While the world has met the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of safe drinking water well in advance of the MDG 2015 deadline, India is among the ten countries after China with the largest population without access to improved drinking water.

According to the report issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef, India is home to 97 million people without an access to improved water supplies. Over all, there are still 780 million people without access to an improved drinking water source.