Rural water supply in the 1980's

Eighty percent of the population of India live in villages and seventy percent of these people do not have assured potable drinking water supply. Hundreds of people die every year because they had inadequate water or sanitation facilities. Thousands of people spend half their day walking in the hot sun to carry polluted water which will poison them and their families. Future rural water supplies have to project for a fifty year period, and a second thirty year period. This plan has to take into consideration the rapidly increasing water demands, quantitative and qualitative modification of the present water resources. The planning comprised (1) valuation of the competitions and gathering useable solutions, (2) analysis of solution variations and the possibility of combining part solutions and (3) economic evaluation and election of optimal project variations. A model of linear programming was prepared for each independent district, which were con­sidered as basic models. These models con­tained continuous decisive variables, possible water supply solutions or their variables. Investment variables and quantity of water supplied to the users, operation variables, (dimensions cubic metres per day) were also considered. The cost sensibility of the solution was worked out along with the result of variation of the 12% discount factor, the effects of the modifications of resource demand structure, and the inter-relation between the districts considered as independ­ent. The sum of the investment costs together with the maintenance and 12% discount factor was kept minimal.