‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’– Newton’s third law of motion unquestionably holds positive in regards to the condition of water, especially groundwater in India.

 18% of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Indian economy is met through agriculture. 90% of rural water requirement is accomplished by groundwater and is used for agricultural purposes.  All these stats invariably feature the importance of groundwater for India’s survival in every discipline. With India being the largest user of groundwater in the world, the acute need for groundwater to serve all life purposes is always heightening. This is not something very unfamiliar to us as well.

Amidst all the extremely unfavorable conditions of the water crisis in India, Hiware Bazar is a village in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra that stands as an example for successfully ‘finding hope in the dark’. Until 1989, this environmentally degraded village absorbed ample attention for all the negative reasons.
Cuddled up in the Sahyadri range of Maharashtra, the village received a scanty average rainfall of 400mm annually. This clearly brought the village under the dark shadow of chronic fear of facing drought.

Groundwater stood like a nightmare against the differing monsoon rains. However, despite all these restraining conditions, the people of Hiware Bazar collectively came up with an efficient “Watershed Management Program” undersigned by the Zilla Panchayat of the village.  This program was combined with the techniques of rainwater harvesting. Watershed is a series of traditional water structures that traps and stores the rainwater. The villagers dug a number of contour trenches (ditches) with soil, in the upper reaches of hills making way for the rainwater to flow and rest on the bed of the ditches.

The result was totally surprising. The constructed fractures (ditches) on the hills stored most amounts of rainwater. The stored water seeped into the ground, nourishing the levels of groundwater. In addition to this, the villagers also planted saplings on the soil excavated from the ditches. This enhanced the availability of water for irrigation purposes with much less difficulty. This also increased the quality of the shallow soil that the village possessed naturally. The village gradually faced no crisis and soon, scanty rainfall was no more a complication in the eyes of the villagers.  

The village sets an example to the collective conscious of the villagers that hinder the intensity of the effect of water crisis on the people and motivates them in brainstorming ideas to overcome the difficulties.
The village of Hiware Bazar henceforth builds a platform for other villages that face the horror of drought in India.

Image: Unsplash and SANDRP