The Government of India is increasingly placing the water scarcity at the forefront of its development agenda. The GoI’s Economic Survey 2016-2017 acknowledges that maintaining growth will require greater focus on the management of natural resources poverty, ensure food security and enhance resilience of agriculture.

India has extensive groundwater resources, estimated at 30/40 percent of its annual utilizable renewable water resources. Physical characteristics of the groundwater resources vary considerably within India. Shallow, low‐storage hard rock aquifers in the basaltic and granitic systems of peninsular India have comparatively limited groundwater availability. The large, high‐storage alluvial aquifers in the Indo‐Gangetic flood plains offer a natural storage capacity of more than 30,000 km. This is approximately equivalent to 100 times the built storage from all dams and tanks combined in South Asia.

Groundwater is a natural resource with both ecological and economic value and is of vital importance for sustaining life, health and integrity of ecosystems. This resource is increasingly threatened by over-extraction which has insidious long-term effects. Scarcity and misuse of groundwater pose a serious threat to sustainable development and livelihood.It currently provides approximately 60 percent of irrigation water. Over 80 percent of the rural and urban domestic water supplies in India are served by groundwater. Approximately 2532 billion of groundwater is abstracted in India each year. This represents 25% of global groundwater withdrawals and makes India the world’s largest user of groundwater.

Government of Maharashtra has also implemented National Drinking Water Mission Program and other major initiatives for strengthening of water supply and sanitation programs. For effective implementation of these programs and further strengthening of demand driven approach GoM has launched Jalswarajya II Program. The objectives of Jalswarajya II Program are to improve the performance of sector institutions in planning, implementation and monitoring of rural water supply and sanitation programs and to improve access to quality and sustainable service in peri-urban Villages and in water stressed and water quality affected areas. It is expected that Jalswarajya II will Benefit more than 1 million populations through program interventions. On Water supply and sanitation service improvements during implementation period of 2014-2020. With this initiative the Government of Maharashtra seeks to significantly expand the frontiers in the rural water and sanitation sector with a focus on increasing house connection coverage, improved service levels; and ensuring 100 percent of the rural population having access to safe water and basic sanitation especially in peri-urban, water quality affected and water stressed areas.

The Water Supply and Sanitation Department (WSSD) is a Nodal Agency for Jalswarajya –II Project. Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Reform Support and Project Management Unit selected STAPI as Support Organization (SO) for Pune District since April 2015.

• The village population participation in project activities like water literacy, water budgeting and Water Audit have been very active
• The response to Women Gramsabha ’s was overwhelming
• The participatory activities like Social Audit , Monitoring of village water planning by Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committee and Social Audit Committee proved to be very useful in development of village water action plan
• The Project interventions also addressed other social determinants like water and gender; water and women health; water and domestic violence of women