India's Water Summit Showcased Nine Schemes. Now Comes the Hard Part

The 9th India International Water Week promoted climate-resilient water management. Official data shows rural taps and river clean-up still falling short of the promise.

The **9th India International Water Week** opened at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on **22 September 2026**. Vice-President **C. P. Radhakrishnan** inaugurated it. The Ministry of Jal Shakti organised the five-day event around the theme **"Climate Resilient Water Management"**, with four days of conference and exhibition followed by field visits on 26 September.

The **Netherlands and Germany** are the partner countries. **Fourteen states** and **two central ministries** joined as partners, alongside multilateral lenders, research bodies, industry, start-ups and civil society groups. A second International Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Conference is running alongside it.

The event began in 2012 as India Water Week and has been held eight times before, most recently in 2024. This edition is the first to carry "International" in its name, which the ministry says reflects its growing global reach.

The stated focus areas are integrated water management, decentralised solutions, wastewater reuse and community participation. Sessions have covered flood and drought planning, early warning, glacial-lake monitoring, water finance, urban rivers and the links between water, food and energy.

A summit like this is useful for sharing ideas and signing deals. It does not lay pipes. The real test of India's water policy is on the ground, and there the record is mixed.

Union Jal Shakti Minister **C. R. Patil** used the opening session to present the government's Water Vision@2047 and the programmes behind it. He named nine.

**Jal Jeevan Mission** aims to bring piped drinking water to every rural home.

**Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana** funds irrigation expansion and more efficient water use on farms.

**Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari** is a community drive to build low-cost rainwater recharge structures.

**Namami Gange** is the programme to clean and restore the Ganga and its tributaries.

**Atal Bhujal Yojana** is a community-led groundwater management scheme in water-stressed villages.

**NAQUIM**, the National Aquifer Mapping and Management Programme, maps underground water layers to guide their use.

**The Ken-Betwa Link Project** is India's first major river-linking project, moving water from the Ken to the Betwa basin.

**The Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project** repairs and strengthens ageing dams.

**The National Hydrology Project** builds data systems for water monitoring and forecasting.

This is one of the widest sets of water programmes any Indian government has run. The useful question is not whether they exist but how well each is delivering, and whether anyone is adding up their combined effect.

Of the nine, Jal Jeevan Mission has the clearest public numbers, and they show both real progress and a stubborn gap.

When the mission began in **August 2019**, only **3.23 crore** rural households, about **17%**, had tap connections. By **18 July 2026**, states reported **15.89 crore** of India's **19.36 crore** rural households connected, or **82%**. That is more than 12.6 crore new connections in seven years, one of the largest service expansions in India's history.

About **3.46 crore** households still wait. The gaps are concentrated. In West Bengal, only about 57% of rural homes are connected, leaving over 75 lakh uncovered. Rajasthan stands near 59% with 44 lakh uncovered, and Kerala near 55% with almost 32 lakh uncovered. Madhya Pradesh is at about 75%. At the other end, Telangana, Punjab, Mizoram and Puducherry report full coverage.

The mission missed its original 2024 deadline. In March 2026, the Cabinet extended it to **December 2028** under a revamped **JJM 2.0**. The total outlay rose from ₹3.60 lakh crore to **₹8.69 lakh crore**, with the Centre's share going from ₹2.08 lakh crore to ₹3.59 lakh crore.

Past rural water schemes often failed in the same way: pipes were laid, but water did not flow reliably. That is why the word "functional" matters more than "connected".

The government's own **2024 Functionality Assessment**, done by an independent agency, covered about **2.38 lakh households** in **19,812 villages** across 761 districts. All of them were villages officially certified as having a tap in every home.

The survey found taps in **98.1%** of homes. But only **86.5%** of households had a working tap. **83.6%** got water on schedule, **80.2%** got at least **55 litres per person per day**, the mission's minimum, and **76%** received water that met quality standards. Counting all three tests together, **76%** of connections were fully functional.

Put simply, about one in four tap connections in villages declared complete was not delivering regular, adequate and safe water. Applied to the national total, that would mean several crore households with a tap that does not do its job, though the survey was a sample and not a full count.

The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation now says the mission is shifting from building assets to running a reliable service. Its secretary told the summit that resilience "is not merely about creating infrastructure" but about sustained supply, with communities running and maintaining schemes.

Jal Jeevan Mission has also had a governance problem. States have reported **18,790 complaints** of financial irregularities and poor-quality work from media reports, legislators, citizens and grievance portals. Action has been taken against **635 officials**, **1,020 contractors** and **155 third-party inspection agencies**, including suspensions, blacklisting and recovery of money.

Central teams carried out ground checks of selected schemes, looking at design, cost, quality and progress, and shared their findings with states for correction. The Centre also asked states to look for double or incorrect data entries, over-designed schemes and delays.

JJM 2.0 responds by tying money to conditions. States must sign a reform agreement with the Centre before funds flow. Schemes must be checked against a GIS-linked asset registry, meet national design norms and show reconciled accounts. In its latest update, the ministry said **12 states** had signed, and 2025-26 funds had been released to five of them.

That is the right direction. Whether it works will show in whether the functionality gap narrows in the next national assessment.

Groundwater supplies most of India's irrigation and much of its drinking water, and it is where climate stress bites hardest.

The **2025 national groundwater assessment** by the Central Ground Water Board and the states puts annual recharge at **448.52 billion cubic metres** and extraction at **247.22 billion cubic metres**. That is **60.63%** of what can be safely extracted. The national average hides serious local stress.

Of **6,762** assessment blocks, **730**, about 10.8%, are **over-exploited**, meaning more water is pumped out each year than is replenished. Another **201** are critical and **758** semi-critical. There is some good news in the trend. Recharge has risen by about 16.7 billion cubic metres since 2017, and the share of over-exploited blocks has fallen over that period.

The two schemes aimed directly at this problem are small next to it. **Atal Bhujal Yojana** has run as a pilot in **8,203** water-stressed gram panchayats across seven states. Its approach of community water budgets and cutting demand goes after the root cause, but it covers a small slice of stressed India.

**Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari**, launched in September 2024, reports striking numbers. Its first phase claimed over 27 lakh recharge structures against a target of 10 lakh. The second claimed over **1.5 crore** by May 2026, against a target of one crore. By 3 September 2026, the total stood at over 1.58 crore.

The government itself notes these structures are "presently undergoing physical verification". Until that verification is published, the figures show reported activity, not confirmed recharge.

**Namami Gange** has sanctioned 524 projects worth about **₹43,031 crore**, of which 363 are complete. For sewage, the core of river pollution, it has sanctioned **6,610 million litres a day** of treatment capacity and completed about **4,263**, roughly two-thirds. Spending has crossed ₹21,550 crore. The unfinished third matters because untreated sewage from cities along the river remains the main source of pollution.

**The Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project** covers **736 dams** in 19 states under phases running from 2021 to 2031, at a cost of **₹10,211 crore**, co-financed by the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. By March 2025, repair plans for 191 dams had been approved and major work finished at a few dozen. Many of the dams on the list are decades old, so the pace matters for safety.

**The Ken-Betwa Link Project** is the most ambitious item on the list. Approved in 2022 at **₹44,605 crore**, with ₹39,317 crore from the Centre, it involves a **96.7-metre Daudhan dam** on the Ken and a **216-km canal** to the Betwa basin. It promises irrigation for **10.62 lakh hectares** in drought-prone Bundelkhand, drinking water for about **62 lakh people** and **103 MW** of power.

The Prime Minister laid the foundation stone on **25 December 2024**. By July 2026, about **₹12,446 crore** had been spent. The dam is under construction but canal work has not begun, and completion is set for **2030**. The government says there has been no cost increase since approval.

The costs are not only financial. The project needs **6,017 hectares** of forest land, over 5,578 hectares of it inside the **Panna Tiger Reserve**. The dam alone affects 22 villages and about **4,443 families** who must move, and residents have protested over compensation surveys and eligibility lists. The government says rehabilitation payments are largely disbursed and that a landscape management plan will offset the damage to wildlife.

Nine national programmes, each with its own targets, money, agency and dashboard, raise a coordination question. Is there one place where a citizen or planner can see, for a single district or river basin, how drinking water, groundwater, irrigation and pollution are changing together?

At present, each scheme mostly reports on its own. Jal Jeevan Mission counts taps. The groundwater board counts blocks. Namami Gange counts treatment plants. The recharge drive counts structures. Yet these are linked. A tap scheme drawing on an over-exploited aquifer can fail within years, and a recharge pit in the wrong place adds little.

The ministry does point to tools meant to join them up, such as the Sujalam Bharat GIS asset registry and decision-support systems that help districts identify vulnerable water sources. A published, basin-level view combining these data would be the most useful single step towards the "integrated water management" the summit named as a focus.

This is not a problem unique to water. It recurs across large Indian programmes. But water, which crosses scheme boundaries as easily as it crosses state borders, shows the cost of fragmentation more clearly than most sectors.

The Netherlands and Germany are world leaders in water engineering and climate adaptation, and the week produced one concrete outcome.

On **24 September**, India and the Netherlands signed **two tripartite agreements** for technical cooperation on Gujarat's **Kalpasar project**. The signatories were the Central Water Commission, Gujarat's Kalpasar Department and two Dutch institutions, the research institute **Deltares** and **TU Delft** university. Kalpasar, a long-discussed plan, would create a freshwater reservoir in the Gulf of Khambhat from the runoff of the Sabarmati, Mahi and Dhadhar rivers, topped up with Narmada water. The agreements cover hydraulic modelling, coastal and structural engineering, climate resilience and training. They follow a letter of intent signed during the Prime Minister's visit to the Netherlands in May 2026.

Germany's role runs mainly through its **Green and Sustainable Development Partnership** with India, signed in 2022, under which Berlin committed at least **€10 billion** in new financial and technical cooperation by 2030. At the summit, a German-led forum with firms and its development agency GIZ focused on digital and precision technology for water security. Denmark, which ran its own forum on the opening day, was also named by the minister as a key water partner.

Agreements on paper are a start. The test is whether Kalpasar moves from studies to construction, and whether German and Danish cooperation shows up in specific projects with public milestones.

**What is India International Water Week?**

A conference and exhibition run by the Ministry of Jal Shakti since 2012, where governments, experts, companies and civil society discuss water policy and technology. It does not itself fund or build projects.

**Does every rural home now have tap water?**

No. About 82% of rural households have a tap connection, and the government's own survey found about three in four connections fully functional. The deadline for full coverage is now December 2028.

**What does "over-exploited" groundwater mean?**

It means more water is pumped from underground each year than rain and rivers put back. About 11% of India's assessment blocks are in this category.

**Why is the Ken-Betwa project controversial?**

It promises water for drought-hit Bundelkhand but requires forest land inside the Panna Tiger Reserve and the relocation of thousands of families.

**Jal Jeevan Mission functionality.** The next national functionality assessment, and whether the 76% figure rises, is the single most telling number in Indian water policy.

**State coverage gaps.** Progress in West Bengal, Rajasthan and Kerala, which together hold over 1.5 crore unconnected rural homes, will decide whether the 2028 deadline holds.

**JJM 2.0 agreements.** How many states sign the reform agreements, and how many receive funds after meeting the conditions, will show whether the new rules have teeth.

**Recharge verification.** Publication of physical verification results for the 1.5 crore-plus recharge structures would show how many exist and work.

**Ken-Betwa milestones.** Watch for the start of canal work, spending against the ₹44,605 crore budget and completion of rehabilitation for displaced families.

**Namami Gange sewage capacity.** The remaining roughly 2,350 million litres a day of sanctioned treatment capacity is the gap to watch.

**Kalpasar and partner projects.** Specific studies, budgets or timelines emerging from the Dutch agreements, and any named German or Danish projects, would show whether summit diplomacy produces results.

**Next year's groundwater assessment.** Whether the count of over-exploited blocks keeps falling will test the government's claim that conservation is working.

India's water policy covers nearly every part of the problem, from village taps to aquifers to river basins, and some of its results, above all the leap in rural tap connections, are substantial.

The weak points are in quality, verification and coordination: taps that do not reliably deliver, recharge figures still being checked, sewage plants still unbuilt, and schemes that report separately on a resource that does not respect their boundaries. The summit was a showcase and a meeting place. The results to judge it by are functional connections, groundwater levels and cleaner rivers over the next year.

**Note on perspective**: {{Based on Ministry of Jal Shakti statements, parliamentary replies, the 2024 Jal Jeevan Mission functionality assessment and the 2025 national groundwater assessment, as of 25 September 2026. The analysis credits real progress while focusing on the gap between reported outputs and verified outcomes.}}