Snehalatha Sreedhar, Coordinator of WASHCost India, explains how the WASHCost will work with the Government on how to better contribute to national rural water supply guidelines.
Published on: 05/01/2012
The WASHCost team in India will demonstrate the life-cycle costs approach in ten to 15 villages in Andhra Pradesh to show the Government how it can contribute to their national rural water supply guidelines.
The team has selected a cluster of villages in the Dhone Mandal of Kurnool District where an intensive effort will be made to focus on the key data that needs to be collected to provide critical information on costs and on service levels.
Snehalatha Sreedhar, Coordinator of WASHCost India, says that the process will be less complex than that employed in earlier WASHCost research in 187 villages and will be used to develop a “how to” guide that can be used by State and National Government to implement the life-cycle costs and service delivery approaches.
The results of earlier research sparked interest from the Government of India as well as at State level. “They are very interested in seeing how these life-cycle costs approaches can be demonstrated at the field level in planning and budgeting WASH programmes.”
The Government of India has embraced the concept of sustainability in developing the National Rural Water Supply Guidelines, which States have the responsibility to implement. But the GoI has also made it clear that they are more interested in finding practical ways to ensure that everyone has access to effective water services, than in developing ever more complex policy that is never implemented.
Snehalatha says that the pilot planned for Andhra Pradesh will indeed focus on the practicalities. “It was a new methodology we were testing. Now we know after analysis exactly what data is required for planning and for implementing the life-cycle costs approach.
“In reality what exactly is needed on the ground using the life-cycle costing approach is something we would like to get integrated into the 2010 national drinking water guidelines.”
In effect, she said, WASHCost was putting the life-cycle costing and service delivery approach into practice. They would also produce a booklet of guidelines for implementation.
Peter McIntyre
6-January 2012.
