Tap water mission: Mizoram leads way, Assam lags

Guwahati: The hilly state of Mizoram has topped states from the northeast in providing tap water to highest percentage of households (85.68), while Assam with vast plains ranked among the worst-performing states with a merely 49.15% coverage, as PM Narendra Modi on Wednesday hailed the feat of tap water connections for 12 crore houses under the Centre’s Jal Jeevan Mission.
Of the 1,33,060 households in Mizoram, the JJM official dashboard said 1,14,007 households have tap water supply, accounting for 85.68%, according to the data uploaded on the Jal Shakti ministry website.
Kolasib district of Mizoram has attained 96.67% coverage, highest among the eight districts of the state. Despite the fact that Kolasib has only 9,038 households, from merely 15.36% tap water coverage (delivering water to 1,388 households), when JJM was launched on August 15, 2019, Kolasib has come a long way to lead by example, government officials said. While 16 of the 34 villages in the district have tap water connections in 100% households by now, work is in progress in 18 villages.
Serchhip and Aizawl districts are in second and third positions in terms of tap water coverage with 91.7% and 90.30% having tap water supply. Lawngtlai district that has the highest 27,158 households is at the bottom among the Mizoram districts but at 75.21% coverage, it still has better performance than the coverage achieved by more than a dozen of the states.
Among the rest of the northeastern states, Arunachal Pradesh has achieved second best coverage of 77.54% by ensuring tap water connection to 1,78,547 of 2,30,275 total households in the frontier state.
Manipur fared better than many states with 76.58% tap water coverage. Nagaland has achieved 67.42% coverage and incidentally, Kiphire, which was tagged as one of the most backward districts in the country by NITI Ayog, has best coverage of 83.68%. While Tripura has 62.74% coverage as on WednesdayMeghalaya and Assam are the worst performing states in the northeast. Assam is at the bottom with 49.15% coverage.