Water for life and livelihood

A field well (mathkuo in vernacular) was constructed in Narayanpur village of Tantipara Gram Panchayat in Rajnagar Block of Birbhum District. The area is surrounded by plateau and the soil is lateritic and sandy-loamy. A total of 15 families reside in the hamlet. They depend on a single crop of rainfed paddy and the land is left unutilized during the rest of the year due to unavailability of water. The land has slopes and the soil has no water retention capacity. Apart from cultivating their own land in monsoon, the families have to go to work as daily wage labour in the neighbouring districts and few migrate in the period between early summer and pre monsoon to cities or other states. In this back drop, in order to store water from the rains as well as seepage a dug-well was constructed with the financial support from RKVY scheme, Govt. of West Bengal in the plot of one of the members of the group. The field well or dug well measuring 20ft X 20ft X 14ft was totally constructed by the group formed by all the families of the village.

Last year the monsoon came very late. In order to save the saplings from drying up, water from this well was used to serve the irrigation requirement. 3 members of the group have cultivated winter crops like wheat, potato, leafy vegetables, eggplant etc. in 2 bigha of land. About 120 person- days were created for this work. According to the group about 1-1.5 bigha of land can be cultivated round the year to meet the food requirements of one family for 5 months. The villagers confess that at the beginning they had doubts about the storage of water, but now they are happy. It is evident from the fact that other group members have also shown interest to construct such wells in their plots. Similar interests have been shown by farmers of neighbouring villages also.

Source : DRCSC newsletter Issue No. 7