Over the past year, the Halma Water for Life campaign has been supporting to build a safe and clean water supply for 8,000 people in Bhagalpur and Buxar in the state of Bihar in India. The campaign is leveraging Palintest’s specialised water testing kits for testing in remote areas, allowing WaterAid to map the water sources.

In summer, Product Manager for our Wagtech product range, Shaurya Sheoran, visited a WaterAid field site in India to discuss the current challenges on water quality faced by rural parts of India and how our kits are helping them achieve their mission of providing safe drinking water.

In the last 2-3 years the development efforts from State government have been focussed upon building infrastructure of tap water in rural areas. Previously, people would have to walk a few miles daily in search of water for household use, but now more than 90% of rural households have taps in their homes which has been a big improvement.

Although taps have been installed in households, the challenge now is ensuring the water is safe to drink. The groundwater is contaminated with fluoride and arsenic in high concentrations, which can have serious health effects and there is still a lack of awareness in communities about the harmful effects of drinking contaminated water.

In terms of the plans to mitigate this issue, the first step is to identify the water sources that need attention and build an inventory of the contaminated sources. Following this, a mitigation plan needs to be created to provide safe clean water.