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dam-l LS: 4 stories in Econ Times on Alternatives to Large dams.
When all's well
Nivedita prabhu
THREE lakh [300,000] wells in the rainstarved Saurashtra region have been
recharged by harnessing rain-water owing to the work of just one man -
60-year-old Shamjibhai Antala from Dhoraji, in Rajkot district. The
direct result of this has been a substantial increase in the Saurashtra
farmer's income, a little less dependence on the rains and, most
vitally, a check on the depleting water table level in the region.
The drought of 1984-88 dried up the 7.5 lakh wells in the Saurashtra
region, cutting off the main source of irrigation for the 4,700 villages
with a population of nearly a million, dependent on the groundnut,
cotton and millet crop.
Added to the above is the geographical location of the Saurashtra region
which slopes towards the sea, resulting in 75 to 80 per cent of the
rainwater draining off into the sea. This, in turn, leads to a severe
depletion of ground water making the harnessing of the little rain-water
the region receives very important.
Manilal Ramjibhai Hirapara - a small farmer in Dhoraji village - made an
attempt to combat the increasing water problem in 1988. He thought of
diverting the run-off rainwater into an open well. ``All my friends
warned me that it would silt up the well," says Hirapara. A year later,
when the monsoon failed to arrive on time, and Hirapara was two harvests
ahead of the others not to mention approximately Rs 60,000 richer with
the high cotton yield, other farmers started noticing. And so did
Shymajibahi Antala.
Armed with nothing - not even formal education - except keen observation
and loud thinking with a few close friends Antala was ready. They formed
the Saurashtra Lok Manch and launched the Jal Sanchayan Abhiyan
(movement). Its main aim: to harness rain-water to recharge wells.
``Today, my mission is to recharge all the 7.5 lakh wells in the region
and the 12 lakh handpumps, bore wells and percolation wells. At a cost
of Rs 200 crore, we would be able to cultivate 7.5 to 8 lakh acre and
also recharge 18 lakh acre feet of water every year into the ground,"
succinctly sums up Antala, the figures highlighting the obvious
benefits. ``Just compare this with dam construction - an expenditure of
Rs 200 crore can only serve 50,000 acres of land," says Antala
re-emphasising the cost-benefits of recharging.
Like all eco success stories Antala's recipe is deceptively simple.
Harnessing rain-water and recharging works on pure rustic pragmatism.
One of the easiest ways works thus: a 6ft x 6 ft filter tank is dug
close to the well and filled with two to three layers of pebbles of
different sizes. Just above the bottom of the tank, a cement pipe 9
inches in diameter is installed to guide the water into the well.
Rainwater comes into the filter tank through open channels and gushes
into the well through the pipe. The one-time installation cost is
between Rs 500-1000 and each well has the capacity to cultivate at least
one acre of land yielding an average profit of Rs 5,000. Different
situations use varying methods.
But ushering in a revolution is not easy when you have to convince
people that there is no personal gain involved. ``People were used to
populism and subsidies, so we were eyed suspiciously," says Antala who
is a strong advocate of self-reliance.
So how did he make his brand of do-it-yourself solution acceptable to
the people of the region? Antala approached religious gurus whom people
revered and often went to with their problems. He armed the new converts
with a simple message of `recharge your wells or face a desert within
three decades' along with a few simple charts of how to recharge the
wells. That's how the revolution set in initially.
And though Antala generously gives the credit of the success to the
people who actually adopted the recharge technique, the soles of his
feet which have traversed the length and breadth of Suarashtra and the
region's farming community will beg to differ.
(Nandini Raghavendra in Rajkot)
---------------------------
Don't weed them out...
Nivedita prabhu
SOMEWHERE in the Garhwal mountains, you can get to sip rhododendron
juice, chew cactus candy while relaxing on furniture fashioned from a
weed called Lantana and watching a little water mill under a gushing
stream make wholesome flour. Sounds exotic? Forty-four-year old Dr Anil
Prakash Joshi, the man behind these things does not think so. He
believes they hold the promise of a better future for hardy villagers
eking out a living in the mountains.
Joshi has some brilliant ideas with which he has dissolved notions of
chronic problems. He has, for instance, changed the way people look at
the Lantana. This weed, which grows all over Garhwal, eating everything
in its way, has foxed the state for a long time. Despite spending huge
amounts of money, the weed menace remains uncontrolled.
Joshi, a botanist, didn't think Lantana was a weed. With the dried stem
of the Lantana he was able to make chairs and stools that look like they
are made out of cane. Far cheaper than cane and more durable, Lantana
furniture now provides an extra source of income for unemployed youth.
Joshi also discovered that the leaves of the Lantana contain a chemical
which is an effective repellent. So he mobilised village women to make
agarbattis and mosquito repellent sticks from Lantana. Joshi and his
team are now working on the root which they believe has the right
ingredients to make good toothpaste.
Having surveyed the Garhwal region, and even the remote villages,
Joshi's phenomenal knowledge of the flora has found traditional and
innovative uses of various plants. A local plant called Rambas is used
in many ways. When planted on hill slopes, it helps bind the soil and
prevent landslides, a common problem during the monsoons.
Its leaves are stripped to provide fibre which is then used to make bags
and conference files. The plant when used as fencing, provides effective
protection to crops against marauding elephants and wild hogs. The pulp
of the Euphorbia, a commonly growing cactus on the mountains, is turned
into an edible sweet. Other parts of the cactus is used as a substrate
for mushroom cultivation.
What's extraordinary about Joshi is that he is not a simple farmer but a
scientist. Who along with a team of other scientists is working out
appropriate technologies that can be used to meet the needs of the rural
people.
He has, through his organisation Himalayan Environmental Studies and
Conservation Organisation (HESCO), mobilised village communities to use
their local resources in an effective, sustainable income-generating
way. ``We cannot develop the community unless we use local resources,
decentralise production systems and produce locally for the local
market," he says.
With that kind of vision, Joshi has organised village communities,
trained them in the use of various technologies - from simple pickle
making and juice processing to pyrolisers which provide fuel briquettes.
HESCO has improved upon composting pits and also developed herbal
pesticides and medicines.
The marketing and distribution of food products are handled by the local
people themselves.
In the upper reaches of Dehradun and Rudraprayag district women have
learnt to extract juice from citrus fruits and preserve them. This is
later sold to companies who process it further or on the wayside to
pilgrims on the route to Badrinath.
Earlier these women were at the mercy of middlemen who could dictate the
terms for buying the fruits. But with the ability to preserve the fruit
in the form of juice, the village women have eliminated the middleman.
One of the technologies that Joshi is proud of is the one HESCO has used
to revive the watermill economy.
A simple ball bearing and a thin galvanised iron sheet was all that was
needed to improve the efficiency of the watermill by over 60 per cent.
Watermills across the mountains and in the remote villages have sprung
back to life.
Water millers have, under Joshi's guidance, formed themselves into
associations from J&K to the North east.
Currently Joshi's team is working on drawing electrical energy from the
water mills and also using them as oil expellers and spice grinders.
Joshi would like to see mountain villages being able to harness their
water resources for their own drinking, irrigation and energy needs.
--------------------------
A meal out of a desert
Nivedita prabhu
SITTING IN his dilapidated ancestral home, Laxman Singh explains to a
heavily turbanned Gujjar farmer why he is opposed to the village elders'
proposal to impose a fine of Rs 1100 on anyone caught felling a tree. He
has another alternative: the culprit should be told to plant two trees
for every tree felled. ``Imposition of a fine would change the focus
from protection of trees to collection of money and corruption will
follow," he says.
It's a conservation ethic deeply entrenched in Laxman Singh that has
changed the lives of the villagers of Lapodiya. It could have easily
remained a typical dry and dusty village in Rajasthan. But over the past
decade, Laxman Singh mobilised the community to dig three massive tanks
which have turned the village green.
A pasture land uniquely engineered by Laxman Singh has ensured adequate
fodder for cattle. Today Lapodia nestles among thick clumps of trees,
with well-fed cattle roaming amidst `pukka' houses. There are visible
signs of prosperity - tractors, mobikes and TVs. Every household has
enough foodgrain throughout the year.
It is difficult to imagine that in the 1970s, government records
described Lapodia as a droughtprone area with barren, highly-saline
landscape, denuded pasture lands and agriculture lands capable of
producing only one low-value monsoon crop. During the summer, 40 per
cent of the population migrated to the cities. Most of the livestock too
migrated to neighbouring states. Laxman Singh, who comes from a family of
feudal landlords of Lapodiya, travelled to various states and studied
their forests for five years. He returned with ideas that revolutionised
both his villages and the neighbouring ones. Working tirelessly he
created a culture of building ponds and planting trees.
The pasture land was redesigned in a such way that rainwater is
harvested effectively to provide moisture all year round for different
kinds of grass, shrubs and trees for all sorts of animals and birds. The
earlier government model of trenches proved inadequate. Laxman Singh's
design, like most innovative ideas, was simple.
The grazing lands have zigzag rectangular enclosures which spread water
over a larger area. The enclosures or `chaukas' are built in such a way
that excess water from one flows into the next. Every part of the land
is managed effectively. The design also incorporates dry areas for the
cattle and cow herds.
Nearly ten years ago, the village began repairing and extending the old
water tank. In 1996, two years after the tank was restored, the village
had enough water for a bumper harvest. The huge tank, which looks like a
lake after the monsoons, was named Anna Sagar. Two other tanks were
built close to the Anna Sagar and these help recharge groundwater so
that there is enough in the village wells throughout the year.
Laxman Singh has also designed the catchment area in an innovative way.
Every field has some sort of bund to trap all the rainwater. The
overflow from the field goes into two canals which feeds Anna Sagar.
The tanks were built over ten years with voluntary labour (shramdan) of
the village folk. Every adult in the village would contribute five days
in a year towards digging the tanks. And as Lapodiya's success story
spread, neighbouring villages too got mobilised into digging tanks. Over
the past ten years 40 tanks have been dug with voluntary labour as
neighbouring villages helped each other out. Laxman Singh now dreams of
seeing at least a 100 ponds being dug every year.
Building tanks through community participation has galvanised the
Lapodiya villager to think always in terms of the interest of the
community. Individuals have donated water troughs for cattle. There is a
raised platform where grain is scattered for birds. There are birdbaths
hanging from trees. And every house has at least one tree in the
courtyard.
But this ecological concern had to be cultivated in the villagers by
Laxman Singh and the organisation called Gram Vikas Navyuk Mandal which
he set up. This NGO now trains people in building capacities for natural
resource management.
It took just man's vision and common sense to do what the state had
failed - provide a better standard of living to the village without
compromising the environment.
--------------------------
THE FIELD MARSHALS
Nivedita prabhu
THEY ARE the real changemakers. These men and women, from rural
backgrounds, who with creative ideas and an ability to mobilise human
resources, are changing rural India for the better. Without the help of
government or external funds. Just by their own grit and drawing on
traditional wisdom, they have done what the state failed to achieve
despite spending thousands of crores of rupees. And they are helping
villagers reject state-imposed models of development.
Forests have come up, huge ponds brimming with water shimmer among
desert sands and once-barren lands turn up three crops a year. Even a
seasonal river has become perennial (the Arvari in Alwar), all thanks to
the effort of these changemakers. They are spread all over the country,
these unsung heroes who are essentially creating systemic or
institutional change. Decades ago, the villages of Ralegaon Siddhi and
Sukhomajri shot to fame for the work done by Anna Hazare and P R Mishra.
The new changemakers are just as visionary but more diversified and the
impact of their work is spread over hundreds of villages.
Take Sacchidanand Bharati, for instance. In the mountains of the
Doodhatoli range in Pauri Garhwal, poor hilly hamlets now have the power
to manage their own resources, thanks to Bharati and the Doodhatoli Lok
Vikas Sansthan, an organisation he helped set up. Together they have
regenerated 136 dense patches of forests and mobilised hundreds of
villages into protecting their forests.
Bharati revived traditional systems of small pits and trenches on the
hill slopes to harvest water for a region which despite numerous streams
and rivers is water scarce. A network of these ponds recharges
groundwater. Afforestation activity around the ponds helps keep the soil
intact while also providing fuel and fodder.
The network is managed by the local women's collectives called Mahila
Mangal Dals. The sale of surplus saplings from nurseries run by these
dals means an extra income of at least Rs 1.5 lakh every year.
So just by simply motivating people to protect the environment, Bharati
was able to turn around the subsistence economies of the mountain
villages. All this without huge budgetary outlays. Interestingly, in the
recent forest fires that devastated most of Garhwal hills, the
Doodhatoli forests remained untouched.
Like Bharati several others working with the rural poor are creating a
workable marriage of activism and pragmatic capacity building. They
provide models of development that reverse economic and ecological
exploitation. In the mountains, villagers have been motivated in the
Chipko Andolan spirit to protect forests and conserve the fragile
biodiversity of the Himalayas.
On the fringes of the Chilka lake and near the rivers in Orissa, tribals
have fought against the state and industrialists to retain control and
sustainability harvest natural resources. All of this shows that there
is a quiet but strong movement by civil society to assert itself against
the abuse of its natural resources.
The development alternatives being wrought in hundreds of villages all
over the country are show up state failures while also forcing
recognition that the state has a lot to learn from rural pragmatism. For
instance, the wasteland development board consults Laxman Singh and his
organisation Gram Vikas Navyuk Mandal in Jaipur district in the village
of Lapodiya.
Laxman Singh has designed an innovative watershed management program
that has wrought ecological, cultural and economic change in this little
village of Rajasthan. In Dehradun, the government is using a model
developed by Anil Prakash and his team of village-based scientists on
how to control landslides with the help of an indigenous plant.
As Anupam Mishra of the Gandhi Peace Foundation puts it, many village
communities are ``water literate". ``City dwellers and the government
can learn a lot from these people about the sustainable use of water,"
he says.
The transformation of the village economy through ecological restoration
has rekindled interest in traditional medicine. Every herb, shrub and
indigenous tree is used as an economic or medicinal resource. Joshi has
changed the outlook on weeds by effectively turning the Lantana scourge
into a resource for the villagers.
In the Himalayas there are many untold stories of visionary men and
women who are conserving the local varieties of rice or protecting
medicinal herbs, preserving in the process a valuable heritage for the
future. Take Arun Kumar Badoni who has shown that mountain herbs can be
grown by farmers without scientific institutional backing.
Women are the biggest beneficiaries of these development movements. They
are also the main drivers of change. Quick to understand the necessity
of ecological protection as a means to a better life, women organise
themselves into committees that afforest degraded lands, protect forests
and create new income-earning avenues through micro-enterprise.
On the banks of Chilika lake, one woman, Swarnalata Devi, transformed
villages through the introduction of proper sanitation. Her
organisation, Janamangal Mahila Samiti, held rallies in villages
sensitising people to the diseases caused by defecating in the open in
waterlogged areas. She helped mobilise Madhapada, one of the
worst-affected villages, into building low cost latrines. The villagers
provided the labour themselves.
Environmental regeneration provides adequate fuel and fodder. It also
means better nutrition and health care through the revival of
traditional medicine. And above all, a strong sense of self reliance and
pride.
The work of people like Bharati and Laxman Singh has attracted the
attention of a Virginia, USA-based NGO, called Ashoka: Innovators for the
Public. Defining such people as ``social entrepreneurs" because they
combine the same skills of vision, creativity and determination as other
businessmen, this NGO provides a stipend to take care of their living
expenses. Founded by William Drayton, a former McKinsey & Co consultant,
Ashoka, which operates in 33 countries, supports people who come up with
innovative ideas to solve social problems. Even the corporate world has
begun to realise the immense potential to learn from `social
entrepreneurs'. In the US, major companies are sending out their people
to work in the social arena and hone their skills in solving seemingly
intractable social problems of poverty, environmental degradation, poor
education and health. This new trend is not born out of philanthropy but
a recognition that the social arena is also where the corporates will
get their future managers and business.
Perhaps in India, it is time that the state recognised the immense
potential in the work of people who have truly understood the meaning of
sustainable development.
(With inputs from Nageshwar Patnaik in Bhubaneswar )