Group3_C | SDG 6: Clean Water And Sanitation

 What is the "Clean Water and Sanitation" sustainable goal all about? To put it simply, it is focused on ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for every individual.

To be one of the key sustainable development goals, there needs to be a fundamental necessity for the resource in the discussion, and nothing is more necessary and basic to our lives than clean and safe water. Water has been the foundation resource for healthy ecosystems, thriving communities, and stable economic development, and thus automatically qualifies as a major goal under Sustainable development.

The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s 2015 Report on Global Risk ranked ‘water crises’ as the highest impact risk. It still ranks as the third-highest risk in terms of impact in the 2016 report as well. While roughly 2.6 billion people managed to gain access to ‘improved drinking water’ (compared to 1990) during the period corresponding to the Millennium Development Goals, 663 million people are still reliant on sources like unprotected wells and springs. This is all the reason we need to focus on clean water and sanitation to ensure not just the present, but the future ecosystems have the required stability to sustain themselves.

Sanitation is also a strong development priority, with inadequate sanitation affecting an individual's health and dignity, not to forget national economic productivity. Globally, around 2.5 billion lack access to improved sanitation; and around a billion people practice open defecation i.e., nine out of ten in rural regions. One in three people currently live in a country with moderate to high water shortage, and by 2030 nearly half the global population is estimated to face water scarcity, with demand outstripping supply by 40 percent. Water availability and quality are at threat due to pollution, the impacts of climate change, population growth, and increasing consumption.

Why is this SDG relevant to India?

Equal access to health, clean water & sanitation services continues to be a key priority for India, housing a sixth of the world’s population. India has already made remarkable progress in the eradication of various diseases like polio and has been historically focused on meeting the Millennium Development Goals on health and sanitation.

The issues of health and sanitation are closely related to those of an adequate water supply and functional sanitation systems. The country is focused on ensuring access to water and sanitation services to each and every one. Since the launch of the government’s flagship scheme, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), more than 11 million toilets have been constructed in rural areas.


That said, despite the headway made in the past 15 years, problems continue to remain in the form of challenges. There appear to be noteworthy inequalities in access to quality and affordable health services along with an asymmetrical burden of other diseases. Low budgetary allocations have been a key reason towards this end. The government’s health expenditure has remained at around 1% of GDP over the past decade, which puts India significantly behind the global average. These funds are also not efficiently utilized due to fragmented planning and vertical disease programs.


UN agencies are presently at work with the government to expedite the universal health coverage and establish the overall capacity to provide good & affordable quality health services for every individual, ending acute water scarcity, epidemics of key communicable diseases and responding to environmental perils, tackling health security threats from emerging and re-emerging diseases, and accelerating sanitation coverage.

Business Implications & Responses

A significant number of sectors have started to face problems with respect to availability, access, and quality of water. Besides, the moral obligations improving the gaps in terms of clean water access and sanitation also provides opportunities for businesses.

  • In the industrialized nations of the world, the industries consume about 50% of the water available for use while worldwide the figure is 70% for agri-based consumption and 20% for industries. Thus, the companies in the manufacturing sector and FMCGs, in general, have a very critical role in water stewardship or managing the use of water. More than 150 liters of water are used in 1 liter of beer and 7000 liters are spent to create denim jeans.
  • The problem of ‘stranded assets’ is real. As the water resources get depleted, the business facilities which require water like intensive crops or manufacturing sites would no longer be able to operate at the projected capacity, thereby losing value and causing shareholder loss.
  • Business Stewardship requires the businesses to consider the entire water cycle in business, beginning from extraction, treatment, use/reuse, and disposal. This involves significant cost escalation.
  • The businesses have recognized the need to have multi-stakeholder associations and a systematic approach to meet the SDG for clean water. The ‘2030 Water Resources Group’ is a public-private collaboration to bring about water-related changes in developing countries.
  • Addressing problems in access to sanitation and clean water provide an opportunity to solve global problems and at the same time develop shareholder wealth by having healthier employees which can reduce up to $4 billion across the global economy.
  • The employees and the consumers can take pride in being associated with a responsible organization working for the greater good.

Responses of a few top firms towards clean water and sanitation SDG:

       1. Bajaj Auto

‘Bajaj Water Conservation Project’ conserves about 172000 TCM of water through nullahs, check dams & tanks across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttaranchal.

The Bajaj Majhi City Swachh Program is a joint venture between BAL, CARPE and Municipal Corporation of Aurangabad to enhance waste management across more than 90 wards in Aurangabad.

2. BCG

BCG has started a marquee project in the form of Mississippi Valley Reforestation. The project aims to reform the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley through reforestation. It aims to enhance local water quality and availability along with biodiversity.


3. P&G

P&G’s Bhiwadi plant has taken several employee engagement initiatives to drive an energy-saving mindset. As a result, in the last five years, the Bhiwadi plant has reduced its water usage per unit of production by 50%. Similarly, in the last five years, their Goa plant has also improved on water consumption by 75%. Through their partner NGO Americares, they distributed P&G Purifier of Water delivering more than 10 million liters of clean drinking water. One of the Ambition 2030 goals of P&G is to inculcate advanced recycling solutions and protect water channels by ensuring that packaging waste is not dumped into the oceans.

4. Pidilite

The company received a Letter of Appreciation for a contribution towards water conservation activities undertaken as part of ‘Sujalam Sufalam Jal Abhiyan 2018’, a program initiated by the Prime Minister of India and Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Pidilite has started an optimization of De-mineralization Plant Regeneration which led to a reduction of water consumption by 1,861 KL/annum in one of Pidilite’s manufacturing plants.

5. Uber

Uber has been using the WRI Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas18 classification to calculate which of its sites are located in regions of low to extremely high levels of water scarcity. One of their initiatives in this regard can be seen at their Mission Bay campus in San Francisco where they are re-structuring their workspaces to increase the reuse of water, the project is estimated to save around 2.5 million gallons of water.

Analysis and the suggested path ahead

Having learned about the contribution of corporates to SDG6, let us analyze two successful programs taken up by both public and private sectors in India with regard to clean water and sanitation.

The impact of Swachh Bharat Mission

Swachh Bharat Mission, considered to be the world’s largest sanitation program, was a Government of India initiative, launched in 2014 with an aim to make India “open-defecation free (ODF)” within 5 years. SBM’s main focus is on Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services, both essential and critical in guarding us against the outbreak of transferable diseases.

All villages in India had achieved the ODF status as of 2nd October 2019. Waste management has improved from 19% in 2014 to 60% in 2019.

Hindustan Unilever Limited

As a part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), a clear purpose and roadmap were developed and its key target in 2020 is to reduce to half the water associated with the consumer use of HUL’s products. Initiatives like the “smart-foam” technology in Rin is an innovation that will help in reducing the 38% water footprint, saving 2 buckets of water in every wash cycle. Pureit helps in reducing the deaths by diarrhoeal diseases by 50% and has provided over 70 billion liters of water to date. HUL Suvidha Centre in Mumbai is another initiative that has adopted circular economy processes to reuse water.

Hindustan Unilever Foundation (HUF), a non-profit organization was set up in 2010 to monitor water management initiatives. The Water for Public Good program by HUF helped in water conservation, increased livelihood opportunities, and better crop yield in 2019.

HUF’s target is to create additional 1.5 trillion liters of water by 2024 focussing on Clean water and sanitation (SDG 6); Responsible consumption and production (SDG 12); Climate action (SDG 13); and Partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).

As high as 163 million people in India do not have access to clean and safe water. More than 200 million lack access to better and improved sanitation. Although the government is ensuring full access is provided to all for clean water, efforts towards optimizing the water resource utilization in the country are also going on. India’s water requirement will be 1182 BCM in a high demand scenario by 2050. In contrast, currently, this availability is 695 BCM, and the potential water availability in the country has been estimated to be 1138 BCM.

Following is the index score for SDG-6 for various states/UTs in India where Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh are the top performers.

The way forward

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, and Namami Gange for the conservation of the River Ganga are some of the key initiatives that have improved India's condition in the past few years. Going forward, the following are the few measures that are currently being implemented:

  1. The need for Behavioural change ‘Good morning’ squads in Maharashtra comprising local bodies, SHGs, NGOs, social workers, and students, monitor and prevent open defecation. ‘Dibba Gang’ in Indore and ‘Gabbar posters’ in Delhi have proven to be useful while driving home the importance of cleanliness and sanitation.

  1. Swachhata has to become ‘Swabhav’ It is our collective responsibility to keep our nation clean Swachhta is everyone’s business and it has to be a people's movement. 

  1. Nudge Theory India should also implement the nudging theory whereby people would be prompted to make a public commitment (either to an individual or a group) making it more likely that they will follow through on the handwashing, treating household water, and sanitation behavior.

  1.  Using the twin-pit system and curbing manual scavenging The use of scientific technology can help improve the levels of clean water, like the recently designed Bandicoot robot in Kerala, the first of its kind, designed to clean sewers will help in curbing the spread of diseases due to unclean water. 

  1. Circular economy A transition to a circular economy could bring about a significant impact for the wide level of acceptance and adoption of water reuse as an alternate water supply despite facing the barriers of public perception, pricing, and regulatory challenges. 

  1. Water Usage Charge - Nal se Jal Modi government’s ambitious Nal Se Jal scheme entails imposing a cost on water usage for every piped water connection in households to promote the judicious use of the resource, and less wastage of water. Jal Saathi scheme in Odisha is set to provide piped water connections in rural areas. 

  1. Jal Shakti Abhiyan Ministry of Jal Shakti launched a campaign in 2019 with people's participation for water conservation and water security with a major focus on 256 water-stressed districts involving the following activities:

●   Rejuvenation of the traditional water bodies

●   Desilting of ponds and lakes

●   Encroachments removal in the water bodies

●   Catchment area treatment etc

Based on the given situation when the country and the world is grappling with the pandemic (Covid-19), clean water and sanitation have taken a back seat in the list of priorities set by the government.  But what makes SDG 6.1 and 6.2 even more relevant in today’s times is its emphasis on the need for sanitation and hygiene. Both central and state governments are obligated to spend more on these areas.










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