Indian Village's Water Collection Techniques Lauded at Earth Summit

Shackling Water

Deepak Mahaan / Jaipur, India / Sept. 17, 2002

In 2000, when former U.S. President Bill Clinton visited a women's cooperative milk society in the rural village of Nayla, he praised the women for their economic, social, and political progress. Now, another Indian village has earned laurels on the world stage.

Neembi, a village in the Jaipur district of Rajasthan in India, was praised for outstanding management of rainwater and water conservation by environmental experts at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, which took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 4.

At a time when environmental groups are expressing disappointment at the lack of commitments by industrialized countries to embrace environment reform, Neembi has set a remarkable example of water management and self-help which, if followed, could well change the destiny of many desert states around the world.

While the entire state of Rajasthan and major parts of Northern India are reeling under drought and water scarcity, for the fourth year in succession Neembi has no such worries. Its wells and check dams are full of water and its farmers are harvesting three crops a year from their lands.

The village has demonstrated that traditional, inexpensive, common-sense techniques can be a great help in sustaining and improving the fast-depleting resources of the globe. Moreover, it has shown how reliance on modern scientific equipment and technologies, absent a focus on human needs and sensibilities, is not necessarily the best way to save valuable natural treasures.

Coleridge's famous lines, "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink," seem to depict the strange paradox of India, a country where water is becoming a scarce commodity. India has a tradition of rain collection that dates back thousands of years, and numerous river systems criss-cross the country-yet people as well as fields find themselves thirsting for water.

If the people were left to themselves-especially in rural areas-problems would probably be dealt with as they arose. But a gargantuan bureaucracy, a legacy of the British colonial rule, is destroying the water table with expensive canals, dams, and frequent drilling of the Earth's crust.

Architect couple Nimish Patel and Parul Zaveri of Ahmedabad, who won a UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award in 2000 for their restoration of the Chanwar Palkhiwalon-ki-Haveli ruins in Amber, Rajasthan, put the problem succinctly: "There was no problem when water was managed by people themselves. But when the government decided to undertake water supply, developments in the name of progress in the path of water flow led to degradation and destruction of natural resources."

The problem is twofold. On one hand, clean water sources are being polluted and exploited; and on the other, as the late Anil Agarwal, director of New Delhi's Center for Science and Environment, said, "the rural genius in catching water is being elbowed out" by modern technology that is out of synch with the environment.

Writer Arundhati Roy, whose debut novel The God of Small Things won Britain's Booker Prize in 1997, has become an outspoken opponent of India's big dam-building projects, in particular the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River. As Roy wrote in the article Lies, dam lies, and statistics published in London's liberal The Guardian in June 1999, "Big dams are obsolete. They're uncool. They're undemocratic….They're a brazen means of taking water, land, and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to the rich."

According to estimates conducted by the Center for Science and Environment, there are 600,000 villages in India with environmental problems. Until recently, Neembi was no exception. In the 1980s, it was stricken with chronic drought that led to distress and poverty, forcing its residents to migrate to neighboring states for employment. At the time, nobody knew what could be done to alleviate the problems.

But then in 1995, along came a savior in the form of Rajendra Singh, a water conservationist par excellence who had transformed the nearby Bhaonta-Kolyala village into a green haven along with his volunteer group Tarun Bharat Sangh (Young India Group).

Since 1986, Singh had been conducting a paani yaatra (water tour) to various villages to motivate citizens to take up water collection. In 1995, he invited Neembi residents to witness the water conservation work done by Bhaonta-Kolyala villagers who had built small, traditional earthen check dams called johads. The johads prevent rain water from running off, allowing it to percolate into the ground, thereby recharging ground water aquifers and improving the water balance of the earth.

The Neembi villagers went reluctantly to the meeting, but came back inspired by the sight of several johads that had been strung together in a river named the Arvari. They were amazed to find out how, from a small tributary, the Arvari had grown into a full-fledged river that flowed year round.

After the decision was made to create dams, the entire expenditure for the building of johads was financed by the villagers by way of voluntary labor and locally available materials.

They first restored an ancient johad, originally built in the era of Emperor Akbar, 1550 -1600 A.D. Then three new check dams were built, old wells were repaired, and numerous trees were planted on hills surrounding Neembi.

The villagers' efforts resulted in a rediscovery of water, leading to increased income as abundant water led to better agriculture and animal husbandry. The area under cultivation increased by 500 percent, and milk production shot up by 1,000 percent.

A study conducted by G.D. Agarwal, former head of the Civil Engineering department of the Indian Institute of Technology, shows that every single rupee spent on a johad increased the annual income of the village by about four times.

Despite recurring droughts and a mass of sand dunes surrounding the village, Neembi has enough water for drinking and irrigation, and its ecology has become healthier. Fish now appear in its streams and birds flock to its regenerating forests.

Sarvan Kumar and his brother are now free of the tensions typical of farmers in Rajasthan. Seven years ago, despite owning 20 bighas of land (approximately 660,000 square yards) barely 30 kilometers from the capital city of Jaipur, both had to work as migrant laborers due to repeated crop failures. Water harvesting now ensures them three crops every year.

Says Kumar, "our life has changed. Earlier we begged for work in cities but now we live at home. The dams in our village have tripled our produce and as the moisture content remains high, the fertility of our lands has greatly increased."

Like this farmer, almost everyone in Neembi village has experienced a sea-change in their fortunes since 1995. Since the water conservation work was completed, the price of one bigha (around 33,000 square yards) of arable land in Neembi has shot up from 3,000 rupees (approximately US$60) in 1994 to over 25,000 rupees (US$500) at present.

Villagers at a local chaupaal (a place for informal evening gatherings), in a conversation overflowing with pride and a sense of achievement, explain, "Water gives better and more nourishing fodder, increasing the milk yield of cattle by almost double. Earlier, many people had to sell off their cattle but now every house keeps five to six cows or buffaloes."

The village supplies milk worth US$3,000 every month to the government cooperative dairy in Jaipur. Crucially, economic prosperity has led to social progress. The number of wife-beatings and child marriages has decreased, and the number of young girls pursuing an education has increased. A voluntary ban on liquor was also imposed by the village panchayat (a rural council of elected representatives).

After being granted permission from the village elders, I talk to some of the womenfolk. Through their veils, at times, they giggle at my questions, but I detect a newfound confidence and their answers are spontaneous and unpretentious. Says Lali, with a tinge of discernible pride, "as the water gives us more crops and more money, we have started educating our children. Moreover, since the men gave up drinking, they have also stopped beating women as they used to, and behave like civilized people. And now, we educate not only our boys but girls also."

Another lady chips in to say how school education has led to a dramatic decrease in child marriages, and how by a collective decision, funeral feasts in memory of deceased relatives have been banned. Previously, there was social pressure to hold such feasts, which were born out of the belief that a dead ancestor ascends to heaven with the blessings of an entire village. But the elaborate and expensive feasts often forced poor farmers into penury as they struggled to repay loans. Now, they have been freed from the debt-collector's shackles.

Sustained water harvesting and sincere community action have clearly transformed the lives of people in Neembi, and its conservation efforts have shown how a degraded landscape can be regenerated. Farms that only seven years ago were barren now yield a large variety of fruits and vegetables that are sent to markets in Delhi and Haryana. And instead of Neembi villagers migrating for employment, now over 800 laborers from other areas are employed in the village.

Neembi has shown that economic well-being can be a byproduct of ecological regeneration, and that environmental challenges can be solved by social mobilization. At the Johannesburg summit, photographs of Neembi by the Japanese Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International ensured that the village's achievements are no longer hidden from a global audience