Groundwater Recharge

Groundwater levels across India have been falling rapidly, affecting the livelihood and wellbeing of village communities. Top-down approaches to groundwater management have not worked.

How have watershed development projects fared in India? Have they helped in better distribution of benefits among the poor and marginalised? Why is it important to talk about watershed development at this juncture?

This book by Dr Eshwer Kale dwells on these questions and explores issues around social exclusion among resource-poor people in watershed development projects.

Ahar pynes, the ingenious community managed irrigation systems of South Bihar

For a long time, villagers of Thanakasoga in Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh knew about the depletion of their drinking water sources and the thirstier future they faced. “We depend on bawdis and natural springs, from where we fetched water. By 2012, our springs were dying and could hardly cater to the local demand.

A few of us did an exercise where we closed our eyes and thought of the first four words that came to our minds when we thought of water data in India. Here is what we came up with:

In Kerala, around half the urban population and 80% of the rural population depend on open wells on their domestic water needs. But in the last decade, the majority of observatory wells recorded an average annual decline of half a meter.

The Gond dynasties mainly flourished in the Central highlands of India. This region includes Sagar, Bhopal, and nearly half of Narmada valley, including the flanks of Vindhya and the Satpuda mountain ranges of southern Madhya Pradesh. The principal states of the Gonds were Garha-Mandla (1300 to 1789), Devgarh, Kherla and Chanda.

The environment versus development debate has increasingly become more polarised, with discussions in the public domain revealing a stark contrast of views. Development has increasingly come to symbolise ‘doing something’ and ensuring ‘visible outputs’, largely in the form of infrastructure.

People in remote hamlets left out by previous schemes like Swajal and Sector Wide Approach Program of the Uttarakhand Jal Nigam and Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan longed for household-level piped water supply for drinking and domestic purposes.

India’s Himalayan rivers have been a cradle of civilisational development and a centre for faith and culture for ages. Ganga being a fertile basin has been a significant contributor to our agricultural economy as well as our river-based agrarian development.