BANGALORE: A research study has revealed that more than 80 per cent of the people of rural Karnataka are forced to depend on inferior and unsafe options for drinking water as they do not have potable drinking water within their residential premises. According to the findings of the study conducted by Prof D Rajasekhar and R Manjula at the Centre for Decentralisation and Development of the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, only 18.5 per cent of the total households are reported to have drinking water source on their premises.The Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, is an All India Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Training in the Social Sciences, established in 1972 by the late Prof V K R V Rao. The researchers who studied the data collected from 5,212 Gram Panchayats(GP) out of 5,665 in the state in drinking water supply service said “Increased distance in accessing the potable drinking water forces the people to fall back on inferior and unsafe sources,” they said.The study titled - Decentralised Governance and Service Delivery: Affordability of Drinking Water Supply by Gram Panchayats in Karnataka - has revealed that more than 58 per cent of the gram panchayats (GPs) in the State were spending more than `5 for every one rupee of receipts, raising serious questions of affordability. The analysis has showed that a majority of GPs in the State spent much more than what they received towards drinking water provisioning. In other words, the affordability of GPs to operate and maintain water supply sources was less, the research findings said.The research found that although poor access to drinking water supply was the result of several factors and the poor affordability of GPs to maintain water supply sources was an important factor.A majority of the GPs, which incur expenditure on electricity, maintenance charges and salaries to watermen, fixed water rates at less than `20 per household per month. There was no attempt to find out the affordability of water supply services through periodic calculations and resorting to mid-course corrections, and inefficiency in the expenditure on water supply sources contributed to the problem.The research study has recommended listing of all houses in the jurisdiction of the gram panchayats and bringing them under the house tax (user charges and water cess are part it) net.“The State government should enable gram panchayats to arrive at house tax on equity basis (fixation of tax on the basis of size and quality of the house). The GPs should periodically revise house tax rates. In this regard, incentives are to be provided to them,” the researchers said. They suggested that the GPs should apply water user rates as prescribed by the government and periodically revise them.“Overall suggestion is that the State government should work out incentives in such a way that they motivate the GPs to improve tax or user charges base, collect all the cess and water user charges that they themselves fix and periodically revise tax and water user rates,” the researchers observed.
Comments
0 comment