The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), launched by the Government of India in 2019, aims to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections to every rural household by 2024. At its inception, only 3.23 crore (17%) rural households had tap water connections, but the mission has set an ambitious goal of adding nearly 16 crore additional households, benefiting over 19 crore rural families. As of August 2024, JJM has achieved significant progress, providing tap water connections to 11.82 crore more rural households, raising total coverage to over 15.07 crore households, or 77.98% of all rural households. The mission emphasizes a community-based approach, encouraging local ownership through contributions of cash, kind, or labor (shramdaan) and prioritizes sustainable water supply systems, infrastructure functionality, and resource maintenance. Additionally, it focuses on developing skilled human resources in construction, plumbing, water quality management, and catchment protection, creating a lasting impact on health, quality of life, and rural empowerment.

Arghyam, supports JJM’s objectives in partnership with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and government departments, working to establish sustainable water supply systems across Indian states. With JJM’s remarkable national coverage expansion from 16% to over 78%, Arghyam has aligned its efforts through three thematic divisions: Operations & Maintenance, Water Quality, and Source Sustainability. These areas of focus help ensure the longevity and quality of rural water systems. Additionally, Arghyam runs the India Water Portal (IWP), an online platform providing a space for academia, researchers, and practitioners to share insights, foster public discourse, and address issues in water, sanitation, and climate change, further advancing the mission’s transformative impact on India’s rural landscape.

Currently, 3 states in India are being focused on through  projects that are developed based on geohydrological contexts as well as the priorities and approach of these state governments regarding water supply and management in rural areas.

Sl No	State	Thematic focus area
1	Assam	Water Quality
2	Bihar	O&M
3	Karnataka	Source sustainability

Besides these thematic priorities and focused geographies, Argyam’s strategy is aimed at working at scale by leveraging technology as an enabler and integrating robust social processes to strengthen the system. Each of the Arghyam projects are designed with digital deployment and tech innovation as the mainstay of the intervention.

Data Collection Method

Avni is an open-source task tracker tool, which has been developed by Samanvay- Learning and Development Foundation. The tool has been used in different sectors, such as education and health, especially by Frontline functionaries such as ASHA, teachers, CSO workers and program managers to deliver and monitor their programmes across multiple states of India.

In Bihar, Avni has been rolled out by Arghyam partner agency Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSP-I) to track the mandated tasks at the pipe water supply level by its PWS operators   also known as Anurakshak/ Pump-operator. Through the Avni app, 5 tasks are being captured at PWS(pipe water supply system) by Anuarakshak, which are as follows:-

Here’s a breakdown of what each form captures:

1. Tank Cleaning

• Purpose: To document the regular cleaning of water tanks, which is essential for maintaining water quality and safety.
• Data Collected:
  • Date of tank cleaning
  • Notification to the community about cleaning (photo)
  • Tank cleaning process (photos)
  • WIMC (Ward Implementation  and  & Management Committee) members’ participation (photos)
  • Additional comments if needed
• Frequency: Biannual
• Importance: Ensures tanks are cleaned on schedule and  the community is informed and involved,  records digitised safely.

2. WIMC Meeting  (Record Keeping)

WIMC is the last mile institution below Gram Panchayat created through Panchayati Raj Amendment act 2017 in Bihar , this decentralised institution consisting of 7  elected and nominated members of the community  is tasked with operating and maintaining the PWS at ward level. 

• Purpose: To keep track of WIMC meetings, attendance, and key discussions, which foster community participation in water management.
• Data Collected:
  • Meeting date
  • Meeting attendance with photo evidence
  • Meeting minutes (photo of register)
  • Total attendance and female attendance count
  • Additional comments
• Frequency: Monthly
• Importance: Highlights community participation and the engagement of both male and female members in water management decisions.

3. Jal Chaupal Record Keeping

• Purpose: To document community gatherings (Jal Chaupal) that discuss water issues, providing a platform for feedback and ideas from locals.
• Data Collected:
  • Date of Jal Chaupal
  • Attendance (photo and count)
  • Proceedings (photo)
  • Breakdown of participants by total count and female count
  • Attendance of specific officials and community representatives
  • Additional comments
• Frequency: As organized by the community
• Importance: These records ensure transparency and inclusiveness, showing that community feedback is formally acknowledged.

4. Log Book

• Purpose: To log daily details on water supply, noting any interruptions and reasons for service disruptions.
• Data Collected:
  • Date
  • Reporting month
  • Days of “no water supply”
  • Reasons for interruptions (such as power issues, pipeline breakage)
  • Monthly logbook photo
• Frequency: Monthly
• Importance: This form ensures that all disruptions are recorded and analyzed, which can guide future improvements and maintenance actions.

5. Water Quality Testing

• Purpose: To monitor water quality by testing for chemical and biological contaminants, ensuring the safety of drinking water.
• Data Collected:
  • Dates of entry, sample collection, and testing
  • Sampling points (source, household, institution, etc.)
  • Chemical parameters: pH, Total Hardness, Alkalinity, Chloride, Nitrate, Arsenic, Fluoride, Iron
  • Biological parameter: Bacteriological contamination
• Frequency: As per the testing schedule
• Importance: This testing provides critical data on water safety, enabling quick responses to contamination issues and ensuring compliance with health standards.

Each form in the Avni app thus plays a key role in PWS functionality, supporting both operational tracking and community engagement for a sustainable and safe water supply system.

As of now, Anuarakshaks have used Avni in 3 blocks of Muzaffarpur and efforts are on to take it to 7 districts and 8 blocks. Also, simultaneous efforts are being made to influence the government by advocating its utility and relevance through trusted data generation and improved visibility made available through the Anuarakshak dashboard. 

mGramSeva:

mGramseva is a portal developed by the eGovernment Foundation for managing income and expenditure at the PWS level digitally. Through its partners, Arghyam has rolled out mGramseva to 3 blocks of the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar, and efforts are being made to scale this to 10 blocks across 7 districts of Bihar.

mGramSeva allows Anurakshaks to track the financial management of the  water connections in their area of coverage, the consumers for these connections, and these consumers’ billing and payment histories. It also helps them track the expenses they incurred on the operation and maintenance of the pipe water supply system such as remuneration to pump operator, plumbing cost , consumables for FTK /water testing , repair cost , electricity bill etc . 

Engagement with DALGO on developing Integrated Dashboard:-Arghyam has partnered with DALGO to develop an integrated dashboard from PWS physical and financial performance by pulling data from the both apps. The team has already developed unified Avni and mGramSeva dashboards. The final step remaining is to integrate these dashboards into the mGramSeva application.

Dalgo Adoption 

Challenges Before

1. Problem with Consolidation and Visualization: The key challenge was consolidating and visualizing data from Avni and mGramSeva into a unified dashboard for Anurakshaks. Although there was a silo dashboard for AVNI in the metabase but that doesn’t give a unified dashboard across two sources. 
2. Unique Access Requirement: Each Anurakshak requires a unique URL for personalized access, allowing them to view only their own dashboard and this needs to integrate with mGramSeva users to see their dashboard.
   mGramSeva will help them with unique username in the url parameters to map it with their logins. 
3. Power BI Licensing Cost: Power BI proved to be cost-prohibitive for multiple users accessing the visualization, making it infeasible for this use case.

Solution

1. Data Integration: We leveraged Dalgo to integrate data from multiple sources, including Avni and mGramSeva, streamlining data management.
2. Custom Connector: Developed an in-house connector for mGramSeva, a unique feature that’s hard to find in other tools, enhancing our system’s versatility.
3. Unique URL Solution: Addressed the multiple unique URL issue, which you can read more about [here], ensuring smoother navigation and access.
4. Scalable User Onboarding: Using open-source versions of Superset allows us to onboard an unlimited number of users, with hosting on AWS as our only cost.

Superset Visualization

• With the help of a unique URL an Anurakshak can see their activities. 

Monitoring Pipeline

• User can check the status of their data pipeline here  
• Sync is running on the daily basis for avni and weekly for mGramSeva and if something fails users can receive a discord notification and an email notification on the failures. 

Data Quality Tests

• We have written a few test cases which can identify data problems in your data. Like not null, unique columns, and type checks for the column. 
• If something fails with the test cases you’ll be notified by the yellow line which you can see above.

Conclusion 

Keeping in mind the Arghyam strategy of leveraging the power of technology as an enabler and working on scale, we are trying to establish a sustainable PWS operation and maintenance model, which is amenable to govt and replicable and scalable through their system.

Integrated dashboard of both these digital tools Avni & mGramseva try to address quite critical aspects of PWS operation and management by ensuring trusted data generation through the participation of frontline workers which could be utilised to improve decision making to strengthen the system for better accountability and transparency. For the frontline, this dashboard helps them to understand their performance by looking at one single dashboard that is readily available, sharable and retrievable and is not prone to physical damage to be misplaced or lost which are the main challenges they face while maintaining physical records.