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dam-l Water harvesting success story in India Today (fwd)
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From owner-irn-narmada@igc.org Tue Jul 28 19:31:39 1998
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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:52:43 -0800
From: Himanshu Thakkar <cwaterp@del3.vsnl.net.in> (by way of patrick@irn.org
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Subject: Water harvesting success story in India Today
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India Today, 27.7.98.
ALWAR
Miracle Man
A social activist taps ancient wisdom to bring water to 550 parched
villages.
By Rohit Parihar
The bearded man, clad in a kurta-pyjama and frayed juttis, seems
ordinary enough. What is extraordinary is the way people cling to each
word of his. But Rajinder Singh, 42, secretary of the Tarun Bharat Sangh
(TBS), is not a mere local celebrity. Ask about him in Alwar's Hamirpur
village and you will be told, "For us, he's like Ram."
Singh has brought water to 550 parched villages. By motivating
villagers to collect rainwater, he has helped raise the water table in
these areas from a depth of 200 ft to 20 ft. His awe-inspiring feat
began on a simple note. He quit his job as a project officer in Jaipur
in 1984 and joined the TBS which was working for the rehabilitation of
tribals. A year later, while searching for a place backward enough to
start his work, Singh and four colleagues stumbled upon
Kishori-Bikhampura, a village in the foothills of the Aravali hills.
Singh decided to camp there. Endless discussions with the villagers on
how their lives could be improved failed to create any ripples. Says
Singh: "My pride in having a postgraduate degree was demolished."
Singh soon became a fixture in the village. And then a simple
conversation with a landlord, Mangu Patel, showed Singh the path he was
to take. Patel said that though there had been no decrease in rainfall,
the ground-water level had fallen. Aravali and Ruparrel, once swollen
rivulets, now dried up soon after the monsoons. "Dig new ponds to store
rainwater," Patel said. Old ponds were useless as they were choked with
silt.
Singh was impressed by the simple logic. Offering grain in lieu
of work, he persuaded villagers to help him dig two ponds and a dam.
Then came the rains, filling the ponds and the wells to the brim. Word
spread and soon other villagers began to flock to Singh for help.
Financial help began trickling in from various organisations. Slowly
more dams and ponds began to come up, raising the crop yield and the
groundwater level. Change was in the air. Singh began telling villagers
that the government was a mere custodian of the land. Such talk was
regarded as incendiary. The Irrigation and Forest Department lodged
cases against the villagers for encroaching on state land. Some people
were arrested and a movement was born. In the late '80s, pressure from
the people forced the government to withdraw the cases.
Today, Singh's work seems to have paid dividends. Sia Ram,
sarpanch of Kishori village, says gleefully, "Dried wells now hold water
round the year.'' Kanhya Lal, a farmer with eight bighas of land at
Galda village, was forced by the lack of water to migrate to Bangalore.
And just when his fields were becoming a distant memory, workers from
TBS cleaned an old pond on the top of a hill. The water level in Lal's
well also rose and he could return home to his fields.
However, fame has its drawbacks. As Singh receives a major part
of his Rs 1crore-a-year grant from Sweden, Holland and Switzerland, he
is accused of being a foreign agent. Singh, of course, shrugs off such
accusations. Wealth is not in evidence at the austere office of the TBS
at Bhikampura. How much does he actually spend? While people say it is
75 per cent of the project cost, Singh says his share of the costs
actually comes to a half. The villagers contribute the other half -- a
quarter in money and another quarter in free labour or by helping out in
various ways.
Singh does not claim credit for the water revolution: "Rupparel
would not have flown again had those uphill not stopped felling trees.
And the bunds and ponds would not have lasted had people not cared for
their maintenance.'' So what has been his role? "Motivate villagers to
take the initiative." Not one to rest on his laurels, Singh is now
concentrating on making tanks on the Sawai Madhopur hills. This, he
feels, will enable tribals living there to store rainwater and use it
throughout the year. People in deserts have been doing this for
centuries. It took someone like Singh to realise that this can be done
in the hills too.