Uranium Discovery in Breast Milk Leads to Questions on the Jal Jeevan Mission

The discovery of uranium in the breast milk of mothers across several Bihar districts is an appalling indictment of the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s catastrophic failure to provide safe drinking water under the much-touted Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). This radioactive poison, causing severe kidney damage and neurological impairments, starkly exposes how the government’s loud slogans on water accessibility have been nothing more than empty rhetoric. 

More than six years since JJM’s launch heralded a “watershed moment” for rural India’s water security, the mission remains a hollow spectacle. While claiming milestone progress, the mission has abandoned its fundamental obligation to ensure water purity, allowing toxic contamination to flow unchecked into the most vulnerable bodies, including infants who rely exclusively on breastfeeding. Its focus on superficial piped connections has catastrophically sidelined rigorous water quality, especially the lethal presence of uranium and other radioactive contaminants. The mission defines success by households “reached” with taps, ignoring the fundamental criterion of truly safe, potable water. In uranium-affected areas of Bihar, this negligence has converted water accessibility into a death sentence.

JJM’s operational guidelines theoretically mandate periodic water testing, giving a 10% planning weightage to contamination-affected habitations. Yet, auditing reveals a catastrophic gap between policy and practice. Testing for uranium is neither systematic nor mandatory across affected districts. Public reporting on radioactive contaminants is irregular, opaque, and incomplete. The 2022 JJM assessment glaringly found no mention of uranium and other radioactive pollutants from its monitoring scope, focusing instead on chemical contaminants. This institutional blindness permits radioactivity to flow unchecked into vulnerable communities, including breastfeeding mothers whose very milk now betrays this toxic reality.

Repeatedly highlighted crisis

This is not a newfound crisis but an ongoing tragedy that the BJP government have ignored. Studies from as early as 2020 highlighted uranium’s prevalence in Bihar’s groundwater; 2022 data reaffirmed the persistent hazard. Yet the BJP government, despite its boastful rhetoric, has made no meaningful strides to change this grim status quo or to equip other states vulnerable to uranium contamination with the necessary testing infrastructure.

The JJM water quality management framework nominally stipulates third-party audits; however, these reviews prioritise physical connections rather than enforcing radiological surveillance or bio-monitoring for sensitive groups such as pregnant and lactating women. While effluent standards under CPCB and SPCBs cover conventional heavy metals, uranium’s radioactive nature demands specialised protocols utterly absent on the national scene. Arsenic- and fluoride-focused Community Water Purification Plants (CWPPs) and reverse osmosis (RO) installations have dubious efficacy against uranium, with no transparent CAG audits or real-time public dashboards to verify performance. The Parliamentary Committee has raised pointed concerns regarding the authenticity of data within JJM’s Integrated Management Information System (IMIS), highlighting the critical need for rigour in uploading accurate water quality information, yet these gaps remain unaddressed.

Despite these systemic failures, the government watches idly as the bottled water industry in India explodes, projected to reach a staggering US $ 6.7 billion in 2025. This rapid growth starkly underscores the government’s catastrophic inability to secure the nation’s fundamental right to safe and clean drinking water.

Transparency and accountability under JJM remain fictions rather than facts. Corruption and delays plague the mission’s implementation, acknowledged even by the government itself. Funds are routinely stalled or withheld to states, worsening the crisis on the ground. Routine testing results, especially for heavy metals and radioactive contaminants, are scarcely disclosed publicly, eroding community trust and stifling civil society’s power to demand safer water.

Effort

Bihar’s uranium crisis demands urgent, mission-mode action beyond mere piped connections. Point-of-use technologies like RO filters have been recommended for uranium mitigation but remain inaccessible to most rural households due to costs and maintenance challenges. The government must urgently establish widespread, community-managed water purification plants incorporating uranium-specific removal technologies, paired with rigorous operations, monitoring, and maintenance protocols.

This must be a convergent government effort: the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), environment, agriculture, and health ministries need to coordinate intensively. Regulatory tightening on unregulated fertiliser use, known to introduce uranium pollution, and unchecked industrial effluents must be prioritised. The JJM’s 10% weighting for chemical-contaminant habitations should be expanded to cover radioactive pollutants with a ring-fenced funds modelled on the arsenic mitigation framework.

Equally critical is empowering communities through transparent public reporting systems and citizen vigilance mechanisms to hold authorities accountable. Without these measures, the government’s current approach risks perpetuating a slow-moving ecological and humanitarian disaster.

The BJP government has spectacularly failed not just on water, but across the board, air, land, and now the very lifeblood of millions is slipping away. Bihar’s uranium-laden infants sound a danger bell for the entire nation: groundwater sustains 1.4 billion lives, but contamination threatens generational calamity. The Jal Jeevan Mission must pivot from superficial coverage metrics to an unwavering commitment to water purity as a non-negotiable right under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Renuka Chowdhury is a Rajya Sabha MP from the Indian National Congress and former Union Cabinet Minister. Her official X handle is @RenukaCCongress.

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