Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said as many as 70 million households have been provided the piped water facility in the past three years, against 30 million earlier, taking the total number of households in the country with such a facility to 100 million.

Addressing the Har Ghar Jal Utsav in Goa under the Jal Jeevan Mission through a video message, Modi said: “This is a big success of the government’s campaign to deliver water to every household (by 2024). This is a great example of ‘Sabka Prayas’(everybody’s endeavour).”

The Prime Minister hailed Goa for being the first Har Ghar Jal-certified state where every household is connected to piped water. He also acknowledged Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu as the first set of Union territories to achieve the feat.

The Prime Minister also said 1,00,000 villages in different states have gone beyond the tag of “open defercation free” (ODF). After the country was declared ODF a few years ago, the next goal was to achieve the ODF-plus status for villages. This essentially means they should have community toilets, plastic waste management, grey water management and Gobardhan projects.

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Underlining the water security challenge that the world is facing, Modi said water scarcity can become a huge obstacle in accomplishing the resolution of turning India into a developed country by 2047.

In a veiled jibe at the Opposition for ignoring a key issue like water conservation, the Prime Minister said it does not take much effort to form a government, but a lot of hard work goes into building a country.

“Those who do not care about the country, are not bothered about spoiling the present or future of the country. Such people can definitely talk big, but can never work with a big vision for water,” he said, stressing the need for a long-term approach above the short-term one.

“It is true that to form a government, one does not have to work that hard as one has to work to build a country. We have all chosen to work for nation building. That is why we are working on the challenges of the present and the future,” he added.