Madhya Pradesh’s water story is no longer just about dry wells, defunct handpumps, and women walking kilometres with pots of water balanced on their heads. Pipes have now been laid across villages, overhead tanks have come up, and taps have been installed. In government files, the Jal Jeevan Mission continues to make progress. But the fundamental question remains: is water actually reaching those taps? Images and reports emerging from different parts of Madhya Pradesh make that question increasingly difficult to ignore. In some places, there is a tap but no water. Elsewhere, water comes but not regularly. And even where water reaches households, there are questions over whether it is safe to drink.
The figures have been placed on record by the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti (water resources) in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha. Even the state capital has not remained untouched by the larger water crisis. The administration cited excessive extraction of groundwater and the continuing decline in the water table. A villager, identified as Bajrangi, tied copies of his old applications to his body and crawled to the divisional commissioner’s office to draw attention to the village’s water problem. He alleged that despite approaching officials from the collector to ministers and the chief minister, the problem had not been resolved.
In March 2026, amid falling groundwater levels, the administration declared the entire Bhopal district a water-scarce area and imposed restrictions on the digging of new private borewells. About 40 kilometres from Bhopal, the desperation over water took an extraordinary form in Bishankhedi village of Sehore district in April 2025. Of the 20 handpumps serving the village with a population of around 2,100, only 12 were reported to be functional at the time.
The administration did not agree with all his allegations, but the Public Health Engineering Department acknowledged a shortage of water around the village community hall and said an alternative borewell had been arranged.
It is against this backdrop that a government response in Parliament has now put hard numbers to the distance between the promise of Har Ghar Jal and its reach on the ground in Madhya Pradesh. The government has also explained why these districts are lagging. Several of these schemes are still at different stages of implementation and completion. However, the same assessment also pointed to the need for improvement in quantity, supply, and quality of drinking water.
The latest functionality assessment under the Jal Jeevan Mission indicated that functional household tap water connections were working in 77.21 per cent of households in Madhya Pradesh, according to the government.
The primary reason for the low coverage is that these districts are largely dependent on multi-village schemes and other remaining water supply projects, according to information furnished by Madhya Pradesh’s Public Health Engineering Department. The administration subsequently said the expenditure would be investigated.
