SHALINI SAKSENA tells you how a social initiative is providing access to over 6 lakh households in the Capital access to safe and clean drinking water via vending machines
We all know how ATMs works. You put the debit card into the machine, follow the instructions and lo and behold cash. But did you know that now you have access to clean and safe drinking water through ATMs? A water services company — JanaJal — is revolutionising the way clean and safe water is being delivered through ATMs.
It has till date benefitted more than 90 million people in India with an approximate consumption of eight-10 litres per capita per day as has been prescribed by the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation in India. It adopts different technology tools to solve different problems. In other words, it adopts new water treatment technologies to solve different water-related issues. Given that water changes every 5-10 km in India, every water ATM is custom built to suit the environment in which it is intended to operate in. Besides accepting coins, all water ATMs are enabled with cashless transacting capability.
Parag Agarwal, Founder-CMD, JanaJal tells you that their mission is to make safe drinking water available to every person at very a nominal cost. “Safe drinking water is a basic human requirement, which is essential for good health and subsequent education of the people and can boost the GDP by up to 6 per cent as stated in a recent article issued by Niti Aayog. Clean drinking water is a medium to deliver health and wellness to communities besides providing gainful employment to individuals, self-help groups, widows and the unemployed. We work closely with NGOs and charitable foundations to provide vocational training and upskill individuals by expanding their capabilities. With the Government’s emphasis on CSR spending, corporates have developed a renewed focus on safe drinking water as its significance in terms of meeting basic needs of people is clearly understood along with the fact that the social impact being delivered is unparalleled,” Agarwal says.
There is a wide gap in the demand and supply of safe drinking water in the country. Nearly 680 million people have no access to safe water. Women and children walk several miles to fetch water, which prevents them from going to schools or having a job. This has a severe negative impact on the economic growth of the country.
According to a new study titled The Water Gap-State of the World’s Water 2018 by WaterAid, states that the global population without access to clean water has gone up to 844 million, which is almost 200 million more than previously counted. The Economic Survey of Delhi 2017-18 states that around 6,25,000 households do not have access to piped water supply.
The service follows a triple A philosophy of making safe water — Available, Accessible and Affordable — to all while keeping technological advancement and implementation at its core. The ATMs also maximise efficiency by utilising solar energy and regular electricity minimising downtime due to power outages. This serves as an asset for the smooth expansion to other rural and semi-urban areas.
Water ATM is a kiosk that is an independent water treatment plant with a chiller that has the option to dispense water in bulk. This means water in an unpackaged format to people in a quantity that they desire — 250 ml, 500 ml, 1 litre, 2 litres, 5 litres and 20 litres. It is a decentralised water distribution plant that enables people to have greater access to safe and clean drinking water at an affordable cost, taking away the fixed cost involved with packed water.
“A glass of 250 ml on a refill basis costs `1. If however, a person wants the same quantity in a paper cup the cost is `2. A litre of chilled water is `5 but for 20 litres it is `20. The aim is to take water right up the households. While a litre of water is chilled, the bulk water is at room temperature,” Agarwal says and tells you that the cost of the ATM depends on the capacity of the plant — anywhere between `3 lakh to `10 lakh.
At present over 100 such ATMs have already operations in Mumbai for a year-and-a-half. In Delhi, these ATMs are operational in NDMC area and some are operational in Ghaziabad and Gujarat as well. There are plans to move to Karnataka for 1,000 ATMs.
“Since water is still a Government managed utility, we need an authorised legitimate connection to access raw water. This water is then processed before it is made available to the people. We have to approach the Government for connection and the electricity department. Sometimes, we have to approach the local administrative body to get access to a place. For each ATM we have to deal with multiple stakeholders,” Agarwal explains and tells you that the biggest challenge to safe drinking water has become the product for a select few since packed water is expensive.
Despite, the penetration of packaged water, it caters to only 5 per cent, leaving 95 per cent behind. The motivation was to bring safe drinking water through an operational model that took care of the unnecessary cost.
He tells you that sometimes the potable water that we drink is worse than bad water since it has micro particles of plastic. “There are people who get rashes or food poisoning, it could be due to bad water. Bad water is the reason for the deteriorating quality of potable water,” Agarwal tells you and says that the reason why water in these ATMs is safe is that nothing additional is being added to it.
“All we doing is to bring the total dissolved solids (TDS) below 500. According to the WHO, this level should not be more than 500 for it to be labelled as potable water. But due to packaged water, this level has come down to 30-40. People have got used to this taste. The only difference in the water in the ATMs is the taste. We bring the TDS down and remove all microbe contamination that causes water-borne diseases and epidemic,” Agarwal says and tells you that in the next one year they are looking at 2000 ATMs across India.
Depending on the condition of the raw water is a particular area, the water treatment plant may have an RO system or ultra-filtration system or even a combination of various systems.
In order to clean the ATMs, three manual routine procedures are followed. One is a daily back flush system to get rid of impurities. “Every ATM has an operator who does this. There is a fortnightly wash. Depending on the membrane and the quality of raw water, there are quarterly checks. Each ATM is also connected to the Internet and it is possible to control and study the quality and the quantity of water in real time through cloud to monitor the system,” Agarwal says.