Jal Shakti Ministry ropes in Ministry of Electronics for 'Jal Jeevan Mission'

Ravi S Singh
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 19

The Union Jal Shakti Ministry has roped in Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to bolster the implementation of its Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).

This is to develop and inject technological intervention for monitoring the implementation and sustenance of the JJM.

The JJM aims to provide piped water connection to every rural household by 2024.

The homing in on technological solutions is to deal with future challenges relating to supplies in the piped water connections to the households, and functional aspect of the infrastructure (the network of pipes) laid down under the JJM.

To this effect, the National Jal Jeevan Mission of the Jal Shakti Ministry and MeitY has launched, “ICT Grand Challenge”.

Conjoining efforts of the two Ministries is also in line with Centre’s thrust on the convergence of resources of Ministries and departments concerned regarding JJM’s implementation.

The ICT grand challenge is a platform to create innovative, modular, and cost-effective solution to develop a “Smart Water Supply Measurement and Monitoring System” to be deployed in at the village level.

Its focus is on service delivery at the household level with the over-riding goal of water supply regularly in adequate quantity and of prescribed quality.

“This necessitates the use of modern technology in systematic monitoring of the programme and to capture service delivery data automatically for ensuring the quality of services,” said an official of Jal Shakti Ministry official.

“Digitisation of water supply infrastructure will help anticipate and address future challenges.”

The country’s sprawling geography punctuated with diverse climatic zones, and variegated and shifting terrain like mountain and deserts present a huge challenge if keeping functional Nd sustainable aspects of the Mission.

The platform will be inviting proposals from Indian tech start-ups, MSMEs and domestic companies.

This grand challenge seeks to harness the vibrant information technology eco-systems of India for creating smart rural water supply eco-system to measure and monitor the service delivery of the water supply in rural areas.

The platform will provide support at the ideation stage, prototype development stage, deployment stage.

Selected solutions from the applicants can be implemented at 100 villages on a pilot project basis.

The successful developers will be given an opportunity to join the MeitY supported incubator or CoEs for further nurturing of their solution.