Avinash Patil, deputy sarpanch of Bodhgaon village in Dhule district, Maharashtra, stands on the crossroad close to his village, pointing to a water body behind him that is brimming over with water. “Till last year we did not even have water to feed our cattle. Just look at it now, we have one year’s balance,” he says.

This is the result of three check dams that have been constructed over the local Waghi river ( nala in common parlance) and a host of other groundwater recharging exercises in the vicinity. “Now, awareness on the need to conserve water and how it can be done has seeped into our 1,500-strong village community.”

The memory of the drought is so stark among the people here that they are eager to implement measures that would help them hold out against such a situation the next time round. And that’s where the strategies being used by the Desh Bandhu and Manju Gupta Foundation (DBMGF) for drought mitigation in the region are relevant and the ones Patil would like to pass on to the next generation in the village.

“We have seen how the measures work. We have begun to pay a lot of attention to recharging old wells, and digging and expanding soak pits. We now have 150 wells and 250 soak pits, and through MNREGA work we have opened out the aquifers and deepened water bodies. We are prepared if we have to face the misfortune of another drought,” says Patil confidently.

Waghi nala , however, is not the only waterway that has received such treatment. Local rivers Sur, Nadari, Kan and Pan have been similarly regenerated.

But the most significant model of river basin development can be seen in the Sakri block of Dhule district, where the entire Jamkheli river was rejuvenated. Jitendra Sonawane, Senior Project Co-ordinator of Water Resource Development at DBMGF explains how it was done, “Jamkheli river has a catchment of 6,410 hectares. This area was treated with 30 check dam structures, of which 11 were old. So we repaired and renovated the defunct structures using low-cost techniques and built 19 new ones.” For some of the check dams, the foundation experimented with ferro-cement technology. This, they estimate, reduced the cost by 50-60 per cent and the construction time by 30-40 per cent.

Sonawane talks about how they are using the convergence strategy to hedge against drought, and the results are there for all to see. “So, along with the rejuvenation exercise, effort was made to link water storage and small irrigation structures with efforts to increase agricultural productivity for optimum benefit.”

Simultaneously, group wells and drip irrigation were encouraged and farmers assisted with seeds and technology support for sowing vegetables and floriculture crops. This resulted in establishing vegetable clusters, promising another income stream for farmers. Onkar Ugale, Senior Project Co-ordinator of DBMGF says that it is this convergence of varied activities that helped them attain visible outputs from the drought mitigation programme.

“When the time came, this rekindling of water bodies along with all the other measures helped us cope with the severe drought in the area.”

The writer was in Dhule, Maharashtra, at the invitation of the Desh Bandhu and Manju Gupta Foundation

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