Wr Clean Drinking Water and Housing In Rural India The World Health Organization estimates that four million children under the age of five die each year from diarrhea, mainly in developing countries, and unsafe drinking water is widely thought to be a major cause of these numbers [20]. When the Indian Government looked at these types of statistics it realized that improving drinking water sanitation had to be one of the most significant elements of Bharat Nirman. The process of fixing drinking water supply sources involves restoring defunct bore pumps and carrying out repairs on water supply pipelines. The improvement of places where there was a non-clean water supply has also progressed well with 48% of the targeted habitations being covered. Telecommunication and Technology The figure below illustrates the growth of the number of telephone subscribers since the beginning of Bharat Nirman. At the end of July 2007, there were over 227 million telephone subscribers. At the end of June 2008, less than one year later, there were over 340 million subscribers [18]. This 49.8% increase just over one year is attributed to Bharat Nirman programs [18]. This increase in connections has a lasting impact on the economy and connects rural India with urban India. According to a World Development Report from , Attacking Poverty, three action items that should be acted on in order to reduce poverty include: increasing opportunity, enhancing empowerment, and improving security. The technology advancements that Bharat Nirman is supplying to rural India are having lasting impacts on all 3 of these areas. By David Partridge and Alexander Davis Rural Indian Economics It is the duty and goal of Bharat Nirman to make rural India economically self-sustaining and self-sufficient, because it is India’s proposed solution to poverty. One way to achieve a self- sustaining community in rural India is to give the inhabitants an economic cushion to fall back on. Bharat Nirman creates this cushion in the form of a stable economy through improved irrigation techniques and a new network of all-weather roads. Of the project’s several focus areas, the construction of roads and improvements in irrigation planned in Bharat Nirman have received the most attention, thus far. This is understandable, considering that investments in roads and irrigation return greater benefits for fighting poverty. THE BHARAT NIRMAN INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT Expenditure variable No. of Poor Reduced Rank R&D84.52 Irrigation9.77 Road Education41.03 Power3.88 Soil and Water22.65 Rural Development Health17.86 In the figure above, the “No. of Poor Reduced” is a measure of the government spending, per million rupees spent, and the results are analyzed to rank the different expenditure variables according to their effectiveness in fighting poverty. What is Bharat Nirman? In 2005 the Indian Government launched what is arguably the biggest revitalization project in the history of public works, Bharat Nirman. The main goal of Bharat Nirman is to revamp the social and physical infrastructure of India in the fields of irrigation, drinking water, electrification, telecommunication, roadways and housing.