Aapni Yojna: Integrated Water Supply; Sanitation and Health Education Programme

Agency : KfW (Government of Germany) and Public Health Engineering Department, Government of Rajasthan

Aapni Yojna is a path breaking project in the area of provision of safe drinking water to the water starved villages and rural communities in the desert areas of Rajasthan where shortage of water is always a serious problem. It is a unique example of partnership between Government (Public Health Engineering Department), Non Government Organisations and the community. While the PMC has successfully brought water to the villages through setting up a distribution system and hardware, the Community Participation Unit, a consortium of five NGOs led by the Indian Institute of Health Management Research, ensured community participation in water resource management at the local level. The unique features of the project were that the safe drinking water is available round the clock in the villages through PSP water supply and the families pay regularly for the water consumed in the households. The water charges are collected by the community in advance and deposited with the PHED.

The success of the project can be attributed to the latest technology and the community participation model used. But implementation of the project has been possible only because of the faith and cooperation among the Government and Non Government partners. Besides, the active involvement of the all NGO members of the consortium (with different core competencies) has ensured the success of the community participation programme.

The project had two main components: Hardware and technical components and complementary measures and soft support activities. The hardware and technical components were dealt with by PHED which included laying down the pipelines, construction of rapid filters, reservoirs, pump stations and power grids. The PHED did a commendable task of laying down pipelines as long as 1800 Kilometers. The project covered 355 villages in which safe drinking water provided and tap water supply was installed. The total cost of the project was Rs. 4260 million.

Community Participation Unit undertook the complementary measures and tasks. The role of CPU included:

  • Water resource management by the community
  • Sanitation and health education
  • Womens Health and their participation
  • Other measures such as a rehabilitation of traditional sources of water in the villages

The unique feature of the project was community participation and ownership of the project. The community supervised local resource management of water distribution and deciding and collecting user charges. In addition, the main highlight was that the households paid the user charges. By the end of the project they had deposited more than Rs. 5 crores to the PHED. As a part of complementary measures over 23,000, twin-sets of sanitary latrines and bathrooms were constructed in the individual households. Beneficiaries' contribution was more than 40% of the total cost. The low-cost, household-level sanitation units were built by local masons with the support of the CPU and have set a new standard of quality. School sanitation programmes and user groups training are a regular feature in the villages. The Water Health Community (WHC) was constituted in each village that was responsible for water resource management and sanitation. To ensure sustainability, Pani Panchayats were established and a federation of Pani Panchayat was created at the later stages of the project. The project has set a new model of water resource distribution and management for safe drinking water in the rural areas with the participation of community in partnership with government and NGOs. It has become a role model now for all other water projects in the rural areas in the country. Further, the project also enabled the Government of Rajasthan to create additional employment generating over 3 lacs of man-days. Towards the end of the project an end-line project evaluation was conducted by an external agency, that clearly showed enhanced access of drinking water, improved sanitation and highlighted more importantly, changed behaviour of the community towards their responsibility and ownership. Besides the major benefits of the project, the women who spent most of the time to fetch water had spare time for income generation and participation in the development process. In addition to the end-line evaluation, a series of studies and process documentation have been conducted to analyse the impact of the project and demonstrate future potential use of knowledge and learning.



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