Collective action through a Pani Panchayat (water council) has enabled a remote village in Pune district of Maharashtra to provide for adequate irrigation in this drought-prone rain shadow area.
By Gouri Agtey Athale*, Purandar, Maharashtra
The plateau slopes gradually, the hills in the distance are blue, the grass underfoot is more than you would expect in October, covering the stones and rocks, the hardy little flowers adding some colour; the silence is welcome. There are also these curious trenches, following the curve in the hillside. These are the 2 x 2 ft continuous contoured trenches (CCTs) dug into the top of the plateau to halt the free flow of water to help in the percolation and recharging of the water table.
The work of the past four years has begun to show results. The height of the water in wells rose to 1.75 metres in March-April last year and there was water in the bunds till May.
This is a hilltop in the village of Kumbharwalan in Purandar taluka (administrative block) of Pune district in Maharashtra and these CCTs are critical to the water conservation programme that has been running here since 2012. These trenches help slow running water down to a walk, bring the walking water to a crawl, and stop that crawling water, which then recharges wells. The entire process of halting water has to begin at the top, which is why the CCTs are on the hilltop.
Recharging and raising the level of the water table is the first step in water budgeting, which is at the root of a successful, four-year-old programme being implemented by the Pani Panchayat (water council), a social movement that began in these parts over 40 years ago. Once there is water, there is action to change cropping patterns so that there is water for everyone through most of the year.
B. Salunkhe in the early 1980s started an experiment of organizing local people to harness available water resources for agriculture in a drought-prone and poverty-stricken area of Pune district. In order to optimally utilize locally available water resources for protective irrigation on a sustained basis, he started the initiative for water conservation and utilization of water through organized collectives of water users—the Pani Panchayats.
A new spirit now resonates in the Pani Panchayat of Kumbharwalan village, with two local residents, Prashant Borawake and Prashant Kumbharkar, both 34, having taken the lead in a programme that is spread over 50 sq km, covering five villages. Both have professional work experience besides farming, Borawake was in the police for a brief spell after doing his postgraduate degree in geography, while Kumbharkar holds a Master's degree in computer science and works night shifts in an information technology company in Pune, about 32km away. During the day, he helps in the implementation of a central government scheme under the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP).
"There are enough programmes of the government, central and state, for water management. The missing part is the extension work and knowledge of local agronomic conditions. We aim to provide these inputs since each location has a different need, a different cropping pattern, and that needs to be taken into consideration," Borawake, coordinator of Pani Panchayat, told VillageSquare.in.
"You cannot depend solely on the government. The community must come forward and participate in the programme of repairing and rejuvenating the bandharas (small bunds or embankments)," Kumbharkar told VillageSquare.in. "They have to take ownership of the project since they benefit from it."
Shared resourceThe belief that water is a shared community possession has now begun to seep into this remote village. The Pani Panchayat's charter demands that work on the repair and maintenance of these embankments has to have participation of local residents and both Borawake and Kumbharkar noted that when they started work on the first of the 16 bunds in the village, people came forward to work on them even if they were not direct beneficiaries.
The work of the past four years has begun to show