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https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jess/128/03/0044

Faecal coliform; nightlight; Indo-Ganges–Brahmaputra basin; sustainable development goal.

More than quarter of underprivileged global population, who lack access to basic sanitation and clean drinking water, live in India. Consequently, every year, millions suffer with enteric diseases from drinking faecal-contaminated groundwater. The UN Sustainable Development Goal lists access to safe water and basic sanitation for all by 2030, as their sixth goal. For the first time, the role of economic improvement on decrease in water-borne faecal pathogens was studied across Indo-Ganges–Brahmaputra river basin (IGB) for almost last three decades, to delineate the long-term improvement trends of groundwater quality across India, as a consequence of development. Long-term temporal (1990–2017) and high-resolution spatial (administrative block scale, n$=$2217) datasets of water-borne faecal pathogen concentration in groundwater and satellite-based nightlight (NL) were used to investigate the statistical trends and causal relationships. Linear and nonlinear (Hodrick–Prescott) trend analyses, panel data analyses, Bayesian vector autoregression (VAR) and lead–lag causality (LLC) analyses were performed on aforesaid culled datasets. However, the efficiency of development in alleviating the water quality and public health, and relationship with economic development, has not been well understood. Here, for the first time, using long-term, high-spatial resolution (n$=$2217), annual in-situ measurements and multivariate statistical models, we show that the spatially variable groundwater faecal pathogen concentration (FC, 2002–2017, $-$1.39 $\pm$ 0.01%/yr) has been significantly decreased across the basin. In most areas, increasing satellite-based NL plays a significant role (NL, 1992–2013, 3.05 $\pm$ 0.01%/yr) in reduction of FC. However, in areas with low literacy rate surpass development. Enhanced decrease of faecal coliform concentration in groundwater possibly signifies the implementation of Clean India Mission since 2014.

Srimanti Duttagupta¹ Animesh Bhattacharya^{1 2} Abhijit Mukherjee^{1 3} Siddhartha Chattopadhyay⁴ Soumendra Nath Bhanja⁵ Soumyajit Sarkar¹ Pragnaditya Malakar³ Jayanta Bhattacharya^{1 6}

1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India.
2. Public Health Engineering Department, Government of West Bengal, Kolkata 700 001, India.
3. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India.
4. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India.
5. Faculty of Science and Technology, Athabasca University, 1 University Dr, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3, Canada.
6. Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India.

Published

1 April 2019

Manuscript received

29 November 2018

Manuscript revised

30 December 2018

Accepted

17 January 2019

Final version published online

10 March 2019