Naandi Foundation's Community-based Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) programme will provide contamination free drinking water to 5 lakh villagers in Haryana. In the presence of the Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a MoU was signed between the Government of Haryana and Naandi Foundation represented by Roshan Lal, Commissioner & Secretary – Public Works, Government of Haryana and Amit Jain, National Director, Naandi Foundation on July 23rd in Chandigarh.

As per the MoU, Naandi will set up safe drinking water plants in 100 villages in phase I covering – Mewat, Mahendragarh, Jhajjar and Kaithal districts, which have very high contamination levels in their drinking water sources. Naandi with its technology partner TATA Projects – that brings in the reverse osmosis technology to purify water – and village panchayats will set up safe drinking water plants over the next 3 years.

It must be recalled that the Cabinet in Haryana approved the setting up of the Safe Drinking Water plants on July 14th, 2008.

As part of the programme, Naandi will be responsible for the development and implementation of a hygiene and sanitation behavioral change communication strategy through theatre arts and school education campaigns besides setting up water plants. The idea is to provide safe drinking water to villagers and educate the community on sanitation and water-related issues and encourage them to adopt more hygienic lifestyles.

Naandi's CSDW is a collaborative arrangement with village panchayats, Naandi Foundation and the district administration. The village panchayat permits the use of water resources from where water is drawn, purified and supplied from the water purification plants. Panchayats also contribute partially to the setting up of the water purification plant.

With purified water being made available at 10 paise per litre, this model, by building in this fee ensures not only that the poorest of the poor drink safe water, but also makes it possible to sustain the water plant by paying for the programme management and plant maintenance costs.

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About Naandi:

Naandi Foundation is the new generation social sector organization led by corporate heads such as Dr K Anji Reddy, B Ramalinga Raju, Anand Mahindra, G M Rao, Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia and Padma Bhusan Chiranjeevi. With interventions such as Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Child Rights and Sustainable Livelihoods underway across seven states in the country, Naandi is one of the largest national players in the development sector working with national, international, corporate and civil society organizations to serve and empower underserved communities in urban, rural and tribal areas.