The drinking water sector is off track to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 with over a quarter of the world’s population lacking safe and reliable services. Policy approaches are shifting away from provision of access towards managing the multiple risks of water supply and quality. By considering how infrastructure, information, and institutional systems evolved in Bangladesh, this article identifies the unintentional consequences of reallocating management responsibility for rural water services away from government agencies towards individuals and households.

Between 2012 and 2017, we estimate up to forty-five unregulated tubewells were installed privately for every publicly funded rural waterpoint. This growth rate more than doubled total national waterpoint infrastructure since 2006. The scale of growth is reflected in the declining ratio of households per tubewell from over fifty-seven in 1982 to less than two in 2017, potentially approaching market saturation. This scale of growth aligns to an observed decrease in the real price of private market shallow tubewells by seventy percent between 1982 and 2017. In 2018, we estimate households invested up to USD253 million in tubewells, nearly sixty-five percent of the total national water and sanitation sector’s household-level finance. In effect, household investments became critical to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of improved infrastructure access, but now pose challenges for meeting targets of safely managed services. The scale of continued private investment provides an opportunity for policymakers to explore blended public finance models to meet emerging consumer preferences, while at the same time introducing regulatory and monitoring systems.

饮用水部门无法实现可持续发展目标（SDG）6.1，因为世界上超过四分之一的人口缺乏安全可靠的服务。政策方法正在从提供使用权转向管理供水和水质的多重风险。通过考虑孟加拉国的基础设施，信息和体制系统如何发展，本文确定了将农村水服务的管理责任从政府机构转移到个人和家庭的无意后果。

在2012年至2017年之间，我们估计每个公共资助的农村水位都私下安装了45座不受管制的管井。自2006年以来，这一增长率超过了全国水位基础设施总量的两倍。增长的规模反映在每管井家庭的比例从1982年的57多家下降到2017年的不到2家，这有可能接近市场饱和。这种增长规模与1982年至2017年间观察到的私人市场浅管井的实际价格下降了70％相符。2018年，我们估计家庭在管井上的投资高达2.53亿美元，几乎占全国总水量的65％以及卫生部门的家庭融资。有效，家庭投资对于实现改善基础设施接入的千年发展目标（MDG）的目标变得至关重要，但现在却面临着实现安全管理服务目标的挑战。持续私人投资的规模为决策者提供了探索混合的公共金融模型以满足新兴消费者偏好的机会，同时引入了监管和监控系统。