Bihar

This case study published in Yojana documents Megh Pyne Abhiyan's work in organising access to safe drinking water for rural communities during the 2006 and 2007 floods in North Bihar. As a result of the Abhiyan's work, approximately 13000 and 36000 people accepted and accessed rainwater as a safe drinking water during the North Bihar floods of 2006 and 2007 respectively. Using rain water for drinking led to significant improvement in health indicators and flood-related deaths and sickness, as well as reduction in health expenditure.

This report by ACWADAM based on a rapid hydro-geological appraisal of 2 villages, in Supaul distict in flood-prone North Bihar, gives a good understanding of local conditions as well generates a lot of useful data, that can help in planning groundwater management interventions in a village. Such information is crucial especially for regions such as North Bihar, where current data about the local conditions are literally absent.

Water conservation has been carried out through establishing an overall water balance, reducing at source, reusing in other beneficial applications after treatment (land scaping, toilet flushing, cooling tower applications and civil constructions), and recycling back to process applications after appropriate treatment.

Arsenic contaminated aquifers in a 5 km. wide study belt along the banks of river Ganga, in Patna, Bhojpur, Vaishali and Bhagalpur districts of Bihar, are used for both drinking and irrigation purposes.

The following reports are from interactions organized in and around the Kosi Basin on the initiative of the Barh Mukti Abhiyan in alliance with local organizations. Reports from the interactions offer an unique window to the continued effect of the Kosi deluge and also the current local concerns in the field.

Read the main article: " Battle for work" by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.

The document informs that traditionally Indians worshipped both water and rain as “Jala” and “Varuna”. Even rivers were worshipped. Till 3000 B.C., RWH happened without human effort as rain got collected in rivers and natural depressions. Civilizations flourished on river banks all over the world Indus valley civilization in India.

Megh Pyne Abhiyan - Baadh prabhavit sthalon mein varsha jal sangrahan

Read more about the effort in Hindi

The School of Environmental Studies - Jadavpur University (SOES-JU), has done path-breaking research in reporting and documenting the issue of Arsenic contamination in the country.