Digitisation of Water Supply to Resolve Many Problems in India

The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) aims providing Tap Connection to every rural household by 2024 with particular focus on ‘service delivery’ i.e. regular water supply in adequate quantity and of prescribed quality on long-term basis. This necessitates the use of modern technology in monitoring of the programme and to capture service delivery data automatically for ensuring the quality of services. Digitisation of water supply infrastructure has the potential to solve current problems as well as help anticipate and address future challenges.

In order to harness the power of technology in water management which is the need of the hour, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology in partnership with National Jal Jeevan Mission, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti had announced an ICT Grand Challenge to develop a ‘Smart water supply measurement and monitoring system’. The Jal Jeevan Mission would be the user agent of the Grand Challenge and C-DAC, Bangalore is the implementing agency and would provide technical support for the challenge. C-DAC will also provide technical support for Proof of Concept (PoC) development to the shortlisted candidates. It would also provide mentoring support, technical guidance to them.

The challenge witnessed enthusiastic participation from all over India with a total of 218 applications. These applications were received from various sectors like LLP Companies, Indian Tech start-ups, Individuals etc., as per the following statistics. Applications were received from 46 individuals, 33 companies, 76 Indian Tech start-ups, 15 LLP Companies and 43 MSMEs.

The evaluation of the applications is currently in progress. Shortlisted submissions will be invited for presentation in front of a Jury duly constituted, which would conduct these online presentations and review the applications for identifying the top 10 for the next round of prototype development.

Way forward in the Grand challenge includes Ideation to Prototype Stage, Prototype to Product Stage, Product Deployment Stage, and the announcement of three winners. All these stages would be carried out with funding support from MeitY and National Jal Jeevan Mission. Based on evaluation throughout these steps, one winner and two runners-up will be selected and awarded with Rs. 50 Lakh, for the winner and Rs. 20 Lakh of each runner-up.

This Grand Challenge will harness the vibrant IoT eco-systems of India for creating smart rural water supply eco-system to measure and monitor the service delivery of the water supply in rural areas. This Challenge will provide an opportunity to work for Jal Jeevan Mission and to assure potable water supply through Functional Household Tap Connections to every rural household.