Claiming back the commons

When the Desh Bandhu and Manju Gupta Foundation working in the Shindkheda, Sakri and Dhule blocks of Maharashtra’s Dhule district found groundwater resources depleting due to overuse, it explored ways to arrest the decline. Over the years small and marginal farmers, especially in the tribal belt, found their fields bereft of adequate irrigation and experienced a drastic fall in agricultural production.

Sensing that the situation was serious and could threaten the livelihood, even independence, of the farmers, the development organisation worked out a ‘commons’ strategy by which farmers could come together to use a common groundwater resource — the group well. Essentially community wells, these would be typically owned by five to six families as a common asset and the groundwater treated as a community resource and not the private property of any one family.

While the richer farmers were not keen on sharing resources and preferred to go it alone, the smaller ones saw this as a viable alternative — equitable distribution of water through a group well could well be the answer to their problems. Soon, this move became popular among the tribal population of Shirpur and Sakri, leading to the emergence of 170 such wells in the region and an idea worth emulating in all water-stressed areas of the country.

“It is not done in a haphazard way. The farmers first have to be motivated and explained the positives of such a move. Then formal and legal agreements are signed between group members, with equal water shared among them. All members cultivate equal amounts of land, they follow the same cropping pattern and contribute equally. The well legally belongs to the whole group and not any single individual,” explains Jitendra Sonawane, Senior Project Co-ordinator (Water Resources Development) of DBMGF.

United they grow

“Be it the rabi or the kharif crop, water is not an issue any longer,” says Sairam Dashrat of Gartad village in the Shindkheda block. He is one of six brothers. Collectively they have opted, under the initiative, to operate a group well in their adjoining farms comprising four acres.

His brothers — Babulal, Jejiram, Sonulasha, Gularam and Ramesh — all from the Kokana tribe, echo his words. They recall how four years ago they were approached with the group well proposal. Through a ₹25,000 joint loan secured through the Foundation, they were able to deepen their existing dry well by another 40 ft and rejuvenate it. “We were also introduced to crop diversity and now cultivate maize, ragi, rice, soya bean, groundnut, coriander, chillies and other vegetables. We would each go to the weekly market and sell our produce and were able to repay the loan in quarterly returns,” says Jejiram.

“Nothing is given as free to farmers to develop a sense of ownership. Apart from helping with easy loans, we provide forward linkages in terms of better varieties of seeds and agricultural practices,” says Sonawane.

He also spells out future initiatives for improvement including more data collection and assessment; encouraging the use of water-saving techniques such as drip irrigation and sprinklers; scaling up the programme; and embarking on artificial recharge measures.

Though more inputs will, of course, take forward the Dhule group well initiative, what is important for development agencies is to assess the before and after of a ‘commons’ programme. It is this pooling and collective mobilising that could be an answer to managing depleting natural resources in the future. Here is a standing example.

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

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