Book Excerpt: How Odisha achieved the seemingly impossible feat of ‘Water for All’

‘Jal Sathis’. Photo: Shagun / CSE

…I strongly believed that enhancing the role of water monitors, who had already been chosen from the local communities and trained and who functioned as part of the grassroots-level teams, would give better results.

Thus, the idea of Jal Sathis was born as an improved and upgraded version of water monitors. Since then, Jal Sathis have filled the gap in the community connect and are acting as a bridge between the consumers and the PHEO.

With appropriate orientation and training, Jal Sathis have been providing better consumer-friendly services because they hail from the local community and are more accountable to their own community.

Women are hit the hardest when there is a water problem at home because, since time immemorial they have been responsible for fetching water for all household needs. Access to clean and safe water at home leads to women’s empowerment as women would no longer need to trudge miles and spend hours to fetch water, so we thought it would be most appropriate to have women as partners in drinking water distribution management at the habitation level.

Odisha has a strong legacy of women empowerment, with the Mission Shakti14 initiative spearheading the women’s SHG movement for the last two decades. CM Naveen Patnaik has always believed that unless women are given a voice and their rightful role in every aspect of life, society and the state can’t progress.

Inspired by his vision, in 2001, we federated the block-level and district-level SHGs in Ganjam district and I organized the first women’s SHG convention as the collector and invited Naveen Patnaik who had just completed one year as CM.

Today, we have many active and dynamic women SHGs and their federations in urban areas throughout the state. By the time we started upgrading the water monitors to Jal Sathis, the state government had already engaged women SHGs for the collection of electricity dues, paddy procurement and midday meal preparation activities under its Mission Shakti programme.

The H&UDD, through ULBs, has also started partnering with Mission Shakti Groups (MSGs) in several areas, particularly in the sanitation sector (solid waste management [SWM] and faecal sludge management), and achieved impactful outcomes. The MSGs have been successfully managing city-level septage treatment and SWM facilities covering the entire state.

This emboldened us to go for a robust engagement with Jal Sathis with higher roles and responsibilities. We had already tested the effectiveness of the incentive system in other sectors of urban governance, so we followed the same approach with the Jal Sathi model and defined quantifiable performance deliverables and associated incentives.

When we decided to engage Jal Sathis across the state to function as an extended arm of the PHEO, we thought it necessary to set out the guiding principles governing the partnership. A standard operating procedure (SOP) was laid down, which detailed the roles and responsibilities of Jal Sathis and the defining principles of the partnership, to bring clarity to the alliance between the PHEO and Jal Sathis.

The SOP details all the aspects of the Jal Sathi programme: programme objectives, agencies supporting the implementation, implementation strategy, criteria for selection of Jal Sathis, capacity building, roles and responsibilities of Jal Sathis and the supporting agencies, dos and don’ts, incentives, etc.

On 18 December 2019, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik formally launched the Jal Sathi initiative in a state-level event organized to commence water charges collection by Jal Sathis from the consumer’s doorstep using a mobile point of sale (MPoS) system device. By paying the water charges for his residence, Naveen Niwas, and getting a receipt through the MPoS device from a Jal Sathi at the event, the CM became the first consumer to avail of the Jal Sathi service.

The Jal Sathis are now the go-to persons for consumers in municipal wards across the 115 towns in the state for water supply-related matters. Their responsibilities range from testing water quality at the consumer’s end to reading the meter, bill generation, delivery, collection of water charges, facilitating complaints redressal and, above all, managing customer relations.

The facilitation role initially played by water monitors has matured into a deeper and more intense role as Jal Sathis, and they have now become the pillars of the urban drinking water management system in Odisha.

The Jal Sathi initiative that started in Bhubaneswar has reached all ULBs across the state, with more than 900 Jal Sathis till August 2022. The selection of Jal Sathis from the women SHGs and their federations is done through a transparent process by the concerned municipalities, and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) is signed between the PHEO and the group/federation.

Each Jal Sathi is assigned a clearly specified geographical area of one or more wards with a few hundred connections having a mix of residential, commercial and institutional consumers to ensure that a decent income is earned by each Jal Sathi.

The Jal Sathis are provided with a uniform to wear while on duty, an ID card, a shoulder bag containing the MPoS device, a water-testing kit and registers. They are also trained in the technical skills required to discharge their functions along with soft skills for customer relationship management before their deployment in the field. Jal Sathis are incentivized handsomely for their services in the water supply management chain.

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The Jal Sathi initiative in Odisha is an exemplar of the effectiveness of community partnerships. Jal Sathis were selected from the local community and trained to provide customer-friendly services. They became the main pillars of the urban drinking water management system, leading to improved water supply management that achieved 100 per cent HCs and improved revenue collection. The initiative has provided economic and social empowerment to women in Odisha and proved to be a transformative step in water supply service delivery.

Involving community members can foster a sense of ownership and accountability in them, resulting in sustainable success. Additionally, community engagement can help build trust and strengthen relationships between the government and the local community, leading to effective collaboration in other sectors too.

Excerpted with permission from People First: How Odisha’s Drink from Tap Mission Quenched Every Thirst by G Mathi Vathanan. @2024Rupa Publications