This project was an initiative conceived by students from the National Institute of Technology-Karnataka, who started a group called Sparsh in collaboration with Gajani Foundation. The project sought to ensure water security in a coastal village with high saline intrusion. Arghyam‘s role in this project partnership was to promote community rainwater harvesting so as to provide potable water to the people.

Outputs

1. Around 5 community rainwater harvesting structures were built.
2. Over Rs. 5 lakh was leveraged from multiple sources

The Supreme Court ordered that across states, all schools must be provided with toilets and drinking water facilities as part of students’ Right to Education. Arghyam considers sustainable access to safe drinking water an important issue and has promoted it across Karnataka.

This has been done through several methods:

High propensity to drought and rapid soil erosion triggered by high intensity rainfall and high wind speeds leads to sub-optimal storage of water in the Ratlam district. Through the use of watershed interventions the project was able to improve sub-surface water availability. The project also assessed utilisation potential and set up dug wells on the basis of hydro geological understanding.

Groundwater overexploitation is a significant problem in many parts of India, especially in groundwater dependent dry land regions such as Maharashtra. However, villages with unexplored groundwater resources often fall within the “dark zones” categorization and therefore are not allowed to access their water resources. In this project, two partners collaborated to help create access to groundwater resources and ensure sustainable management in one such village in Pune district.

Sustainable exploration, development and management of groundwater requires a specialized human resource base. However, there is a dearth of specialisation in this field. In this project, ACT created an internship to train people from local communities to understand geohydrology better and plan water management based on that. This programme helped them formulate strategies for management of groundwater on the basis of mapping and identification of aquifers with practical training in Mundra Taluka.

One third of the state of Maharashtra is drought prone as it falls in the rain shadow belt and receives erratic showers. The project examined ways to enhance implementation of drinking water and sanitation projects to create an Integrated Domestic Water Management (IDWM) model for replication in villages prone to water scarcity. Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) worked on an integrated watersheds approach in the villages, which was useful in strengthening and protecting the water source.