Adopt a Village by HDFC Kheda, Madhya Pradesh
Story by Vaishali Sharma
When the entire nation was lockdown, all our needs were going back to basics. The need of the hour was to get what was immediately available to the nearest. Hence the local market could easily suffice the need.
Similarly, think of it, if you have safe, affordable and accessible drinking facility at the nearest place then will you consider repairing your domestic RO machine when none of the servicemen is available to come to your home and do the needful. Even if it's is happening then how many of you are willing to pay a huge amount of maintenance charge during these tough situations?
The same situation happened with many households at Kheda, Madhya Pradesh. It is one of the locations adopted by HDFC Life to provide safe drinking water facility to the villagers. These testing times, I happened to interact with our enthusiastic and young operator Vishal Patidar, Kheda location.
He shared, “the village mainly consists of the Patidar community where the nearby households have RO water facility. Due to continuous lockdown, they were not getting any servicemen for the maintenance who could provide service at a decent rate. They were sceptical and felt unsafe to bring someone inside the house. Now it's been more than one month since many of them have switched to take water from our Sarvajal Kendra.”
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| Figure 1: Sarvajal Kendra is regularly sanitised by the operator and consumers are maintaining social distancing. |
It is so evident by his statements when we compare the monthly production data. And from the last month, there is a jump of 40% (Comparing March- 6501 litres and April- 9055 litres total production) which is indeed a sound response from the community.
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| Figure 2: Sarvajal Enterprise Management System shows
monthly data of April litre dispense |
It shows that the access of domestic RO was there but people didn’t have a huge amount to pay for the maintenance. However, the villagers found Sarvajal services affordable and easily switched to our solution. Our operator follows a safety guideline, sanitising the ATM all the time, reminding people to maintain social distancing and asking villagers to wash their hands and utensils.
He kept going "logo mai ab ek respect wali bhavna hai ki unke gaon ke hit ke liye ye suvidha hai jo aas paas nahi hai.” It’s a matter of pride for them to have Sarvajal Kendra in their village whereas in the neighbouring village such a facility is not available.
Because of the unavailability of servicemen, the charges also increased and our operator happened to calculate and compare a one-time service charge of Domestic RO with a yearly take-home price of Sarvajal. He shared "Mai toh sabhi ko ek hi baat bolta hu ek mahine ki servicing ke liye aap 2000 rupeeye doge, yaha Sarvajal ka paani poore saal ke liye bhi 2000 rupeeye jyada hai" From his words, I realised how important it is to make our consumers understand the financial comparison and the overall benefits of it.
One of the consumers, Ghanshyam Verma Ji now sends his kids to take water. Their home is half a km away from the plant. He shared “the little ones are just 8-10 years old. They come with their bicycle and feel comfortable to take water from our plant" says Vishal ji.
In the end, he said "during such health crises, I am glad people are realising on their own and have started taking safe water. Now the consumers have taken for a month and I am sure they will continue to take the same. I would be reinforcing the positive impact among my customers so that they become consistent in taking safe water”
While conversing with him I also got to know that the Gram panchayat has bought another card where they provide camper facility to the people who comes from outside and are quarantined for 14 days. They were concerned about the people as the raw water TDS is more than 1000 pmm which is not safe to have.
This shows that people are now collectively taking care of their health consciously and choosing what is right at this point of time by considering safe and affordable choices in life.
It says, “Water is the foremost cure and good medicine as well.”
Figure 3 Consumers regularly cover their mouth and wash sanitise utensils before filling safe water |
