DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Battling Drought With Self-Help

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jul 11 2000 (IPS) - The one lesson that peasants in drought- prone western India learned this summer is that water conservation is too important to be left to government planners.

Even as the weather office declared the country’s 13th successive good monsoon this year, large swathes of western Gujarat and Rajasthan states faced acute water scarcity, described as the worst in living memory.

Experts warned that plentiful monsoon rains were no guarantee against a recurrence of droughts in this part of the country.

“Though the monsoons have once again brought plentiful rainfall to Gujarat and Rajasthan and even floods in some places there is no guarantee that droughts will not occur again next year because of poor (water) conservation,” said Sudhirender Sharma, a water expert who is a consultant to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

An independent survey by the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), found the drought had lowered the region’s water table by three metres. This cannot be made good by this year’s monsoon rains and the area would face water scarcity again next year, it noted.

However, people in the mainly rural region can draw hope from local communities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which have designed their own water-management systems based on age-old practices.

For example, Mahudi village in Gujarat’s Dahod district abounds with lush greenery because of a series of small check dams built by the inhabitants with funds and know-how provided by the NGO, N.M. Sadguru Water and Development Foundation.

“But for the check dams, we would have been without water like the other villages,” Kalabhai a villager was quoted as saying to journalists taken to the region on a ‘Paani Yatra’ (water journey) by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

According to well-known Indian environmentalist and CSE director, Anil Aggarwal, droughts are caused by human fault. Scanty rainfall can cause acute water scarcity like the one in western India this year because the groundwater in the area has been overused with no efforts to replenish the supply, he explained.

“India is, in fact, one of the most well-endowed nations in the world in terms of average rainfall and there is no good reason why it should suffer from drought – this year or any other year,” Aggarwal said.

“The most important lesson that India’s decision-makers should learn from the current crisis is how to drought-proof the country in the years to come,” he added.

Local initiative based on self-help is showing how to do this. Tired of waiting for civic agencies to flush silt out of an ancient water tank, the people of Jamnagar city in Gujarat’s worst-hit Saurashtra region decided to do it themselves this summer.

Spread over more than 50 hectares and capable of holding more than one million cubic metres, the reservoir, filled once again, is expected to recharge ground wells in the city.

“We will never allow the reservoir to dry up again,” said leaders of the Jalsanchay Abhiyan Samiti (save water campaign committee), a local NGO that disilted the tank after appealing to the authorities for years without success.

It was lack of faith in government projects, in this case the giant three billion-U.S. dollar Narmada Valley Project, which saved people in Gujarat’s Amreli district from the worst effects of this year’s drought.

The people of Amreli built 78 check dams that helped raise the ground water level to a point where it could be pulled out easily. Amreli had the luxury of running water when surrounding areas faced acute shortage.

The key to successful water conservation in India, according to Aggarwal, lies in capturing as much rainfall as possible. Calculations by his centre show that even the driest region in the country in the desert state of Rajasthan gets enough rainfall in a year to meet the basic needs of the people if all the water were stored.

This job is best done by the people themselves, said Ashish Banerjee of the prestigious Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) which is backing community-based schemes to revive traditional water harvesting methods in India’s villages.

“The community must be closely involved mainly because of the high level of corruption in government water projects,” Banerjee said.

People’s involvement also ensures better upkeep of these water supply systems that need regular attention, he explained.

Among those who accepted Aggarwal’s advice are India’s President K.R. Narayanan who ordered officials to install a rain water harvesting system in the sprawling 1.33 sq km presidential palace in the Indian capital.

At the peak of the drought in western India, Narayanan travelled to Rajasthan’s Alwar district to congratulate local villagers for their water conservation effort that had revived dried up rivers and converted barren land into lush green fields.

Speaking to the peasants, India’s head of state recalled that for centuries India had relied on efforts like theirs rather than on government water supply schemes.