Govt to borrow $400m to fund Jaladhare

Karnataka is looking to raise a loan of US $400 million (about Rs 2,800 crore) from the Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to fund its ambitious Jaladhare drinking water supply project.

The Jaladhare project, which is estimated to cost over Rs 53,000 crore, aims to provide piped water supply to all rural households over a seven-year period, covering over four crore people. Water for this will be drawn from perennial rivers, reservoirs and canals.

The Finance Ministry’s Department of Economic Affairs has recommended Jaladhare for AIIB funding. If this goes through, Jaladhare will be the second project from Karnataka to be funded by the bank, following its $335 loan to construct the Gottigere-Nagavara line of the Bangalore Metro.

“What we’re trying to do with Jaladhare is redo our water supply, in that we’re moving from groundwater to surface water,” Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told DH. “From 1985, Karnataka invested heavily on groundwater-based supply schemes. But due to recurring drought, groundwater has failed and the investment has become redundant,” he said.

In the first phase of Jaladhare, the government has picked Raichur, Vijayapura, Mandya and Kolar districts. Authorities have identified Narayanpur and Tungabhadra reservoirs as the source for piped water supply in Raichur, the Almatti and Narayanpura reservoirs for Vijayapura and the KRS for Mandya.

The assured water source for Kolar will be the Yettinahole project, whose land acquisition is pending before the Cabinet. The project aims to tap into the Yettinahole river water for supply to Kolar, Hassan, Tumakuru, Chikkaballapur and Bengaluru Rural districts.

“For these four districts, we’ve estimated the cost at Rs 6,000 crore,” RDPR principal secretary L K Atheeq said. “Once these districts are covered, we will take up Belagavi, Kalaburagi and Shivamogga in the second phase.”

The government is also open to converging Jaladhare with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Piped Water for All by 2024’ project. “But we need more details on the PM’s project,” Gowda said.

“It may be more suited for states in the Indo-Gangetic plain where groundwater isn’t a problem. There, the per-capita cost for water supply could be Rs 7,000-8,000. In Karnataka, the per-capita cost that we’ve estimated is about Rs 14,000,” he said.