An Analysis of Disparities in Access to Drinking Water in the Rural Areas of Rohtak District, Haryana (India)

Abstract

Access to safe drinking water has been a major challenge in India especially in rural areas where lack of usable water has given birth to decades old sanitation and health problems. In India, the water supply primarily depends upon two sources- Rivers and ground water. Unfortunately, both the sources are declining quantitatively and qualitatively owing to increasing population, industrialization and pollution. As per the report of Central Ground Water Board, ground water of most of the districts in Haryana is unfit for consumption due to high presence of salinity, nitrate, fluoride etc. As per Houselisting and Housing Census, 2011, in Rohtak district, 63.3 percent of rural household used taps, 8 percent used wells, 17.6 percent hand pumps and 8.1 percent used tube wells as sources of drinking water. In the present paper, Composite Index Method has been applied to find out the disparities in the availability of drinking water among the villages. Out of total 143 villages, village Kisranti has the highest number of households (99.2 percent) while four villages- Sanga Hera, Taimurpur, Sahan majra and Kahni 7 ½ Biswa have no households under tap water from treated source of drinking. Based upon the secondary data, the research work aims to analyze the access of safe drinking water through holistic comparison among the villages.