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General information |
Water
supply and sanitation in India continue to be inadequate,
despite longstanding efforts by the various levels of government
and communities at improving coverage. The level of investment
in water and sanitation, albeit low by international standards,
has increased during the 2000s. In 1980, rural sanitation
coverage was estimated at 1% however after the 1986 launch
of the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, rural sanitation
coverage improved to 4% in 1988 and 22% in 2001.[7] Also,
in recent years the number of Indians with access to improved
sources of water has increased significantly and it is estimated
that 89% of Indians have access to these improved water sources.[1]
At the same time, local government institutions in charge
of operating and maintaining the infrastructure are seen as
weak and lack the financial resources to carry out their functions,
partly due to very low tariff levels[citation needed]. In
addition, no major city in India is known to have a continuous
water supply[8] and an estimated 72% of Indians still lack
access to improved sanitation facilities.
A number of innovative approaches to improve water supply
and sanitation have been tested in India, in particular in
the early 2000s. These include demand-driven approaches in
rural water supply since 1999, community-led total sanitation,
a public-private partnerships to improve the continuity of
urban water supply in Karnataka, and the use of micro-credit
to women in order to improve access to water. |
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Government Type |
| Parliamentary
Democracy |
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Capital |
| New Delhi |
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Geography and Climate |
The southern half of India is a largely
upland area that thrusts a triangular peninsula (c.1,300
mi/2,090 km wide at the north) into the Indian Ocean between
the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the
west and has a coastline c.3,500 mi (5,630 km) long; at
its southern tip is Kanniyakumri (Cape Comorin). In the
north, towering above peninsular India, is the Himalayan
mountain wall, where rise the three great rivers of the
Indian subcontinent-the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra.
The Gangetic alluvial plain, which has much
of India's arable land, lies between the Himalayas and the
dissected plateau occupying most of peninsular India. The
Aravalli range, a ragged hill belt, extends from the borders
of Gujarat in the southwest to the fringes of Delhi in the
northeast. The plain is limited in the west by the Thar
(Great Indian) Desert of Rajasthan, which merges with the
swampy Rann of Kachchh to the south. The southern boundary
of the plain lies close to the Yamuna and Ganges rivers,
where the broken hills of the Chambal, Betwa, and Son rivers
rise to the low plateaus of Malwa in the west and Chota
Nagpur in the east.
The Narmada River, south of the Vindhya hills, marks the
beginning of the Deccan. The triangular plateau, scarped
by the mountains of the Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats,
is drained by the Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri rivers;
they break through the Eastern Ghats and, flowing east into
the Bay of Bengal, form broad deltas on the wide Coromandel
Coast. Further north, the Mahanadi River drains India into
the Bay of Bengal. The much narrower western coast of peninsular
India, comprising chiefly the Malabar Coast and the fertile
Gujarat plain, bends around the Gulf of Khambat in the north
to the Kathiawar and Kachchh peninsulas. The coastal plains
of peninsular India have a tropical, humid climate.
The Deccan interior is partly semiarid on the west and
wet on the east. The Indo-Gangetic plain is subtropical,
with the western interior areas experiencing frost in winter
and very hot summers. India's rainfall, which depends upon
the monsoon, is variable; it is heavy in Assam and West
Bengal and along the southern coasts, moderate in the inland
peninsular regions, and scanty in the arid northwest, especially
in Rajasthan and Punjab.
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Population |
1,152
Million |
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Economy |
India
is developing into an open-market economy, yet traces of its
past autarkic policies remain. Economic liberalization, including
reduced controls on foreign trade and investment, began in
the early 1990s and has served to accelerate the country's
growth, which has averaged more than 7% since 1997. India's
diverse economy encompasses traditional village farming, modern
agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries,
and a multitude of services. Slightly more than half of the
work force is in agriculture, but services are the major source
of economic growth, accounting for more than half of India's
output, with less than one-third of its labor force. India
has capitalized on its large numbers of well-educated people,
skilled in the English language, to become a major exporter
of software services and software workers. An industrial slowdown
early in 2008, followed by the global financial crisis, contributed
to the deceleration in annual GDP growth to 6.1% in 2009.
The government of India has expressed a commitment to fiscal
stimulus in 2010, and to deficit reduction the following two
years. It has proposed limited privatization of government-owned
industries, in part to offset the deficit. India's long term
challenges include inadequate physical and social infrastructure,
limited employment opportunities, and insufficient basic and
higher education opportunities. In the long run, however,
the huge and growing population is the fundamental social,
economic, and environmental problem. |
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Member of South Asian Organizations
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Initiative towards WatSan |
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Organizations Work For it |
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WatSan Coverage |
- Water Coverage at:
National Level: 89%
Rural Level: 89%
Urban Level: 96%
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- Sanitation Coverage at
National Level: 28%
Urban Level: 52%
Rural Level: 18%
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Technology used for Water Supply |
- Shallow tubewell & Convensional Deep-set
Hand Pump
- Tara handpump tubewell
- Pond sand filter
- Tara II handpump tubewell
- Shallow shrouded tubewell
- Pond sand filter
- Dug Well
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Technology used for Sanitation |
- Home-made hygienic latrine
- Water-seal latrine
- Offset latrine
- San-plat latrine
- Twin Pit Latrine
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