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ACCESS to safe drinking water remains an urgent necessity, as 30% of urban and 90% of rural households still depend completely on untreated surface or groundwater.While access to drinking water in India has increased over the past decade, the tremendous adverse impact of unsafe water on health continues. It is estimated that about 21% of communicable diseases in India is waterrelated. The highest mortality from diarrhoea is said to be among children under the age of five, highlighting an urgent need for focused interventions to prevent diarrhoeal disease in this age group. The diarrhoeal and other waterborne diseases in India are given in Table 1.
Despite investments in water and sanitation infrastructure, many low-income communities in India and in other developing countries continue to be bereft of safe drinking water, Regardless of the initial water quality, widespread unhygienic practices during water collection storage and consumption, overcrowded living conditions and limited access to sanitation facilities perpetuate the transmission of diarrhoea-causing germs through the faecal–oral route (Table 1) A majority of inland rivers which are the sources of drinking water in urban India are also contaminated.
While the shift in usage from surface water to groundwater has undoubtedly controlled microbiological problems in rural India, the same has however, led to newer problems of fluorosis and arsenicosis. Excess iron is an endemic water quality problem in many parts of eastern India. In 2002, 17 states were affected by severe fluorosis and now the problem exists in 20 states, indicating that endemic fluorosis has emerged as one of the most alarming public health problems of the country . About 62 million people are suffering from various levels of fluorosis, of which 6 million are children below the age of 14 years; they suffer from dental, skeletal and/or non-skeletal fluorosis .
A survey carried out by the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM), a nodal agency responsible for setting up systems of monitoring rural drinking water in India, indicated in its report during 1993 (based on 1% random sampling) that 217,211 inhabitants had water-quality problems in rural India (Table 3).
Water quality is now being recognized in India as a major crisis. Any sustainable water quality management plan has to have a policy that addresses technical, institutional and legal components, so that the management itself becomes effective.
