CSE and Tata Trusts organise national workshop on ‘Water and Wastewater Management in Rural Areas of India: Ensuring Sustainability and Circularity’.
Three new reports from CSE form the basis of the discussions
Find the workshop details and report pdfs click here
New Delhi, May 22, 2026: “We are in a state of climate change-aided stress. Our water resources are stressed, and with the heat-stress that we are witnessing this season, our water demand is going to increase. But we should remember that climate change is an ‘exacerbating factor’ here – we are facing a water crisis primarily because we have been struggling to build an affordable system of water management to supply clean water to all,” said SunitaNarain, director general, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) here today.
She was speaking at a day-long discussion workshop on ‘Water and Wastewater Management in Rural Areas of India: Ensuring Sustainability and Circularity’, organised by CSE in partnership with Tata Trusts.
Besides Narain, other speakers at the workshop included Ashok K KMeena, IAS, secretary, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti; Yugal Kishore Joshi, programme director, water and land, IT and telecom, culture and tourism and lead, communication, NitiAyog; T B N Singh, member, Central Groundwater Board; Nitin Khade, IAS, joint secretary, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development; and DivyangWaghela, deputy head of programmes, Tata Trusts.
Explaining the objective of the workshop, Subrata Chakraborty, programme director, water and wastewater management, CSE said: “This workshop has brought together different stakeholders to explore opportunities for scaling up the solutions for sustainability of water sources. This will be done by sharing some success stories on best water-wastewater management practices in rural areas. We have also produced three new reports,which have formed the basis for today’s discussions.”
CSE researchers point out that the Government of India’s policies and programmes have already covered a lot of ground. Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), for instance, has reportedly connected more than 80 per cent of households in rural areas to piped water supply. Says Chakraborty: “The challenge now is to ensure a safe and secured water supply system – which is possible by recharging sources and managing wastewater sustainably. We have conducted comprehensive studies in select pockets of Banda and Bijnorin Uttar Pradesh and Pali in Rajasthan to reinforce the ways and means of meeting this challenge.”
Speaking in the inaugural session, Meenaemphasised the government’s focus on passing on the management of water resources to local communities and management bodies. He said: “The Jal Jeevan Mission 2.0 now aims to strengthen the Gram Panchayats and Gram Sabhas – the third level of governance in rural areas – so that they can own and operate the water and wastewater management systems.”
“JJM 2.0 will complete the remaining connections and transfer them systematically to rural communities through the Jal Arpan process. We have to ensure that systems are in place to enable villagers to take care of the scheme and manage their water, as they used to do 30-40 years ago,” Meena added.
Waghela, from Tata Trusts, agreed with Meena on enabling communities to be at the centre. Speaking on the occasion, he said: “The first phase of JJM solved the first generation problems, but it also gave us a realisation of the emerging challenges. We engaged with CSE to understand these challenges and their root causes, and to design solutions. The new reports that CSE has done on the subject help create a nudge by building data-driven evidence which can be mainstreamed with policy and can show the way forward.”
Agendas for action
Narain presented a four-pronged agenda to take the work forward. According to her, “source sustainability – the Achilles’ heel of all water projects – should be the first agenda”. With groundwater being the key source in rural areas, recharge should be the focus of development actions. Existing recharge regime is lagging because of poorly constructed recharge structures, lack of linkages with greywater management, and weak groundwater monitoring networks, among other things.
Administrative convergence is the second imperative. Instead of multiple and different departments, agencies, bureaucracies and schemes working in silos, convergence has to be brought about in their functioning – this will help map the water structures, develop recharge plans, and enable efficient utilisation of funds.
Narain also stressed on concerns about pollution and quality of water. “What is needed is credible, reliable and timely data,” she said. “The existing system does have a monitoring network, but the data that is emerging from there is either unreliable or unavailable.”
The fourth action agenda that she proposes is strengthening the institutions of management. Commending JJM for keeping its sights on institutions of decentralised planning and management at the village level, Narain said that this tier of governance needs strengthening: “This is the most important agenda – we need to invest in building technical and management capabilities, including in the use of digital public infrastructure at the village and hamlet level.
For more on this and CSE’s work on water and wastewater, please contact Sukanya Nair of the CSE Media Resource Centre at sukanya.nair@cseindia.org, 8816818864.
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