SUJALA – Water for Life, Water for Livelihood
Country: India
Organization: BYRRAJU FOUNDATION
2) Sector of activity: Water and Sanitation
3) Description of your products or services: Our Water program (Sujala) provides safe drinking water (quality equivalent to bottled drinking water) to 100% of the population in the villages where we work. It is a sustainable, low cost (12.5 paise per liter, about 1 US cent /gallon), community driven model that integrates technology and community participation for providing drinking water as per WHO standards. A multi-stage purification plant (including Reverse Osmosis in a few villages) is set up in every village in partnership with the people and the local authorities (with 50% financial contribution from the community), which is manned by the local populace. The project is a market-based approach for increasing access to drinking water meeting WHO standards on quality. The system can process about 1000-2000 liters of water per hour. It effectively eliminates pollutants such as chemical impurities, biological impurities as well as suspended particulate matter. In addition, it also removes unpleasant odour and excess chlorine.
4) Description of the operational model: The solution involves setting up of water purification system at the village level for providing safe drinking water to the residents. This system has multi-level filtration beds. The water undergoes through 5 iterations of purification- chlorine dosing, pressure sand filtration, activated carbon filtration, micron filtration and ultra- violet sterilization.
Raw water sourced from the village pond is collected into raw water storage tank. From the raw water storage tank, water is passed through a stream of pressure sand filter, activated carbon filter and softener to remove suspended matter, odour and organic matter.
The filtered water is fed to a high-pressure pump through a series of micron filters, which removes the physical impurities.
The high-pressure pump develops pressure and feeds the Reverse Osmosis membrane modules. Reverse osmosis is a membrane process of removing dissolved solids, organic matter and other toxic impurities by forcing water with high pressure higher than its osmotic pressure through a semi permeable membrane. It is a reverse process of natural osmosis process in which fluid with a low concentration pass through a semi permeable membrane into an area of higher concentration. Now it is being widely used in drinking water treatment where Total Dissolved Solids levels are high and abundant water is available. The villages where the input water conditions are variant, the Reverse-Osmosis is not warranted and the rest of the purification process is followed.
The outlet water is passed through an ultraviolet radiation unit to remove bacteria and thereafter ozonator to maintain oxygen level to the desired levels making it ready for human consumption.
5) Description of the financial model: The Foundation strongly believes that active participation and involvement of local bodies, villagers and others are essential for successful implementation of the Sujala Water Scheme. The Foundation, therefore, proposed sharing of the initial costs between the villagers and the Foundation. In order to ensure its sustainability, the cost of operation and maintenance has to be taken care by the beneficiaries through user charges at Rs 1.50 for 12 litres. The following sharing principle, in terms of capital costs, with various stakeholders, has been worked out:
A. Grama Panchayat: i) Allotment of Land (free of cost) ii) Permission to draw the raw water from the source in the village
B. Villagers/Non-Resident Villagers (born in the village but living outside) i) Construction of Building ii) 50% cost of Plant C. Byrraju Foundation: i) Technical and managerial guidance, operation and maintenance till its stabilisation, quality control and assurance, etc. ii) 50% cost of Plant
Client fees represent this approximate percentage of operational budget: 50%
6) Key operational partnership: We work in partnership with the village community represented by Grama Vikas Samiti (GVS).Land/land use is being contributed by the community/village along with Water supply agreement with/mandate from the Village Panchayat/local authority. Further, the community would also contribute a part of the cost of the water plant. Marketing Plan, demand pattern mapping and Monitoring are jointly undertaken with the village community
7) Current outreach:
We are at the Scaling Up stage. Till August 2005, Foundation has set up 16 plants (9 in West Godavari, 4 in East Godavari, and one each in Krishna, Guntur, and Ranga Reddy districts). Out of these, 5 plants follow Reverse Osmosis route; 11 plants are based on conventional treatment, followed by with 2-Stage UV irradiation in both the cases.
How many clients have benefited from your product/service in total? Over the last year? Since the launch of the program, over 250,000 population spread over 50 villages have been provided access to safe drinking water. The following graph illustrates the progress achieved
What percentage of your clients is below the poverty line ($2 per day)? 75% More than 75% of the water is consumed by the poor
families. Our experiences and the data are going to be
shared in the forthcoming “World Water Congress” in
November 2005.
Reference :
Safe Drinking Water in Rural Areas of Delta Regions -
Challenges and Some Experiences V.S. Raju, D R Prasada Raju
India
http://wc.worldwatercongress.org:5050/index.jsp
What is the order of magnitude of the potential demand for your products or services? Which
other low-income groups, countries or regions could benefit from it? Try to quantify (number
of clients, market size in currency):
UNESCO World Water Development Report-2003 states that :
· Every day 6000 people, mostly children under 5 years, die of diarrhea, attributed to water, sanitation and hygiene risk factors. · In 2001, 20 lakh people, including 13 lakh children below the age of 5, died of diarrhoeal infection. · Asian Rivers are the most polluted, with bacteria from human waste, 3 times more than the global average. · Among 122 countries, India is the 3rd worst for poor quality of water as well as its ability and commitment to improve the situation.
The Sujala project can be scaled to the villages where the contextual match exists and the solution can be implemented with appropriate customization for the local conditions in almost most parts of the rural India.
8) Scale-up strategy:
How many low-income individuals do you plan to benefit in three years from now? How are you planning to scale up or replicate your solution? What are the major constraints to scale up?
Foundation’s strategy is to set up one plant for 3-4 villages, totaling about 40, which it hopes to achieve by the end of December 2005. Eventually, when the consumption levels go up, each village would need a plant of its own.
Though the Foundation’s aim is that the last woman/man in the village consumes safe drinking water, some people are yet to get in to this fold. The following are some of the challenges that are being addressed to by the Foundation to reach 100% coverage with safe water:
§ To ensure that the poorest of the poor also have safe water.
§ Awareness creation on the need to drink safe water.
§ Income generation initiatives for affordability
Which specific areas - and why - in your field would benefit most from investment by corporations, foundations, and other investors:
The Foundation believes that cost of providing quality services to the poor needs to be reduced by applying best management practices and appropriate technology. At the same time, a market based approach warrants adequate investment in demand aggregation. Hence, an initiative like this would attract investments in continuous research to reduce costs further and also in building the markets
9) The organization: How does the initiative fit with your overall organization's strategic goals and priorities? How did the initiative start?
We are a non-profit organization working in rural Andhra Pradesh. Our work currently reaches 150 villages and impacts a population of about 2 million. We believe that by involving people, applying best management practices and technology we can make things happen. Our mission is to create a world-class platform for holistic and sustainable rural transformation by bringing in the best management practices and technology to address the issues of social sector. Our programs include Health Care, Education and Adult Literacy, Water, Environment and Sanitation and Livelihood Skills and almost any issue which impacts the quality of life in rural areas as a village is the unit of operation for us.
The strategy we follow to achieve these can be summarized as follows :
· The cost of delivering services to be brought down by the use of best management practices and technology · The incomes of people in the villages are to be increased through livelihood interventions. · Long-term common economic surplus to sustain services at village level is created through Village Level Productive Enterprise(s) (VLPEs).
The Foundation, over a year ago, tested water available in all the adopted villages. Results of such water samples, covering 133 villages, spread over East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna and Guntur Districts, showed that the presence of Coliform, Turbidity, Chlorides and other physical as well as chemical impurities. It was observed that 78% do not meet the safe water requirements on account of the above parameters. If the need for 0.2 ppm of residual Chlorine is also considered, 128 out of 133 villages, viz, 96% fail meeting the safe water standards (Prasada Raju, 2005).
The Foundation, in order to provide safe drinking water in the adopted villages, proposed to set up water treatment plants with active participation from community. The basic principle was that such water, maintaining same quality as the reputed packaged drinking water brands in the market, would be affordable by the poorest of the poor in the village.
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10) On the mosaic diagram, which of these factors is the primary focus of your work?
- Factor: High volume business based on small (even tiny) individual transactions
- Principle: Leverage the power of communities as both consumers and producers
Contact Information:
Name: J K Manivannan - Partner
Organization: BYRRAJU FOUNDATION
Mailing address: Byrraju Foundation 2/74 , Jeedimetla village, NH 7, Secunderabad -500855
Country: India
Email: manivannan_jk@byrrajufoundation.org
Tel: 914023191725
Fax: 914023191726
Website: http://www.byrrajufoundation.org
Organization's legal status: PUBLIC CHARITABLE TRUST
Number of Employees: 300
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