The Jal Jeevan Hariyali Mission is Bihar’s flagship programme on water, greenery and climate resilience, launched on 2 October 2019 with an outlay of Rs 24,524 crore for three years. It bundles eleven kinds of work, from restoring ahar-pyne systems and ponds to planting crores of saplings and promoting solar power, under one mission, and it is the Bihar scheme most likely to appear in a BPSC question on environment or climate change. These notes set out the components, the numbers and the climate problems the mission answers.
Key facts for BPSC
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Launch | 2 October 2019 (announced by the Chief Minister in August 2019 after the 2019 floods and the south Bihar drought) |
| Outlay | Rs 24,524 crore for 2019-20 to 2021-22, later extended |
| Departments | Fifteen departments led by Rural Development, with Minor Water Resources, Environment and Forests, Agriculture, Energy and PHED; the Chief Secretary heads the monitoring committee and Jeevika groups help with plantation and awareness |
| Green cover target | Raise Bihar’s green cover from about 15 per cent to 17 per cent by 2022 (forest cover alone is about 7.8 per cent of the State’s area in the India State of Forest Report 2021) |
| Human chain | 19 January 2020: a chain of about 5 crore people over 18,000 km in support of Jal Jeevan Hariyali, prohibition and the campaign against dowry and child marriage, claimed as the longest in the world |
| Companion schemes | Har Ghar Nal ka Jal (Saat Nishchay), Har Khet Tak Sinchai ka Pani (Saat Nishchay-2), Mukhyamantri Niji Nalkup Yojana, the State Action Plan on Climate Change |
The eleven components
- Restoration of public water bodies: ponds, tanks, ahars and pynes (the traditional irrigation channels of south Bihar) are cleaned, desilted and repaired; the 2019 survey listed well over a lakh public water bodies.
- Removal of encroachments from ponds, tanks and canals, with the land recorded in the name of the water body.
- Repair of public wells and construction of soak pits near wells and hand pumps to recharge groundwater.
- Rainwater harvesting structures on all government buildings.
- Check dams and water-harvesting structures in the hilly and rain-fed areas of south Bihar (Gaya, Nawada, Jamui, Aurangabad, Kaimur).
- Creation of new water sources and lift irrigation where surface water is far from fields.
- Plantation: trees along roads, canals and embankments and on public land; the target of 2.51 crore saplings in 2020 was followed by annual drives of a few crore each, with Jeevika nurseries supplying saplings.
- Alternative crops and organic farming: drip and sprinkler irrigation, crop diversification away from paddy in water-stressed blocks, and support for organic farming in the Ganga-bank districts.
- Solar energy: rooftop solar on government buildings and solar pumps for farmers.
- Energy-efficient appliances: LED bulbs and tube lights in government offices and street lighting.
- Awareness and education: Jal Jeevan Hariyali Diwas on the first Tuesday of every month, school programmes and the 2020 human chain.
Why Bihar needs it: the climate picture
Bihar faces floods and droughts in the same year. North Bihar is the most flood-prone region in India: the Kosi, Gandak, Bagmati, Burhi Gandak, Kamla-Balan and Mahananda carry Himalayan snowmelt and monsoon rain into a flat plain, and about 73 per cent of the State’s area (over 68,000 of 94,163 square kilometres) in 28 of its 38 districts is liable to flooding. South Bihar, on the other side of the Ganga, depends on rain-fed rivers such as the Son, Punpun, Phalgu and Kiul and suffers drought in years of weak monsoon, as in 2019 when Gaya and Nawada declared drought weeks after Patna flooded. Groundwater is falling in Patna, Gaya and Nalanda, and is contaminated with arsenic in about 18 Ganga-bank districts and with fluoride and iron elsewhere. The State’s own climate action plan and the 2021 Climate Resilient and Low-Carbon Development Pathway study (Bihar was the first State to commission one, with international support) warn of hotter summers, more intense rainfall and more erratic monsoons.
Floods, drought and the Kosi
The Kosi, the “sorrow of Bihar”, has shifted its course by more than 100 kilometres westward over two centuries and broke its eastern embankment at Kusaha in Nepal on 18 August 2008, flooding Supaul, Saharsa, Madhepura, Araria and Purnea and displacing over 30 lakh people. Embankments, built since the 1950s under the Kosi Project agreement with Nepal (1954), now run for over 3,700 kilometres across the State but have also trapped water and silt in the countryside between them. The mission’s water-body restoration and the Water Resources Department’s flood management are therefore two halves of one problem: storing water where it falls in the south, and giving it room to drain in the north.
Results and criticism
By 2023 the State reported lakhs of water bodies and wells restored, tens of thousands of check dams and recharge structures, and more than 10 crore saplings planted since 2019, and the India State of Forest Report 2021 recorded a small rise in Bihar’s forest cover. Critics point out that survival rates of saplings are rarely published, that encroachment removal has been uneven, that the mission’s spending has been dominated by civil works rather than ecological restoration, and that it does not address the embankment-driven waterlogging of north Bihar or the arsenic problem directly. For a mains answer, present the mission as a sound convergence model with weak monitoring of outcomes.
Quick revision: likely BPSC questions
- When was Jal Jeevan Hariyali launched? 2 October 2019.
- Outlay of the mission? Rs 24,524 crore (three years).
- How many components does it have? Eleven.
- Green cover target? 17 per cent by 2022.
- When was the human chain for the mission held? 19 January 2020.
- Which river is called the sorrow of Bihar? Kosi.
- Share of Bihar’s area that is flood-prone? About 73 per cent.
- Jal Jeevan Hariyali Diwas is observed on? The first Tuesday of every month.
Related guides
- Bihar Geography: Rivers, Floods and Agro-Climatic Zones
- Saat Nishchay of Bihar: Parts 1 and 2
- Mukhyamantri Niji Nalkup Yojana: Tube Well Subsidy
- Bihar Polity and Geography PYQ Quiz (67 MCQs)
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