The water and sanitation picture for the rural and urban poor in India is dismal and a lot needs to be done to achieve the millennium development goal of halving the number of people without access to clean water (1.2 billion) and sanitation (2.4 billion) by 2015. India's progress on ensuring water and sanitation for all its citizens is painfully slow indeed, the country now lags neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh on this front and a long road still remains to be travelled.

Traditionally, the public sector in India was assigned a dominant role in planning, development and management of drinking water supply and sanitation projects. Now a more de-centralized demand-driven approach based on public-private partnership is coming up.