After The Pipes, The Proof: Inside Jal Jeevan Mission’s Push To Track Every Drop

This underscores the gap between infrastructure and actual facilities.

After five years focused on laying pipes and building supply systems, India’s rural drinking water programme, the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) now faces a harder question: how to verify that water actually reaches households regularly, safely and in adequate quantity.

JJM, launched in 2019, was designed to provide functional household tap connections (FHTCs) to every rural home. According to the mission’s Integrated Management Information System, more than 95% of rural households across 777 districts and about 6.53 lakh inhabited villages now have tap connections. Fewer than 5,000 inhabited villages remain without piped water supply systems. The focus is now shifting from connections to service delivery.

That shift is driving a growing emphasis on digital measurement and monitoring. Officials argue that without reliable data on flow, pressure and quality, India risks confusing coverage with outcomes.

Why Monitoring Has Become Unavoidable

India’s rural water network is vast and fragmented. Around 6.83 lakh water supply schemes operate under JJM, most of them single village systems, alongside multi-village and bulk water supply projects. These schemes span more than 7,300 blocks and over 2.6 lakh gram panchayats.

“A junior engineer in a block may be responsible for 100 to 150 schemes,” said A. Muralidharan, Deputy Adviser for Drinking Water and Sanitation at NITI Aayog. “Without measurement and monitoring, it is not possible to know where water has stopped flowing, where pressure has dropped or where quality is compromised.”

To address this, the mission constituted an expert committee that recommended a three-tier monitoring framework. The basic tier uses limited sensors, the intermediate tier adds parameters such as pressure and water quality, and the advanced tier extends monitoring to the consumer level. The intermediate model is considered the most practical for large-scale deployment.

Under this approach, each scheme would typically be equipped with sensors tracking tank levels, chlorination, bulk flow, pressure and water quality. Data flows through networks and cloud platforms to dashboards intended for engineers, district officials and local governments.

But it’s an expensive affair. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that an investment of US$ 49 billion is required to achieve complete measurement and monitoring of water supply under the Mission,” says Muralidharan.

“Unless and until you have monitoring and measurement mechanisms, it is not going to be physically possible for anyone to do proper maintenance and ensure service delivery,” he says.

What “Har Ghar Jal” Really Means

Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, coverage is defined through a structured process known as Har Ghar Jal. A village first achieves 100% tap connection status when all households are recorded in the JJM database after verification. 

The next stage, known as “reported”, is when the state or Union Territory confirms that water is being supplied through taps to all households, schools and anganwadi centres. The final stage, “certified”, requires a Gram Sabha resolution affirming that water is indeed being delivered as claimed. 

As of December 2025, States and Union Territories, including Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab have reached the certified stage. 

Telangana, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are in the reported category. The distinction matters because it highlights the gap between infrastructure creation and verified service delivery.

From Pilots To Policy

Monitoring under JJM is no longer theoretical. The Ministry of Jal Shakti has conducted pilots of Internet of Things (IoT) based smart water supply monitoring systems across multiple states, covering over a hundred villages. Several states have also launched their own real-time tracking portals for rural water supply. Central advisories and technology challenges have been used to identify scalable solutions.

At the same time, officials acknowledge that monitoring is still at an early stage. Most schemes are not yet fully instrumental, and issues such as recurring maintenance, data reliability and local capacity remain unresolved. 

“There is a clear need to build indigenous sensor manufacturing capacity. Dependence on imports, particularly from China, could create vulnerabilities as monitoring scales up,” a NITI Aayog official, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Secretariat.

The push for monitoring comes as the Centre’s approved share under the original Jal Jeevan Mission outlay has largely been utilised. The Finance Minister has announced an extension of the mission until 2028, with enhanced funding under consideration. 

Officials indicate that the scale and pace of monitoring deployment will depend heavily on decisions taken in the Union Budget in February 2026.

For the Jal Jeevan Mission, the next test isn’t about pipes, but whether data can prove that water flows through them every day for everyone, including Fardeen.