Fetching Pails of Water: Examining Households Choice of Drinking Water Sources in India

Drinking water is already a scarce resource in India as the estimated per capita availability of freshwater is 1545 m3/year (2011 census) that falls below the benchmark of minimum requirement. As India owns about 16 percent of the world's population as compared to only 4 percent of its water resources, such water stress is likely to assume magnanimous proportions over the coming decade. However, water supply policy in India has a tendency to put more emphasis on supply side measures. To make the water supply initiatives more successful more information is required about preference of the households regarding water source. In this paper we attempt to model the choice of drinking water source in urban India using a nationally representative data of urban households from Indian Human Development Survey (2005). Our results suggest that ability to pay and awareness regarding the benefits of safe water might be the major drivers of exclusion from public water supply networks in India. We also find evidence that media exposure might induce reduction in usage of ground water sources. Given the fact that government has been emphasizing the role of media campaigns for awareness generation regarding safe water and sanitation benefits this finding assures them of the social returns from investments in awareness campaigns.