Every year, scores of people all over the world die from waterborne diseases caused byack of accessto clean drinking water.In this background and in a country asarge as India, can anyone even think of drinking waterdirectly from a tap? The answer isikely to be a resounding ‘No’.However, one state in India has achieved this seemingly impossible feat—Odisha. From the time whenthe state was infamous for drought and poverty, it is now providing international standard drinkingwater toakhs of homes in different parts of the state, with an aim to do so for every household.G. Mathi Vathanan, a career bureaucrat, hased the Odisha government’s revolutionary Drink fromTap mission. Pure drinking water is now available round-the-clock in every home in Odisha’s Drinkfrom Tap cities.Ground-breaking reforms backed by strong political and administrative commitment have proved thatthere is no need to privatize if governments have the will to change with a ‘people first’ approach.The success of Odisha’s public water supply management model has been recognized internationallyand many other states and cities are now replicating it.People First provides a robust blueprint and a step-by-step guide to the much-awarded Drink fromTap initiative.