The 15th Finance Commission has recommended a total of Rs 426 crore as tied grant for water and sanitation activities in villages of Meghalaya for the period 2021-22 to 2025-26.
According to official sources, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation has recommended the release of the first installment of a tied grant to 25 states for water and sanitation activities and onward transfer to rural local bodies.
For 2021-2022, the tied grant for Meghalaya is Rs 82 crore while for 2022-2023 the amount will be Rs 84 crore. Again for 2023-2024, the amount will be Rs 84 crore and for 2024-25 the amount will be Rs 90 crore. For 2025-2026, the amount will be Rs 88 crore.
It may be noted that for 25 states in the country the 15th Finance Commission has recommended Rs 1,42,084 crore tied grant to rural local bodies and panchayats for water and sanitation for the five years 2021-2022 to 2025-2026.
This will have a huge impact on ensuring these services in villages and thus on public health and quality of life in rural areas.
The 15th Finance Commission tied grants will ensure more funds to villages to make their water supply and sanitation-related plans implemented and villages can function as local ‘public utilities’ with a focus on ‘service delivery. This is a big step towards strengthening the local self-government in line with the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India.
The Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance has issued the guidelines for release and utilisation of grants recommended by the 15th Finance Commission for rural local bodies during the period 202-2022 to 2025-2026.
The Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti will act as the nodal department for determining the eligibility of the rural local bodies for the 15th Finance Commission tied grant for water and sanitation and recommend release of tied grant for water and sanitation to the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance for all states.
To help and enable rural local bodies to perform their functions as recommended by the 15th Finance Commission, the State’s Public Health Engineering Department will provide technical assistance to these rural local bodies. To simplify and help rural local bodies, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti has prepared a manual for utilisation of these funds and the same has been made available to all state governments.
States have been requested to get the manual translated into vernacular language and it should be made available to every village. A massive drive is to be taken to sensitize, train and empower the rural local bodies functionaries to utilise this fund to ensure tap water supply and improved sanitation in villages.
Following the bottom-approach, it is expected that every village local body or its Village Water and Sanitation Committee (VWSC) functions as a ‘local public utility’ that can plan, approve, implement, manage, operate and maintain in-village water supply and sanitation services on a regular and long-term basis with focus on service delivery, rather than mere infrastructure creation.
Rural local bodies or their VWSC have to ensure that water supply schemes are operated and maintained properly, and last their full design period of the next 30 years and to ensure the investment made on sanitation for open defecation free sustainability and solid and liquid waste management in the villages is utilised on a long-term basis.
For this, every village needs to prepare a five-year Village Action Plan co-terminus with 15th Finance Commission period, comprising critical components of drinking water source strengthening, water supply, grey water treatment and its reuse, operation and maintenance, solid and liquid waste management, etc.
The main objective of the 15th Finance Commission tied grant for water and sanitation is to enable rural bodies to shoulder the responsibility for potable water supply to every household, schools, anganwadi centres, PHCs, CHCs, community centres, marketplaces, playgrounds, etc on long-term and regular basis; grey water management; solid waste management; maintenance of open-defecation free status and improved sanitation in villages.
