Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on May 31, 2008 – 9:24 am | by FICA |

Naandi’s Community-based Safe Drinking Water programme which is presently supplying clean drinking water to a population of 20 lakh underprivileged in the villages of Punjab and AP has won the Ashoka Changemaker’s competition under the “Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis” segment.

Naandi was declared as one of the 3 winners from the total 264 entries received from 54 countries. Incidentally the other two winners are also from India, making this a clean sweep for India in the realm of innovations to solve water and sanitation crises in large scale.

“We are proud to have reached this milestone especially in the light of the tough competition we faced from 54 countries,” said Amit Jain, National Director (Water Programme), Naandi Foundation. As a part of Naandi’s drinking water programme, certified clean, pathogen and fluoride-free drinking water is supplied to Indian villages across Andhra Pradesh and Punjab with rapid expansion plans to Haryana.

Ashoka Changemakers had an interactive competition platform where entries were posted transparently online and were available for public view. Naandi’s model was recognised by a panel of leading experts as an ‘outstanding demonstration of innovation, social impact, and sustainability’ and ‘represents the best of social innovation and commitment in the water and sanitation sector’.

The Global Water Challenge which is partnering with Ashoka in this competition has announced an intention to make available USD 1 million to the award winning entries to implement innovative entrepreneurial approaches to provide universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation across the world .

Naandi’s Community-based Safe Drinking Water project’s innovation is in the manner the programme has been designed that enables it to be inclusive and participative and more importantly sustainable in a village.

It is a collaborative arrangement between villages, Naandi Foundation, technology partners and the state. The village panchayats/state contribute partially to the setting up for the water purification plant in the villages, and also permits the use of common property water resources from where water is drawn, purified at the plant and supplied to villagers at a nominal user fee of Re 1 for 10 ltrs of water. This fee pays for the operations and maintenance of the plant to prevent it from going defunct. In addition to running the plant, a bigger health education programme also runs in the villages that helps to create an environment for greater understanding of health, hygiene and sanitation issues and therefore greater usage and demand for safe drinking water in families.