Washing hands is a luxury for over 80% rural Indian households that don’t get tap water
In her annual budget, presented in February this year, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a splash by significantly increasing allocations to the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), which was launched a year earlier. Under the Rs3.6 lakh crore ($50 billion) JJM, the government aims to provide a “functional household tap connection” to every household by 2024. Secondly, the volume of water delivered will be substantially higher at 55 litres per capita per day (lpcd), instead of the shared standpipe-norm of 40 lpcd.
