Evaluating the regional disparities in safe drinking water availability and accessibility in India

The key challenge of India is to provide access to safe drinking water for the increasing population. Hence, it is important to access the current status and progress in the sources and availability of safe drinking water in India for improving the prevailing policies. This paper studies the spatial and temporal patterns in safe drinking water availability and accessibility in Indian states and union territories. State-wise data of safe drinking water sources have been obtained from the Census of India for the period 1981–2011. Their spatial distributions have been shown using choropleth maps in geographical information system (GIS) environment. Rural–Urban differential and Safe Drinking Water Sources Availability and Accessibility Index (SDWSAAI) is computed for all the states and union territories for the year 2011. Findings indicate that India gained a significant advancement in access to safe drinking water from 38% (1981) to 85.5% (2011). In 1981, 26.5% and 75.1% of rural and urban households had access to safe drinking water, respectively, depicting a huge gap of around 49% point. This gap has brought down to only 8.7% point in 2011. Households having a source of drinking water within the premises have increased from 39% to 46.6% during 2001–2011. Nevertheless, households getting drinking water away from the premises have also recorded a marginal rise during the same period. Pondicherry has the highest score in the SDWSAAI followed by Daman and Diu, Chandigarh. Among states, Tamil Nadu has scored the highest, followed by Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Manipur and Odisha have scored lower in the index. Regional disparity in access to safe drinking water still exists in India and needs further improvement and management for a better quality of life.