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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/banda-india-drought-community-water-budgeting/>
"A lone tractor trundles along a bumpy road in Banda, one of the most
drought-prone districts in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Up until a
few years ago, soil here would dry and crack into fissures deep enough for
unwary cows to fall in. Today, as we drive toward a little village called
Jakhni, we see rice paddies usually found only in much wetter climes. A large
pond comes into view, and behind it, Jakhni.
Thanks to a revival of old farming practices and growing community involvement
in all matters relating to water, this village is now known in India as a model
jalgram, or water village.
Jakhni is a settlement of barely 1,600 people, mostly farmers. Its stony, hilly
terrain is typical of Bundelkhand, an arid region spread across parts of the
neighboring states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. This region receives
between 800 and 1,300 millimeters of rainfall annually, but locals quip that
like their children, who all tend to migrate for better opportunities, the
rainwater runs off too. The rocks that lie beneath the region are not very
porous, and there are relatively few aquifers (layers of underground water). As
a result, most of the rainwater flows away from the region instead of being
locally absorbed.
“Growing up, the water scarcity we experienced in Jakhni was scary,” Uma
Shankar Pandey, a 52-year-old resident of Jakhni, recounts.
“Underground water would dwindle in the summer, and the few wells we depended
on for drinking water would dry up too.
Water would be distributed like charity, and it was no wonder that all the
young people in the village had migrated to cities for better opportunities.”
Farmers routinely saw their rain-fed crops fail. As the summer heat mounted,
women, on whom the task of fetching household water fell, would walk long
distances to find water sources. Pandey, a social activist, happened to attend
a water conservation seminar in New Delhi in 2005, where he heard the late
President APJ Abdul Kalam speak eloquently about rainwater harvesting and the
impact the simple task of conserving rainwater could have.
“In his talk, Dr Kalam floated the idea of ‘jalgrams,’ or villages that
practice water conservation and harvesting,” Pandey says, “and I thought — if
there’s a village that needs to adopt such practices, it is Jakhni!”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
