Swajal Phase-I

Uttaranchal Rural Water Supply & Environmental Sanitation Project: THE SWAJAL PROJECT

The Uttaranchal Rural Water Supply & Environmental Sanitation Project, known as the Swajal Project, is a World Bank-assisted initiative implemented across 857 villages in 12 districts of Uttaranchal, excluding Haridwar. The project follows a demand-driven, community-participatory approach and focuses on improving water supply and sanitation infrastructure. Villages are selected based on criteria like demand, technical feasibility, and need. The project cycle consists of three phases—pre-planning, planning, and implementation—spanning approximately 33 months per batch. The project duration was of six years i.e. 1996-2002, which was later extended till May 2003.
Support Organizations (SOs), primarily NGOs and in some cases public/private entities, are selected after rigorous vetting to support village communities in planning and implementation. The SOs conduct pre-feasibility studies for village selection, facilitate formation of Village Water & Sanitation Committees (VWSCs), and guide communities in choosing appropriate technology options for water and sanitation. VWSCs are inclusive, with required representation from Scheduled Castes/Tribes and women.

Project Objectives:

To deliver sustainable health & hygiene benefits to the rural population, through improvement in water supply and environmental sanitation services, which will increase rural incomes through time savings and income opportunities for women; test an alternative to the current supply driven service delivery mechanism and promote sanitation and general awareness.

To promote the long-term sustainability of the rural water supply and sanitation sector by providing assistance to State Governments to identify and implement an appropriate policy framework and strategic plan.

Village Selection:

The selected SOs conducts the ‘Pre-feasibility Studies’ to select villages, on the basis of the village selection criteria. The three basic criteria for selecting villages are demand (willingness to share 10% of capital costs and take over the 100% responsibility for O&M including its costs), need (future time savings, insufficient supply of water or water quality problems) and technical feasibility (adequate water source). SOs are trained in the process of conducting pre-feasibility study. The villages selected by the SOs are crosschecked by PMU through Site Appraisal to ascertain whether the SOs have followed the eligibility criteria or not. After the final selection of villages the PMU enters into a contract with the SOs for the Planning Phase.

Achievement of Objective and Outputs:

The Project’s outcome is satisfactory, as it achieved most of its major relevant objectives. The Project is also achieved substantial development results without major shortcomings.
The first objective Delivery of sustainable health and hygiene benefits to the rural population has been achieved through the village communities’ change in attitude, which are demonstrated by the significant improvements in performance indicators, including (i) incidence of diarrhoea in children under five (from 14% to 3.6% in UA and from
13% to 5.4% in UP); (ii) washing hands before eating (59% to 85% in UA, 22% to 67% in UP); (iii) safe use of water (43% to 90% in UA, NA to 92% in UP); (iv) safe disposal of infant excreta (41% to 44% in UA , 3.8% to 57% in UP); and (v) use of latrines (16% to 99% in UA, 3.8% to 31% in UP).

The physical achievements are demonstrated by the number of infrastructure facilities constructed in the states’ 19 districts (12 in the hills of UA, including Almora, Bageshwar, Pithoragarh, Nainital, Champawat, Udham Singh Nagar, Tehri, Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Srinagar, Dehradun, and Uttarkashi and 7 in the Bundelkhand region of UP, including Hamirpur, Jalaun, Lalitpur, Jhansi, Mahoba, Banda, and Chitrakoot) by Project closure, which exceeded the targets set at appraisal. In addition to the 1,214 villages served, a large number of villages are continuing to show interest to participate in the schemes, as they hear success stories from the project villages.

The demand driven and participatory approach, which has been tested as an alternative to the traditional supply driven service delivery, has shown successful results. The Project, through establishing the Village Water and Sanitation Committee (VWSC) as a legally constituted sub-committee of the Gram Panchayats (GP), have allowed the village communities to fully participate in the process and gain a sense of ownership of the infrastructure schemes constructed under the Project.

The innovative features and success of the Project have attracted a lot of attention, and influenced the Government of India (GOI) to introduce a major policy change in 1999 in its rural water and sanitation program. The Sector Reform Project, which incorporates the key principles of the Swajal Project was introduced in 1999 and is being implemented in 67 districts spread over 27 states across the country.

India’s national sector strategy has also allocated 20% of GOI plan funds for nationwide rural water supply program called “Swajaldhara” which came in effect in December 2002. In addition, the Planning Commission, GOI, has named the Swajal Project as one of the successful governance initiatives from Indian States.

Lessons Learned

Key lessons learned from the project include the following:

1. Development Objective should be Formulated Clearly
2. Community Participation and Empowerment are Keys for Sustainability
3. Basic Principles of Proven Approaches should Not Be Diluted when Scaling Up Reforms
4. High Quality Staff, their Ownership, and an Enabling Environment are Keys to Success
5. Community Mobilization Efforts and Implementation Cycles Differ Depending on the Scheme Chosen

Beneficiary:

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Benefits:

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