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But what has the state done?

But what has the state done? The 1970s and 1980s were a time of massive state investment in rural water development. Not only had more land to be brought under irrigation, but also drinking water supplied. These decades saw an exponential rise in the number of privately-owned pumpsets and wells, even as investment in public wells remained flat. Encouraged by state subsidies on diesel and electricity, people put their money on diesel pumps and then submersible pumps (as water levels went down). The land was literally pockmarked with borewells; the race to reach the bottom of the aquifer had begun.

The government launched the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme in 1971-72. The aim was to assist states and union territories to increase the pace of coverage of drinking water supply in the country. The entire programme was given a mission approach in 1986, with the launch of the Technology Mission of Drinking Water and Related Water Management, also known as the National Drinking Water Mission (ndwm). ndwm was renamed as the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (rgndwm) in 1991, which is at present managed by the Union ministry of rural development. The pace did increase. In the 1980s, called the decade of drinking water, international agencies such as the United Nations Children's Fund (unicef) lent their hand. The ubiquituous Mark II handpump became a symbol of rural relief.

In all this, nary a thought was given to the source of national gratification: groundwater. Even less was given to the groundwater quality that handpumps were regurgitating. A unicef paper, Mitigating fluorosis through safe drinking water, points out that "due to the inadequacy of water-quality monitoring infrastructure and the supply-driven nature of the government programme involving some three million deep-well handpumps during 1977-1997, water quality testing did not receive the desired attention'.

Then came the 1990s. Even as scientists and the research community

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