Govt taking measures to improve water quality

The government on Tuesday said it had taken several long and short-term solutions to improve the quality of drinking water in the country and conceded that a United Nations report placed India at a lowly 120th among the 122 countries where there is poor quality of drinking water.

Union Water Resource Minister Arjun Charan Sethi in a written reply said that the UN report had drawn the conclusion due to widespread occurrence of poor water quality, diversion of water from natural aquatic eco-systems and emerging ground water recharge problems.

He said the Centre had promoted rain water harvesting through watershed management programmes, artificial recharge of ground water and also provided funds under the accelerated rural water supply programme.

As a long-term measure, the National Water Development Agency had decided to link major Himalayan and Peninsular rivers to benefit sectors like irrigation, power, flood control, navigation and fisheries to mention a few.

The water resources department had also formulated the National Water Policy 2002 for integrated planning of water resources development and management.

To another question, Sethi said under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme, the government had released Rs 11,541 crores (Rs 115.41 billion) to 172 major and medium irrigation projects and 5,382 minor irrigation projects in 28 states since the programme was initiated in 1996. Andhra Pradesh had received Rs 663 crores (Rs 6.63 billion).

UNI