About 100 million households in rural India lack access to safe and adequate drinking water provided through a reliable piped water supply system. This has improved considerably in recent years through the Jal Jeevan Mission being implemented in every state.

Local Gram Panchayats (village council) in India will over time take over the responsible for operating and maintaining piped water supply network from the Public Health Engineering Department, who is building the water intakes, treatment plants, and distribution networks. This is a huge task for the untrained operators in the villages, and for this they require tools to help them.

IT tools used to be available only though PCs, and webservices accessible via PC. Such IT systems are cumbersome to maintain in remote administration buildings in rural areas.

Nowadays, however, mobile phones are widespread with more than 750 million smart phone subscribers in India. As part of an ADB-cofunded drinking water sector improvement project in West Bengal, mobile apps have therefore been developed for water operator in the villages so they can use direct data-communication with consumers (customer grievance apps), maintenance management of the household connections and pipeline network (asset management apps), billing services and water accounting (accounting apps).

Smart water solutions in villages provided through mobile phones have been designed and tested in pilot projects in West Bengal ready for roll-out through local vendors.

The solutions create local jobs in villages, better consumer service quality, and higher operational efficiency with less non-revenue water losses. Use of mobile phones provide visibilities for users, operators and managers, so that accomplishment of service quality goals as well as operational efficiency objectives can be traced and improved.