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Improving the access of the poor
to sustainable water supply services is difficult
and complex especially under conditions of escalating
population growth and limited resources. The thrust
of the strategy requires promotion of community management
to reorient the delivery of water and sanitation services
from the centralized authorities to the local governments
and the communities. In early 1970s, targeted programmes
were introduced to assist the states and the union
territories to implement schemes in the problem villages.
In the mid-1980s, the National Drinking Water Mission
(NDWM), which has been renamed as the Rajiv Gandhi
National Drinking Water Mission (RGNDWM), was launched
to ensure maximum inflow of scientific and technical
inputs into the rural water supply sector and to deal
with quality problems of drinking water. At the same
time, a number of Mini Missions and Sub-Missions comprising
of areas based pilot projects were started to evolve
models for replication and to tackle water quality
problems and promote sustainability. The policy of
the government is to provide water supply to a maximum
of families in the shortest possible time and with
40 litres per capita (LPCD) of water. The Governments
has adopted a multi pronged approach for solving the
drinking water problems in which rainwater harvesting
and conservation and recharge of ground water are
the priority areas. The projects/ schemes on sustainability
of sources have been taken up under Mini- Mission
and Sub-Mission progarmmes of the RGNDWM. At present,
such projects/ schemes can be taken up under Sub-Mission
on Sustainability component of ARWSP.
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