Shudhaganga project  - Many villages in our country donot have access to pure drinking water. Surface water is often contaminated. Ground water has high fluoride and dissolved solvent making it unsuitable for drinking purpose. Yet people use this water to suffer from various ailments. It is estimated that nearly 90% of the villages suffer from drinking water problems, ranging from supply chains to quality issues.  

Shudhaganga is a unique community effort to produce pure drinking water in the villages by purifying the drinking water at source by a process called “reverse osmosis”. A small building sufficient storage tanks for impure and pure water, machinery for purifying the water are the basic requirements of the project. In this plant impure water is taken from the source, purified in the plant and stored in the pure tanks. The users will come and fetch the water in 20 ltr jerry cans. The users pay a nominal fee of Rs. 0.10 per ltr of water which will be utilized for the maintenance of the plant and day to day service. SKDRDP has installed 50 plants in Chikamagalur and Gadag districts helping 20,000 families to get pure drinking water everyday. This project has attracted the attention of the Govt.

Cost of the program :
Each Shudhaganga plant costs approximately Rs. 10.00 lakhs for commencement of production. Thereafter a monthly maintenance expenditure of Rs. 20,000/- is required. While the installation costs can be sourced from philanthrophic institutions and the govt. maintenance costs have to be reimbursed. For this purpose a charge of Rs. 0.10 per ltr. is collected. In a village if 500 families consume 20 ltrs. of water everyday Rs. 30,000/- is collected every month which will take care of maintenance and servicing. Therefore this is a participatory program where all partners are joining hands to ensure supply of pure drinking water.