The story of Odisha’s stride holds little water when a whopping 36 per cent or over 1.5 crore rural populace in the State each day have to find it a Herculean task to arrange few pitchers of drinking water. Worse, a whopping 12 lakh rural population in Odisha has no access to drinking water at any point of time.
As per the available data, a high of around 4,979 habitations with over 12 lakh population in Odisha have no access to potable water at any point of time. In addition, over 1.4 crore population in another 61, 872 habitations have limited access to drinking water at any point of time. And, this limited access turns into acute water crisis in summer engulfing a whopping around 1.52 crore rural populace daily.
When half of rural habitations in Ganjam, Bargarh and Keonjhar have no access to at least 40 litres per capita per day in summer, the shocker is a whopping 86 per cent rural habitations in Balangir and over 72 per cent in Gajapati district have no potable water source to quench thirst in this gruelling heat.
Even, costal district like Puri have 394 rural habitations without potable water source - the highest in the State. Another coastal district Kendrapada has over 370 rural habitations without any drinking water source. Nuapada fared the worst in western Odisha with 212 habitations having no access to safe drinking water at any point of time. With 192 habitations without potable water, Naxal-hit Malakangiri fared poorest in southern Odisha.
Significantly, when around 4, 473 rural habitations in Odisha are quality affected, means groundwater contaminated with fluoride, iron or salt, and piped water supply is the only source of safe water, the State fared poorer nationally in providing piped water supply to rural habitations. Odisha could cover mere 40 per cent of rural population under piped water against 95 per cent in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and 50 per cent nationally.
Interestingly, despite the State under grip of severe drought, Odisha could utilise mere 64 per cent of funds under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) in 2015-16 against a high of 84 per cent in 2012-13. On the contrary, severe drought-hit States like Telengana, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh show up an utilisation of 81 - 72 per cent. The side-effect: A whopping 8 per cent tube wells/hand pumps in State are non-functional against a mere 3 per cent nationally. The reason: Poor operation and maintenance of water points and also drying up of such points due to wrong spot selection.
Moreover, such a high non-working hand pumps result in ‘slipped back’ habitations in Odisha that gives rise to the concept of partially-covered habitations that now account for over 39 per cent of the total rural habitations.
How hard it hits people could well be ascertained when a whopping three-fifth of rural households depend on tube well/hand pump water in the State as was revealed by the 2011 census.