Evaluating WHO prescribed sanitary inspection templates for assessing contamination risks in tubewells with handpump - case of 9 Indian districts.

WHO prescribes Sanitary Inspections in recommended formats for assessing contamination risks in Tubewells installed with handpump that often constitute primary drinking water sources in rural and remote areas. Sanitary inspections are easy alternatives to costlier and technically demanding laboratory water quality analysis. However, their efficacy remains uncertain despite decades of widespread usage. This study evaluates sanitary inspections by assessing contamination risk in 324 Tubewells with handpump across 9 districts in India. Results indicate that 62% of sampled sources were safe in lab analysis, despite sanitary inspections indicating varying risks. This implies that WHO prescribed inspections yield higher risks, and overestimated risk perception are likely to skew planning and policy, resulting in budgetary over-allocations and financial mismanagement in water-supplies. There is thus an urgent need to review and revise WHO prescribed sanitary inspection templates.

Performance Measurement of Water Supply Services: A Cross-Country Comparison between India and the UK.

Increased emphasis on efficiency improvements has brought the benefits of internal savings and improved service deliveries of water supplies to the developed countries. However, water supply services in developing countries often exhibit large inefficiencies making it difficult to expand coverage or improve supply services. A comparative assessment of efficiencies in the developed and developing countries is therefore essential to estimate the actual lag that developing countries typically experience, and to arrive at an estimate of their efficiency improvements. This manuscript makes an effort in this direction by undertaking a cross-country benchmarking study on the level of inefficiencies prevailing in Indian urban water supply services (IUWSS) relative to the utilities in the UK-England and Wales. This manuscript uses data envelopment analysis approach to measure relative efficiencies of water supplies for a sample of 30 water utilities in India and the UK-England and Wales for the year 2015. The results indicate that there exist significant technical and scale inefficiencies in water supply operations of Indian municipalities compared with the UK-England and Wales. DEA results also show a significant scope for savings with respect to operating expenditures and non-revenue water, if Indian utilities were to adopt the best practices and managerial tools of the utilities in the UK-England and Wales. Further, it was found that IUWSS need a restructuring of their municipalities to become more efficient. This manuscript discusses the above results in the context of policy implications and suggests few mechanisms that are relevant from a developing country perspective for possible improvement in water supply services.

Diseases associated with poor water and sanitation: hazards, prevention, and solutions.

This paper examines one of the most staggering challenges facing the mankind, the challenge to conquer diseases associated with poor water and sanitation. Although rapid strides have been made in the last decade of the last century to provide improved water supply and sanitation, the world is still rampant with diseases. More than 1.1 billion individuals lack access to improved water supply and 2.4 billion lack access to improved sanitation in a world that boasts of human rights and sustainable development. The paper details the various types of diseases associated with water and suggests preventions and solution and also examines international development targets and the number of likely deaths from diseases associated with water. Even if the set targets are met successfully, an estimated 40 to 58 million lives would still be lost by the target year of 2015, while the massive efforts of international agencies and governments would be able to salvage an estimated 15 to 22 million lives. The threat of diseases associated with poor water qualities and services makes a fitting case for world resources, finances, and expertise to be focused and diverted to the Water and Sanitation (WATSAN) sector on an unprecedented scale and at a much higher pace than that envisaged in the targets to avoid the large scale death and misery.