2. Water and Sanitation Report CardNo Indian city receives water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Water is distributed through pipes only for a few hours and is turned off afterwards.http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2011/09/22/urban-water-supply-india. In water scarce areas including rural areas, Indian women must travel many miles for their families daily water needs.
Not only that, but water quality has deteriorated greatly. This has happened because India gets its water from shallow groundwater and open water bodies which have been polluted by an uncontrolled discharge of raw domestic and industrial waste-water. India’s clean drinking water comes from fresh water resources like rivers, lakes, reservoirs, rainfall, wells and the desalination of seawater. People can access water from pumps that are located around the city in residential neighborhoods. In most coastal areas other methods of fresh water have become polluted, so seawater desalination has become an important source of drinking water supply.
Two contracts have been awarded for seawater desalination plants since 2010 in Chennai, TamilNadu. Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and feces. The word ‘sanitation’ also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposalhttp://www.who.int/topics/sanitation/en/.72% of Indians still lack access to improved sanitation facilities.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299104/ India has the most number of people practicing open defecation in the world, around 626 million.
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/monitoring/jmp2012/fast_facts/en/ According to the World Bank estimation about 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are linked to unsafe water and the lack of hygiene practices. On top of that, more than 500 children under the age of five die from diarrhea in India alone each dayhttps://water.org/our-impact/india/ Following are the measures taken by India to keep its cities, streets, sewer systems, health care systems etc.
hygienic: