Mewat District

In the scorching heat, villagers stood with glasses of water in their hands and smiles on their faces in an eagerness to offer all that they had with utmost kindness to bring comfort to people on a hot summer day, oblivious to the quality of water they were offering.

We often take for granted those things that come easy to us. Rain is one such resource that we always enjoy, but never capture for the future.

The onset of a second wave of COVID-19 has inflicted havoc in urban centers and even in the national capital which has somewhat sound state-of-the-art health system.

One of the major causes of deterioration of water quality is the increase in overall salinity. Total hardness and the presence of materials like fluoride, nitrate, iron, arsenic, and toxic metal ions determine salinity levels in groundwater. With the demand for groundwater growing rapidly, its exploitation is also accelerating which causes depletion.

Social media has brought the world to our desktop where information is available at the click of a button. The issues now are not just related to a particular community, region, state, or country; they are global. We get attached to them directly or indirectly and share our opinions on them, which is an easy and powerful way to contribute towards addressing issues we care about.

Bhanu is bracing herself for an income loss this year. The wheat she sowed after bajra in winter did not give her the productivity expected. Her soil health is declining, she says. To top it all, she is afraid there will be deficient rainfall this year in her village in Ferozepur Jhirka in Mewat in Haryana.

What is the exact problem as regards groundwater salinity, fluoride and water scarcity in Mewat, Haryana? Is the area underlain with saline groundwater aquifers? What is the status of surface water in the area? Can it not reduce dependence on groundwater?

356 students and the teachers of Government Middle School in Sukhpuri village of Mewat district, Haryana are a happy lot now that they have access to potable water right within their school premises

Mewat, a historical region comprising of the present Mewat district of Haryana and parts of Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, lies in a semi-arid belt. It experiences variable rainfall annually and receives, on average, 336 mm to 540 mm, as per the Mewat Development Agency.

Content courtesy: DevNetJobsIndia

The Institute of Rural Research & Development (IRRAD) is an initiative of the S M Sehgal Foundation and is one of the leading non-profit organizations working in the area of rural development. It envisions rural people across India motivated and empowered to make their lives more secure and prosperous. IRRAD designs, tests and replicates scalable community-based models for rural development in the areas of water management, agriculture, sanitation, governance and education. It also builds capacities of communities and community-based institutions to enable them to undertake their own development. These initiatives are transformed into action through IRRAD’s four centers: Natural Resource Management, Policy, Governance & Advocacy, Capacity Building and Rural Research.