No improvement in drinking water for elementary schools over 6 years.
Nagaland reported the sharpest drop of 14-percentage points in the proportion of schools with functional drinking water provisions from 37% in 2010 to 22.56% in 2016, followed by Madhya Pradesh (78.51% to 73%) and Kerala (85.66% to 80.5%).
The decline in drinking water facilities, even with resources and policy directed towards the construction of new water provisions, suggests that maintenance and regular evaluation of old infrastructure is important.
In Maharashtra, for instance, the proportion of schools with facilities for drinking water, functional or not, increased from 81.3 to 85.49% between 2010 and 2016.
But the proportion of schools with usable drinking water declined marginally from 68.98 in 2010 to 67.1% in 2016.
In no state in India did more than 90% schools have a usable water facility, according to ASER 2016.
States with the lowest proportion of schools with usable water facility included Nagaland (22.56%), Meghalaya (19.84%) and Manipur (15.25%).
(Bhattacharyya leads the water and sanitation activities of ASER Centre.
Reprinted with permission from IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit organisation.
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