For 25 tribal households of Upli Uberia Phali, a hamlet in Sirohi, the stream to the other side of a craggy cliff is a lifeline. It is also a rich mine of granite and marble. The water there is often fetid, contaminated with silica dust from the mines. But that’s all there is.

Garasias, mainly settled in arid southern Rajasthan, are a Scheduled Tribe. The tribe has three sub-clans — Rajput Garasia, Dungri Garasia and Bhil Garasia. Residents of Upli Uberia Phali mostly belong to Bhil Garasias, who also act as carriers of water for other tribes for a living in a water-scare region.

Over the years, authorities have made several attempts to provide sustainable water to the small tribal community. They were largely unsuccessful. The reasons were diverse, from dearth of appropriate technologies to something as basic as the lack of a motorable road to move men and machinery.

Over 120 million Indian households, such as those in Upli Uberia Phali, lack access to clean water near their homes, the highest in the world, according to UN-Water. The World Bank estimates India loses nearly 6% of its gross domestic product or GDP because of water crisis and environmental degradations.

India has had several public programmes to bring clean water to its people, such as the National Drinking Water Mission launched in 1986, but the goal of providing drinking piped water to every household has got a special impetus under Prime Minister Narendra, who announced the Har Ghar Jal programme (water for every home) under the Jal Jeevan Mission in 2019.

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Four months ago, residents of Upli Uberia Phali got one of the India’s first Internet-of-Things (IoT)-based smart water management plant as part of the Har Ghar Jal mission.

To monitor the rural drinking water supply systems, the Jal Shakti ministry has taken the digital route to use sensor-based IoT devices to effectively monitor the implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in more than 600,000 villages, according to official data.

The Jal Jeevan Mission in collaboration with Tata Community Initiatives Trust (TCIT) and Tata Trusts recently completed pilot projects in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Himachal Pradesh.

The transformation

Water crises mean drudgery for women, who bear their worst brunt. Before the smart water system was installed in the hamlet, Kukibai, a housewife who goes by one name, would trek a daily route of nearly three kilometres through hilly jungles, not once but twice or sometimes thrice, to get to the shallow spring.

Like her, womenfolk of the village used to make three to four trips every day, metal vessels clutched to their waists, foraging for the day’s fill. On bad days, they had to go further to neighbouring village, Malera, six kilometres away. It was hard toil. “My back aches, my arms go numb,” Megibai, another resident, says.

Residents are in awe of the IoT-based smart water plant, which supplies piped water to each of the 25 households.

Dhanaram, the sarpanch, said when a plan to get piped water to the hamlet reached the local panchayat office, villagers initially didn’t believe him even though the state’s chief minister Ashok Gehlot had himself announced it.

Installing the plant was an engineering challenge. The first step for engineers was to conduct a “resistivity test”, a hydrological exercise to determine the most sustainable site for a borewell.

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“The village didn’t have a motorable road. That was a key challenge in moving machinery and men,” says Ganpat Singh Kumpawat, an official of Tata Community Trust Initiative. Villagers then worked to create a car-wide road, clearing boulders and jungles.

The Jal Jeevan Mission has been conceived in a way that villagers contribute 10% of the capital cost, according to Bharat Lal, the chief of the Jal Jeevan Mission in the Jal Shakti ministry.

The technology

On the outside, the smart water plant is seemingly simple, consisting of a borewell and an overhead 7000 tank. Inside, a range of sensors trigger operations and relay data in near real-time to a national dashboard in the Jal Shakti ministry.

Most locations in the rural water network lack easy access to a power grid for running IoT devices. “It requires using a combination of technologies such as radio frequency and cellular for communications and using solar or battery-based powering mechanisms for difficult to access locations,” said Siddhant Masson, Project Lead of IoT-based smart water management at TCIT.

The IoT-based water plant in Sirohi is a first-of-its-kind source to tap remote monitoring and control system in a completely off-grid rural environment. It runs on solar and battery only.

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Operations are high-tech and automated. It has five chip-based sensors that show realtime data on a computer inside the plant. The plant has a mobile internet connection and an internet gateway. The main sensor calculates how much water goes into each of the five supply lines that multiply into 25 different piped connections. “It’s technically called an FM sensor. It helps us detect leakages and faults,” says Suresh Kumar Meghwal, an official.

A second sensor in the tank gives out readings on chlorination levels, turbidity and particulate matter, which together take care of quality of drinking water. For piped water projects like these, sustainability is key issue.

A groundwater sensor constantly monitors the depth at which water level is in the borewell. “The main utility of a smart water management plant like this one is to be able to monitor water quality and detect overexploitation, which is not possible otherwise,” Meghwal says.

While these technical parameters are overseen by Meghwal and his team, the overall guardianship of plant is with a team of local women headed by Kukibai.

They are the lead members of the village’s “pani samity” or water council, which keep an account of how much water is drawn and consumed. They collect ₹50 every month for each user, which goes into maintenance.

The smart water plant has acquired a sacred status. “Every month, we perform a puja for its wellbeing. We believe it must be worshipped to keep it happy,” Kukibai says.

(This is the second of a four part series on India’s water crisis and the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission)