geographical area of 53483 km 2 . 86.07% of total area is hilly area and 13.93% is the plain area (Kumar et. al., 2019). Uttarakhand is an international bordering state of India. The study area makes border with China in the North, Nepal in the East, Himachal Pradesh in the West and Uttar Pradesh in the South (Fig. 1). The study area is divided into two commissionaires, Garhwal commissionary and Kumaun commissionary. There are 07 districts in Garhwal commissionary (Dehradun, Haridwar, Pauri Garhwal, Tehari Garhwal, Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag and Chamoli) and 06 districts in Kumaun commissionary (Almora, Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar, Bageshwar, Champawat and Pithoragarh) (Maithani et. al., 2015).

Results and Discussion:-
As earlier discussed that the study area is a hilly region where the covering of villages under basic water facility is not easy. The detailed study of the development of drinking water coverage in the villages of the study area is 610 divided into four sections which are the history of rural water supply program, piped water supply, functional household tap connection and rural population and drinking water coverage. A brief description of these three sections is presented in the following paragraphs.

Histroy of Rural Water Supply Programs
Since independence, the Government of India is constantly making efforts to provide basic water facilities to all villages. For this purpose, the first nationwide drinking program was started in 1954 named the National Water Supply Program under the ministry of health. Till 3 rd five year plan, the rural drinking water supply program was operated as a part of the community development program. In 1972-73, a new rural drinking water program was introduced named Accelerated Rural Water Supply Program (ARWSP) to provide support to state/UT governments' drinking water and sanitation program. This program was more strengthened during 5 th five year plan under the minimum needs program. In 1986, the National Drinking Water Mission (NDWM) was started to address water scarcity and Swajaldhara drinking water program was launched in 2002. In 2004-05, ARWSP was merged in Bharat Nirman Program to achieve 100% household coverage by 2008-09 and in 2009-10 it was restructured and renamed as National Rural Drinking Water Program (NRDWP) aimed to achieve affordable access to safe drinking water in all the villages. The NRDWP was merged in Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in 2017. The main aim of the JJM program is to achieve 100% coverage of households with functional household tap connection by 2024 (MJS, 2019).

Piped Water Supply (PWS)
The detail of villages and household covered under piped water supply (PWS) is presented in  Fig. 2). The spatial distribution of PWS coverage of the study area is depicted in figure 3. The study area is divisible into three parts based on the PWS coverage facility presented in table-2.  (Fig.3). There are total 632785 households in this category; out of these 326399 households (50.3%) have PWS coverage and there are also 43 villages that do not have PWS coverage facilities (Table-2).

High PWS Coverage Category:
The districts having more than 80% household PWS coverage are classified as high PWS coverage category. Three districts such as Dehradun, Chamoli and Bageshwar fall under this high PWS category (Fig.3). There are total 246807 households in this category; out of these 218792 households (33.7%) have PWS coverage and there are 04 villages that have not PWS coverage facilities (Table-2).    Fig. 4). Figure 5 depicts the spatial distribution of FHTC coverage of the study area. The study area is divisible into three categories based on the >70% coverage of villages under FHTC facility which are low FHTC category, medium FHTC category and high FHTC category (Table-4 Fig. 4:-Graphical presentation of villages covered under >70% FHTC facility in the study area.

Low FHTC Category:
Districts that have less than 300 villages with more than 70% FHTC coverage are termed as low FHTC category. Out of 13 districts, 05 districts fall under this low FHTC category which are; U.S. Nagar, Haridwar, Champawat, Nainital and Rudraprayag (Fig. 5). Out of the total villages, 917 villages are fall in this low FHTC category (Table-4).

Medium FHTC Category:
Districts that have 300 to 600 villages with more than 70% FHTC coverage are classified as medium FHTC category. Out of the total, 03 districts such as Uttarkashi, Almora and Dehradun come under this medium FHTC category (Fig. 5). Out of the total villages, 1368 villages come under the medium FHTC category (Table-4).

High FHTC Category:
Districts that have more than 600 villages with more than 70% FHTC coverage are classified as high FHTC category. Out of the total, 05 districts such as Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Tehari Garhwal, Chamoli and Pauri Garhwal come under this high FHTC category (Fig. 5). Out of the total villages, 3869 villages come under the high FHTC category (Table-4

Rural Population and Drinking Water Coverage
According to census 2011, the total population of the study area is 10086292. Out of the total population, 7036954 is rural and 3049338 is urban population (Tripathy and Kumar, 2014 (Table-5). Figure 6 depicts the coverage of the rural population of different districts of the study area under FHTC and PWS facility which reveals unbalanced development of FHTC and PWS facility.