Small Water Community Enterprises
Development priorities in the water sector have traditionally been limited to the supply of water. However, in the last decade, there has been a shift towards recognizing the public health and economic advantages of improved water quality.
Lack of access to safe drinking water is a huge burden that significantly contributes to poverty, malnutrition, poor health, poor education, ecological degradation, and conflict. The unavailability of potable water in the desired quantities and the consumption of contaminated water have adverse impacts on productivity as well as on physical and mental health. Undoubtedly, safe water is one of the most important public health needs in developing countries in the twenty-first century. Given this, the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) aim to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015.
In the Marwar region, the issue of access to safe drinking water has always been sidelined, as accessing any kind of water has been a difficult task. Ensuring water quality is nothing less than a luxury in a place where people often have to walk 3 to 4 km every time to fetch just a 20-litre container of water. However, in the JMF project area, once access to drinking water has been improved, the issue of safe drinking water still persists, which requires innovative solutions.
Interventions
JMF has piloted community-driven micro-level water enterprise projects to demonstrate safe drinking water solutions through skill enhancement and the adoption of new technologies, with the following key objectives:
- To design a business model for a safe and reliable drinking water supply for the village community
- To encourage local entrepreneurship through the creation of community-driven business models of drinking water supply; these enterprises are operated by community entrepreneurs, especially women, who further sell the water after value addition
- To create livelihood opportunities for the village community, especially women and the marginalized sections of society, through the sale of water
- To improve health and hygiene through the removal of fluorides, nitrates, other salts, and bacteriological contamination from drinking water
Given these objectives, JMF has focused on developing business plans in consultation with key stakeholders, including the final beneficiaries. These initiatives deploy modern technologies for purifying saline water and facilitate a public–private–community partnership. In this model, the technology and the infrastructure required for purifying the water and making it safe for drinking are provided. Software development and social engineering for plant operation and maintenance on a sustainable basis by the communities are also available. There is provision for training, capacity building, and skill development of community institutions to undertake the operation and maintenance of water treatment plants and structures. The main feature of these initiatives is the strengthened role of communities in implementing appropriate drinking water purification technologies to address the need for safe water.
The projects emphasize the importance of capacitating community-based institutions such as the Jal Sabhaand entrepreneurs to run and manage the plants, as well as the need to create distribution networks of safe drinking water. Each treatment plant has a network of outlets so that water is available closer to people’s homes. These outlets are managed by individual entrepreneurs, especially women, who are thereby offered an alternative livelihood opportunity.
The Jal Sabha decides the user charges for the sale of the treated water at an economically and socially acceptable rate. The collection thus made is used to cover the operation and maintenance expenses of the micro project.
JMF supports the operation and maintenance of the plants during the gestation period only. During this period, the capacity building of the community to operate the plant is carried out, and sufficient skills are built through on-the-job training for the maintenance of the water treatment plant. Trainings are provided to community members and entrepreneurs on business development, account keeping, and bookkeeping. After the gestation period, the plants and the outlets are transferred to the Jal Sabhas and entrepreneurs, thus making the entire scheme a self-sustaining system.