Mission Bhagiratha: A life changing water mission

Mission Bhagiratha not only ended water woes of tribal people but also put a check on water-borne diseases

Hyderabad: Not more than four years ago, the interiors of Kumram Bheem Asifabad used to wake up to one sight, that of long lines of tribal women walking for kilometres, balancing water pots on their hands, negotiating the hilly terrains, all to get some drinking water.

Similar long lines, but with a slight difference, used to be seen outside the 22 primary health centres and upper PHCs, with people suffering from diseases related, again to drinking water, queuing up to get treatment.

From typhoid to acute diarrheal diseases and kidney infections to malaria and dengue caused by mosquitoes breeding in the crude water storage methods the tribals had adopted, their lives revolved a lot around water.

Despite having the Pranahita River and tributaries of the Godavari, prevalence of low literacy rates and high rates of superstitions coupled with the lack of bore wells or agricultural wells saw the people in the villages depending on deep wells, which had hard water.

And this, according to a study by District Medical and Health Officer Dr T Prabhakar Reddy, led to several outbreaks of water-borne illnesses and high incidence of typhoid and acute diarrheal disease (ADD) apart from kidney infections due to consumption of hard water. The story repeated every year till 2020. However, in the last two years, there has been a dramatic turnaround.

“If we compare the year-wise prevalence of Acute Diarrheal Disease cases from 2015 to 2022, there is a drastic decrease in new cases in 2021 and 2022. It was around 8000 cases per year but decreased to 1000 per year. Prevalence of typhoid cases from 2015 to 2022 too shows a drastic decrease in new cases in 2021 and 2022. It was around 6000 cases per year but decreased to 1800 per year. There is also a dramatic decrease in kidney related outpatient and in-patient complaints,” Dr. Prabhakar Reddy says in the study.

So what happened after 2020?

“The State government introduced safe drinking water through Mission Bhagiratha to minimize usage of ground water and to utilize surface water and to provide safe drinking water to people of rural areas. In Kumram Bheem Asifabad, the Mission became fully functional and started serving water to every household from 2021,” the study notes.

There was one more angle to this turnaround, which saw cases of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue too seeing a dip.

“Because of scarcity of water, villagers were forced to store water for long, leading to widespread breeding spots for mosquitoes, and in turn, thousands of malarial and dengue cases,” the study says.

Post Mission Bhagiratha, each household is now getting 100 litres per day of per capita quality drinking water, which reduced the burden of storage of water in tubs, buckets and mini tanks at households, thus doing away with mosquito breeding spots to a major extent.

“Along with this, preventive measures by the Health, Panchayat Raj and Rural Water Supply departments collectively brought down malaria and dengue cases in the district,” the study says, adding that, most importantly, Mission Bhagiratha has now ensured that there’s not even a single household in the district where women or girls are forced to walk for kilometres to collect drinking water.

“The time consumed in fetching water is drastically reduced, thereby enabling women to do other productive and economic activities,” it states.