March 2016—In Bangalore, India’s information technology hub, 72 percent of the drinking water is contaminated and a majority of the population does not have access to clean drinking water facilities.

Beginning last year, however, a growing number of new purification centers are allowing residents to purchase safe water at a reasonable cost, with a significant impact on their health and financial well-being.

In Bangalore’s Lingarajpuram slum, where 40-year-old Ruksana Begum lives in her one-bedroom house, the struggle to access clean drinking water is decades old. The water that flows from the taps is yellow.

“It’s unclean bore well water and is polluted and poisonous,” laments Begum. “In the rainy season, even mud would mix in this water. On top of that, such filthy water is supplied to our homes for only two to three hours once in every three days.” Though Begum boiled and filtered the water, it never seemed to lose its yellow color.

Begum’s children often complained of fever and had to miss school after drinking water from the tap, while she and her husband experienced severe joint pain.

“There were days when I couldn’t even pick up a blanket, let alone do household chores,” she says.

For Begum’s husband, who is a daily wage laborer, missing a day at work meant losing 750 rupees ($12) per day. “That’s a lot of money considering that a visit to the doctor and paying for the medicines costs 500 rupees [$7],” she adds.

Like others in her slum neighborhood, Begum had made peace with the water crisis. But matters got out of hand one day two years ago when worms appeared in the water. An agitated Begum knocked on the doors of the local administration, protesting against the quality of water being supplied in her neighborhood.

“I opened the tap one day and the water was black in color,” she recalls, the discontent clear in her voice. “I could even see worms in that water. When I enquired, I came to know that the drain water pipe had burst and was mixing in the drinking water. That was the day I had enough. I couldn’t see my family drinking this.”

In February 2015, following Begum’s complaint, a USAID-supported water purification center was test piloted in Lingarajpuram. The center was established by WaterHealth India, a private company partner under USAID’s Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) alliance, to help solve the neighborhood’s water woes.

“The local municipal body, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, provided us with land, raw water connection, and electricity supply free of charge to set up the water treatment center,” says Vikas Shah, chief operating officer of WaterHealth International, which runs operations for safe drinking water solutions across Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and India.

A state-of-the-art six-stage purification system now converts raw ground water into clean drinkable water that meets and even exceeds the World Health Organization’s global standards. In a 50-square-foot area, the water center opens at 6 a.m. and runs around the clock to fill 350 plastic cans per day brought from local households.

Today, over 100 families in the neighborhood buy their drinking water from the four spouts provided by the center. As a result of USAID’s partnership with the municipality, local community and WaterHealth India, 11,250 households in nine wards throughout Bangalore now have access to safe drinking water.

USAID and its partners now plan to scale this proven solution to 16 more wards—with 25 water purification centers to cover 35,000 poor households—by May 2016, and to all 198 wards in Bangalore in the near future.

“My 4-year-old daughter used to run a high fever and would shiver after drinking from the tap,” says Thyamma*, 24, a resident of Lingarajpuram. “A local doctor advised that we buy bottled water cans from the retail market. But they are expensive [30 rupees for a 20-liter can]. Since the water center has opened, I’m now able to purchase clean water at just one-sixth the cost [five rupees for 20 liters] I previously paid.”

For Thyamma, it’s the affordable water that brings her to the center. But for Begum, the center has become not only a source of clean water, but a source of pride as a mother.

“Each time I carry home a can of clean water with me, I know I’m taking back a safer and healthier life for my children,” says the mother of four.

*Full name not available.

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