Village level communities must take up water harvesting works under MGNREGA before the rains…it will bring supplemental incomes to rural households and water recharge. How can farmers achieve this? Each district must launch an intensive campaign for water conservation works and catch the first rains. Read an excerpt from ‘Poor but Spirited in Karimnagar,’ on how local communities can achieve this in an amazing manner:
AMAZING WATER CONSERVATION BY THE COMMUNITY
Concerns on water conservation led to some interesting innovations under a programme locally called Neeru Meeru (water and you). This was a state-driven programme of the Andhra Pradesh government under which small-scale water conservation works were promoted in the villages, involving the local population. One of the methods utilized was desiltation of tanks, thereby restoring their storage capacity and also improving the permeability of these water bodies through the removal of silt. Consequently, this led to an improvement in the groundwater recharge capacity of the water body.
In all the districts of the state, excavators called poclains or JCBs were mobilized by the administration to help the farmers take up tank desiltation. The farmers in turn organized tractors to carry the fertile top soil to their fields. The poclain had an hourly output fixed on the basis of local observation, and the government paid for its rent. Another type of water conservation work was taken up in the hilly terrain and was called Continuous Contour Trenching (CCT). It involved the digging up of trenches along the contours of the hills. This helped to impede the fast flow of rainwater on the gradient. As the rainwater filled the trenches, it would seep into the ground, thus recharging the water reserves. These trenches were also dug with the help of the poclains. The hourly work output data was maintained with the help of field volunteers in each village. It was supervised by the local engineering staff for the tank works and by the forest range officers for the CCT works.
The slogan given by the state government was: ‘Where water runs, slow it down; once it slows down, stop it.’ I remember visiting numerous tanks in the summer months, watching the excavators work their extended arm like giant robots on the parched fields. The bucket attached to the arm would dig up the silt and the arm would lift the bucket, turn forty-five degrees, before bending down again to deposit the earth into the trolleys of the waiting tractors. There would be a beeline of tractors waiting to get the silt loaded, as the machine would repeat the motion countless times. Meanwhile, the tractors would again come back, after transporting the earth to the fields, for refills. There were also the staggered trenches dug up manually where machines could not go, particularly in deep forests. I was taken to the hilly forest areas by the district forest officials and shown both the staggered trenches and the continuous trenches being dug. The first rains softened the earth and increased the hourly output of the machines.
Another novel method adopted of impounding the rainwater was through the experiment of recharging the dried-up open wells, by diverting rainwater run off from the fields into these wells. I was fascinated when I heard about this concept being introduced in the neighbouring district of Mahbubnagar, over one of the weekly videoconferences. I started it in Karimnagar district too, since it seemed a cost effective and efficient means of water conservation and recharge of groundwater reserves.
To start work on this totally new but commonsensical concept, I asked the rural waterworks department to organize a demonstration for the local zilla- and mandal-level representatives in the dry Sircilla division, where all the nine mandals had a drinking water problem. I remember the morning I drove down to a village in the division, where the public representatives had gathered under a tree, near an open well. The district public relations officer, too, arrived with a posse of journalists, as we watched the officials explain how a channel should be built across the gradient in the field, to direct the flow of running rainwater into the mouth of the open wells. They also explained how to dig a two-metre silt trap before the water actually entered the well, to prevent the well from choking with the silt carried from the fields along with the rainwater. The expenditure involved just the purchase of a six-foot PVC pipe that drained clear water from the top of the silt trap into the open well and cost not more than Rs 300.
The next logical step to propagate the scheme was identification of the villages in the ‘dark areas’ of Sircilla, where the local sarpanch, mandal and zilla parishad members were active and ambitious. Farmers were motivated to work on construction of the channels and silt traps if they were paid for their labour with food grain under the food for work programme. About 400 such recharge structures had been built when the first rains came. The open wells received more water than they had in years—from the top of the well, this time! Though the water got quickly absorbed into the bed of the well, by the fourth spell of rains, as groundwater recharge was sufficient, the water level in these open wells had stabilized. This also led to a lateral recharge in the adjoining wells within half a kilometre radius, even though those structures had not been similarly treated!
Stories of success were quickly picked up by the media. The district administration facilitated supply of the PVC pipes and as word spread, there were 66,000 open wells that had been recharged over eighteen months, till March 2004, with results for all to see. I recall visiting a village where the sarpanch showed me wells that had gone completely dry in the last 3–4 years but now had four feet standing water. It was my moment of true happiness.
Construction of subsurface dykes on the dried-up streams in the district was propagated as yet another measure of groundwater recharge. Going to a village in Vemulwada mandal, I saw that the local farmers had grown paddy as a second crop for the first time in their lives due to the lateral recharge that had taken place in their wells. This was a result of the subsurface dyke built across the dried-up bed of the stream in their village. Vemulwada mandal headquarters village, too, wanted a subsurface dyke now. The town is a famous place of pilgrimage in Andhra Pradesh, known for its Shiva temple. This temple, I was told, finds a mention even in the Rig Veda. The villagers demanded a subsurface dyke to be built downstream of the village in the hope of solving their drinking water shortage. Soon enough, digging of the sand bed of the stream commenced. The labourers reached rock bottom and filled the dug-up trench with black cotton soil. It was packed tight with the help of the farmers mobilized by the local sarpanch and mandal parishad president. The dyke helped stop flow of water in the sand bed upstream and created a pocket of water, leading to groundwater recharge.
It was easy to undertake these interventions in water conservation since introducing a useful concept and demonstrating its impact had been enough to provide the initial interest and spark among the local community leaders. The local media, too, played a role by propagating the impact of the works. And soon the Neeru Meeru programme was creating its own demand for sanction of works from the community. I could feel the pulse of a strong community participating in its development. I realized the farmers of Karimnagar might be poor, but even in the face of adversity, they possessed a spirit worthy of emulation.
The effects of this programme were amazing. Impact studies by the Groundwater Department in 2004 showed groundwater levels were recharged by a supplemental .3–.5 m compared to the normal recharge levels after rains. The water sources of the Protected Drinking Water Supply schemes near the subsurface dykes showed a higher than normal level even after the rains receded. This was due to continued lateral recharge of the groundwater levels on account of the pocket of sweet water created in the sand beds upstream of the dykes.
These interventions created community awareness and involvement in implementation of the water conservation works. Convergence with the existing food for work programme helped to overcome the funds constraint and motivate the labour to work in times of drought. Today, with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme being implemented as a major wage employment programme in the villages of the country, such water conservation programmes can be taken up anywhere. All it requires is awareness generation and capacity building of local leaders.
