While the world has met the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of safe drinking water well in advance of the MDG 2015 deadline, India is among the ten countries after China with the largest population without access to improved drinking water.
According to the report issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef, India is home to 97 million people without an access to improved water supplies. Over all, there are still 780 million people without access to an improved drinking water source.
The progress report shows that over two billion people gained access to improved water sources and 1.8 billion people gained access to improved sanitation facilities between 1990 and 2010. Almost half of the two billion people who gained access to drinking water since 1990 live in China or India. The majority of people without access to drinking water, 479 million, “live in countries that are not among the poorest-China and India,” added the report.
Even though 1.8 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990, the report suggests that the world remains off track for the sanitation target. “Over 780 million people are still without access to improved sources of drinking water and 2.5 billion lack improved sanitation,” said the report. Adding, that if current trends continue, these numbers will remain unacceptably high in 2015. “605 million people will be without an improved drinking water source and 2.4 billion people will lack access to improved sanitation facilities,” it suggested. According to the report four out of 10 people who have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990 live in China or India. While China has contributed to more than 95 per cent of the progress in eastern Asia, the same is not true for India in southern Asia. Together, China and India contributed just under half of the global progress towards the MDG target in sanitation. “More than half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation live in India or China,” said the report.