The Department of Rural Development & Panchayats, Government of Punjab has recently implemented waste water treatment systems, applying Waste Stabilization Ponds (WSP) technology in some of the villages in the districts of Ludhiana and Muktasar, in order to rejuvenate/renovate existing unused ponds. The state government desired to have techno-economic evaluation of the two such waste stabilization ponds already operating in Ludhiana districts. A team of experts from this Ministry visited the sites and submitted this report.

Provision of adequate sanitation to all communities has been a major challenge in India. This is also due to the fact such communities have full spectrum of variations in sociocultural and economic conditions. It is said that in India near stone -age civilization coexists with atomic –age civilization. On one hand, there are Primitive Tribal Groups for whom sanitation is still not a felt need problem at all, on the other; there are communities whose sanitation condition is comparable to any community of a developed country.

The revised National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) Guidelines issued by Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation has focus on adequate water supply in quantity and quality, to each rural household on a sustainable basis. Despite the impressive coverage of provision of safe drinking water facilities in the rural areas, there is considerable gap between infrastructure created and service available at the household level.

This handbook is prepared as per the requirements of Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), Government of India having following objectives: Identification of existing technologies for providing safe drinking water in the country;

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation administers the National Rural Drinking Water programme (NRDWP) instituted from 1/4/2009, through which support is extended to the states for implementing rural domestic water supply schemes. Powers to sanction individual projects is given to the states through their State Level Scheme Sanctioning Committees. Activities like, water quality monitoring and surveillance programme, management information system, IEC, Capacity and Communication Development Unit (CCDU) all were brought under the umbrella of NRDWP.

There had been several newspaper clippings indicating that arsenic contamination in drinking water sources in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh is creating hardship to the local people and several people are suffering from arsenecosis disease. Also, the capacity of the medical doctors is inadequate to diagnose arsenecosis and prescribe preventive medicine. This issue was brought out to the Ministry by an active NGO called “Inner Voice Foundation” headed by a dynamic person called Saurabh Singh.