Context spoke to dozens of residents across six villages in the districts of Latehar and Palamau in Jharkhand who said problems with the scheme ranged from water tanks not connected to underground sources to defunct taps and broken water tank motors.
The cost of the JJM has already more than doubled, according to media reports, and the government in February extended the deadline to 2028.
The JJM has also come under scrutiny by local officials.
Jammu and Kashmir state legislative speaker Abdul Rahim Rather announced in March a probe into allegations of “irregularities” in the scheme’s implementation.
Uttar Pradesh water minister Swatantra Singh said in May he would tour nine districts to review the work, and Maharashtra state food and drug minister Narhari Zirwal called it a “failed scheme”, according to news reports.
In the meantime, the world’s most populous nation faces a looming water crisis. Researchers have said that demand for water is expected to outstrip supply twofold by the end of this decade.
Ambitious scheme
Himanshu Kulkarni, co-founder of the Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, which is based in the city of Pune in Maharashtra, described the JJM as “very unique, ambitious and much needed” but must take into account differences across the country’s villages.
“What is required is a site-specific approach, rather than a broad-sweep, a one-size-fits all approach,” Kulkarni said, adding it also required “better collaboration and partnerships with local communities, with civil society actors.”
In Lat, Devi said water never flowed through her tap. Soon after it was installed, another set of workers uprooted it, claiming it was of inferior quality. No one returned to reinstall it, and the tank was not connected to a water source, she said.
Villagers across Latehar and Palamau districts shared similar stories.
Residents in Latehar’s Kutmu village said they had twice spent their own money repairing the motor of a water tank that never worked.
In Palamu’s Itko village, which the government has said was almost fully connected to running water, the work was visibly incomplete, with unfinished water tanks in three different locations, and many taps did not work.
The scheme has also been overshadowed by media reports of an overhead water tank that collapsed in Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh just weeks after another newly constructed water tank burst in the district of Lakhimpur in the same state.
The accounts were in keeping with the findings of an audit carried out in Jharkhand state by local non-profit Vikas Sahyog Kendra, which works on rural development issues.
In March, the non-profit surveyed 2,892 homes across 12 villages in Palamu district which the JJM said now had drinking water. The audit found that only 14 per cent of those homes had actually been installed with taps and only 3 per cent had running water.
Vikas Sahyog Kendra also alleged that 510, or 17 per cent, of the 2,892 households the government said had benefited from the project were actually in the area.
The audit also found that 78 per cent of the total cost allocated for the 12 villages had been spent, while only 3 per cent of the work was complete.
Context contacted the Ministry of Water’s Press Information Bureau with repeated emails and texts to ask about the audit findings and the residents’ accounts of the scheme. The government did not immediately respond.