Access to Safe Sewage Facilities

Two homes in three send their wastewater into open drains, soak pits or nowhere

Only 34% of Indian homes are connected to a closed drain. Another 38% let kitchen, bath and toilet water run into open drains that flow past homes and into streams. In villages, 28% of households have no drainage at all. Toilets are only one source: most household wastewater is greywater from washing and cooking, and it goes wherever the drain does.

Fewer than one litre in five of household wastewater flows into a sewer

Septic tanks receive more than half of India’s domestic wastewater; sewers receive 18%. A septic tank is safe only if it is sealed and emptied into a treatment plant. Many are emptied by private tankers into fields and drains, and the overflow of many more runs into the street drain.

Cities generate 72,000 million litres of sewage a day and treat 20,000

Treatment plants were built for 44% of urban sewage; plants actually running could handle 37%; and the volume that reached them and was treated was 28%. The rest, about 52,000 million litres a day, went untreated into rivers, lakes, the sea and the ground. Some plants run below capacity because the sewer lines to feed them were never laid.

India treats a smaller share of household wastewater than China, Vietnam or Pakistan

India safely treats 29% of its domestic wastewater, about the South Asian average and half the world’s 56%. China and Mexico treat two-thirds. India does not report the share of industrial wastewater safely treated at all.

Industrial effluent is tracked river by river, not nationally

India has no published national figure for how much industrial wastewater is generated or treated. What exists is river by river: 3,186 grossly polluting industries on the Ganga and Yamuna discharge about 403 million litres of effluent a day. Inspections find most units compliant, but one in seven failed in Sonipat in 2023; the notices issued were withdrawn after later inspections found the units compliant.

Only one water body in ten that India monitors has good water quality

Untreated sewage and effluent end up in the rivers and lakes that supply drinking water downstream. India reports good ambient quality in just 10% of the water bodies it monitors. The count of polluted river stretches has fallen, from 351 in 2018 to 296 in 2025, but most remain.

Nearly 500 workers died cleaning sewers and septic tanks since 2019

Where sewers and tanks are badly built and maintained, people are sent in to clear them by hand. Manual scavenging has been banned since 1993, yet 498 people died entering sewers and septic tanks between January 2019 and June 2026. The NAMASTE scheme has so far validated about 90,000 sanitation workers for safety gear, training and insurance.

Three numbers that need a second look