stories of severe water crisis in indian cities have become routine every summer niti aayogs 2018 composite water management index cwmi report suggests that this crisis will only worsen the report says 600 million people in india live in high to extreme water stress and clearly the strained water supply system is susceptible to collapsein a guidance note the central public health environmental engineering organisation cpheeo the technical wing of the urban development ministry has noted that 24x7 supply is the global norm cpheeo stated that intermittent supply of water for a few hours a day is inefficient and susceptible to contamination there are serious health risks and hence lower consumer faith nonstop supply with improved quality increases willingness to pay for the service reduces wastagea pilot study in four cities in karnataka showed that people started using less water when given 24x7 supply the note pointed out that 30 or 40 years ago many urban areas in india had 24x7 water supply till rapid urbanisation made it unsustainableall developed countries supply drinkable tap water to citizens a travel advisory by the us center for disease control and prevention says highincome countries in the gulf bahrain saudi arabia uae and so on also provide drinkable tap water yet in india majority of the population doesnt even have tap water supply leave alone tap water fit to drink data on piped water connections under the national rural drinking water programme nrdwp reveals the sorry state of affairsgovernment had launched nrdwp in april 2009 in 2013 guidelines were updated to focus on piped water supply a cag report on nrdwp pointed out the scheme that was supposed to provide piped water connection to 35 of rural households by 2017 had actually been able to provide piped water connections to barely 183 of rural households by end of 201819data shows the slow progress under this scheme in 201415 just 133 of indias 178 crore rural households had piped water connection in the past five years this improved by just over 5 percentage points worse the number of new connections each year has declined in 201415 over 17 lakh new connections were provided this slid to just 63 lakh new connections in 201718 before an uptick in 201819 to 97 lakh the cag report pointed out that between 2012 and 2017 rs 81168 crore was spent on this programme and yet it could barely achieve half the target the investment by central and state governments to provide rural india drinking water since independence has been without adjusting to inflation rs 24 lakh crore under various schemes cag notes yet over 80 rural households dont have piped water connectionsonly 5 states and one ut manage to provide piped water to at least half their rural population nrdwp doesnt provide data for fully urbanised states or uts like delhi and chandigarh among large states odisha assam bihar and up piped water connection is available to less than 5 of the rural