Central funds a trickle, K'taka goes slow on water plan

Karnataka has gone slow on its ambitious Jaladhare project to provide piped water supply to all rural households due to financial constraints, especially after the Modi administration declined assistance to the state for creation of the necessary infrastructure.

The Jaladhare project, which was announced in July 2018 and estimated to cost Rs 53,000 crore, is planned as a seven-year project to supply potable water to over four crore people. Water will be drawn from perennial rivers, reservoirs and canals that will be treated and supplied through pipes.

The state government was hoping to merge Jaladhare with the Centre’s Jal Jeevan mission with which PM Narendra Modi wants to give functional tap water to every household in India by 2024. The state’s Jaladhare will require creation of new infrastructure to bring water to every rural household.

The Centre, however, has refused to fund this and has told the state that it will provide Rs 7,000 per household under Jal Jeevan for water connections only.

“The Rs 7,000 per household is for the last-mile of water supply. The Centre will not fund the back-end infrastructure cost, which the state will have to bear entirely. Inclusive of the back-end costs, our per household cost will be anywhere between Rs 15,000 and 20,000,” a senior official from the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department, which is anchoring Jaladhare, explained.

Karnataka has 60,248 rural habitations across 28,970 villages. For drinking water, about 48,000 habitations depend on borewells that are not reliable and have quality issues. Some 11,900 habitations depend on multi-village schemes.

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 sources for piped water supply in Raichur, Almatti and Narayanpur reservoirs for Vijayapura and the Krishnaraja Sagar for Mandya.

Detailed project reports are ready for Vijayapura and Mandya where the cost is pegged at Rs 2,100 crore and Rs 2,000 crore, respectively.

The government faced another obstacle with the Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has been approached to raise $400 million (about Rs 2,800 crore) for Jaladhare. The lender has asked the government to first undertake an environment impact assessment before floating tenders, which has further slowed the project.

Considering all this, the Finance department has asked the RDPR department to “go slow keeping in mind the availability of fiscal resources”, the official said.