India’s next water and sanitation revolution must be financial, not engineering

India has quietly delivered one of the world’s most remarkable public infrastructure transformations. In little over a decade, millions of households have gained access to improved sanitation, while rural tap-water coverage has expanded at an unprecedented pace. What was once viewed as an aspirational development agenda has become a defining national achievement. This progress is reflected not only in official programme data but also in independent global monitoring by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), which tracks progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 6.

The Swachh Bharat Mission and the Jal Jeevan Mission have demonstrated what is possible when political commitment, sustained public investment and institutional focus converge around a common national objective. India has shown that it can build water and sanitation infrastructure on an extraordinary scale.

Yet success has fundamentally changed the challenge.

The defining question for the next decade is no longer how many pipelines can be laid or how many treatment plants can be commissioned. It is whether these assets will continue to deliver safe, reliable and affordable services twenty or thirty years from now.

That is fundamentally a financing question.

India’s WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector is entering a new phase. The first phase was about infrastructure creation. The second was about expanding access. The third must be about sustaining services.

A water supply scheme does not end with its inauguration. Every pump requires electricity. Every treatment plant requires chemicals, skilled operators and periodic refurbishment. Pipelines leak. Equipment ages. Water quality must be monitored continuously. Climate-induced floods, droughts and heatwaves are increasing both operational risks and maintenance costs. Without predictable financing for operations and maintenance, yesterday’s celebrated infrastructure can become tomorrow’s stranded asset.

Public policy, however, still rewards construction more visibly than maintenance. New projects attract political attention; maintaining existing ones rarely does. Yet citizens ultimately judge governments not by the number of projects announced but by whether clean water flows every day when they turn on the tap.

The future of WASH, therefore, depends on moving from financing projects to financing services.

This transition is especially critical for India’s rapidly urbanising regions. Cities are expected to provide drinking water, sewerage, wastewater treatment, stormwater drainage and sanitation services to expanding populations. Yet many Urban Local Bodies continue to face weak finances, limited own-source revenues, high levels of non-revenue water, inadequate cost recovery and ageing infrastructure. These challenges are not unique to India. The UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) consistently identifies inadequate financing, weak institutional capacity and fragmented governance as major barriers to sustainable WASH services worldwide.

The answer is not indiscriminate tariff increases. Water is a public good, and affordability must remain central to public policy. Equally, financially weak utilities cannot deliver reliable services indefinitely. The objective should be financially sustainable utilities that protect vulnerable households through targeted support while improving operational efficiency, reducing leakages, strengthening governance and investing in preventive maintenance.

Encouragingly, India’s financing architecture is beginning to evolve.

The recently launched Urban Challenge Fund seeks to leverage public investment to mobilise significantly larger pools of capital through institutional reform, improved project preparation and market-based financing. In this context, Madhya Pradesh’s approval of the country’s first Urban Challenge Fund portfolio is more than an administrative milestone. It signals an emerging shift from grant-dependent financing towards performance-oriented investment in urban infrastructure, including water and sanitation.

India should build on this momentum by strengthening municipal finance, expanding the municipal bond market, promoting blended finance, integrating climate finance into water infrastructure, and encouraging wastewater reuse and resource recovery as viable revenue streams. Treated wastewater, biogas, recovered nutrients and carbon credits are increasingly recognised globally as financial assets that can improve the long-term sustainability of utilities rather than merely reducing waste.

This approach is consistent with international experience. The World Bank has repeatedly emphasised that financially sustainable utilities require stronger governance, improved cost recovery, efficient asset management and better financial planning.

Similarly, the OECD argues that governments must diversify financing sources, strengthen local institutions and adopt long-term investment strategies if they are to bridge the growing gap between water infrastructure needs and available public resources.

Climate change makes this transition even more urgent.

Extreme rainfall, prolonged droughts, groundwater depletion and rising temperatures are fundamentally changing the economics of water infrastructure. The latest GLAAS assessments recognise climate resilience as an increasingly important component of national WASH financing strategies. Investments that ignore climate risks today are likely to impose much higher financial costs tomorrow. Climate resilience should therefore become a core financial criterion—not merely an environmental consideration—in every major WASH investment.

The larger lesson emerging from global evidence is clear. Countries that sustain universal WASH services over decades do so not simply by spending more, but by building stronger institutions, improving utility governance, diversifying financing sources and planning for the full lifecycle of infrastructure.

As India advances towards the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047, it has an opportunity not only to achieve universal access but also to become a global leader in financing sustainable water and sanitation services.

The next WASH revolution will therefore not be won by engineering alone.

It will be won by redesigning the financial architecture that supports engineering.

The measure of success will no longer be the number of assets created, but the reliability of services sustained.

India has already shown the world how to build at scale.

The next challenge is to show the world how to sustain those achievements for generations.

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