Creating Awareness and Mobilising Community

For conservation of ground water, awareness generation among the community is very important. The main objective is to reach out the local communities to promote awareness for conservation, preservation and the efficient use of water resources. Participatory ground water management means the involvement of all people/ organizations who utilizes ground water. The aim of participatory ground water management is to bring together the scattered experience of ground water management and to train persons for participatory ground water management.

India is having 6,38, 365 villages, 2,65,000 gram panchayats and 640 districts and currently facing a daunting set of water-related challenges as the demand for the fresh water increasing day-by-day. The National Water Policy, 2002 has emphasized that the management of water resources should incorporate a participatory approach by involving not only the government agencies but also all stakeholders in various aspects of planning, design and management. Recognizing the need for legal framework for Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD & GR) has brought out a model act to be adopted by the States for this purpose. Presently more than 61,000 Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) have been formed in 23 States covering an area of about 12.55 million hectares. Despite this progress, PIM is not working effectively in all States. The constraints in the implementation of PIM like deficiencies in the irrigation supply system, lack of training and leadership, cooperation of Irrigation Departments, etc. are need to be addressed adequately.

Over large areas of the country there is uncontrolled indiscriminate exploitation of ground water. This has resulted in very high level of stage of ground water withdrawal in respect to annual recharge in many areas causing fast depletion of water. Any management measures taken by the government alone does not yield the desired results due to large number of ground water stakeholders spread over in far off areas. No monitoring mechanism can be effectively developed to keep a watch or check on ground water withdrawal. Also in absence of any rule / law regarding the ground water uses the stakeholders cannot be forced any reform measures or self-discipline as regards to the ground water uses/withdrawal, by the government. A question arises then how to motivate the stake holders including the large numbers of farmers owning the wells and industries to willingly adopt the reforms for management of ground water in stress areas. There may be requirement to go for demand side management requiring discipline in ground water withdrawal as per the availability of the resource.

The following aspects emerge from the above:

• The stakeholders should be made aware about the local ground water occurrence, issues, vulnerability, recharge and resources.
• They must be convinced for undertaking respective management measures willingly and collectively.
• Ground water management will be effective only when there is active participation and involvement of well owners and other stakeholders.
• Some institutional arrangement/mechanism should be developed to implement management measures.

Participatory Ground Water Management

The goal of a Participatory Ground Water Management (PGWM) should be equitable, safe and sustainable management of India’s ground water resources through improved systems of aquifer mapping, utilization, awareness and governance.

• Why do we need PGWM?
• What are the Objectives & Outcomes of PGWM?
• Who are the partners and who are the facilitators?
• What is the role of partners and facilitators?
• What about capacity building?

Know your Aquifer, Manage your Aquifer

Implementation of an integrated aquifer mapping and ground water management programme is possible only through strong partnerships between various stakeholders. Stakeholders’ participation contributes towards conservation, management and protection of resources. Awareness among the school children of rural and urban area can also be created through organising painting & essay writing competitions in a sporting way at school levels. Children are the best medium to propagate the messages even to their elders and others also awareness through documentary films on ‘community based cooperative management of ground water’ themes can be created among the school children and villages. For awareness, material like maps, brochures, pamphlets can be distributed among the students and exhibitions of working models & pictures can be organised.

• Can the local people identify and understand the complexities associated with occurrence, storage and withdrawal of ground water?
• What is the reliability of data collection and analysis done by local people?
• Can the community and stakeholders be trained in scientific data collection and simple analysis?

First Self Help Groups (SHG), NGO and panchayat people has to be trained. They should be aware about the basics of aquifer such as hydrologic cycle, rainfall, origin of ground water, water table, ground water quality. They should be aware about the different fundamental parameters like static water table, pumping water level, drawdown, yield of bore well, capacity of pump, fluctuation of water table between Pre and Post – monsoon.

Village wise water level and rainfall data throughout India has to be collected by participatory ground water management (PGWM). From these data, farmers can do water balance studies of their field and can do crop water budgeting and ultimately decide which crop has to be taken up in their field.

Many projects are implemented by the government for different purposes such as drinking water etc. But around 50 % of the project fails after 3 to 4 years of implementation of the project. The people are not involved in the project and not aware about the basics to make the project success. People should be aware how the project can be beneficial to them and their involvement is necessary. Long term sustainability of the project is possible only through participation of local people.

Role of individuals in awareness generation and community mobilisation

Shri Anna Hazare in 1975 and Shri Rajendra Singh in 1985 are the pioneer of promoting participatory approach in water management. Ralegan Siddhi village in Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra was a degraded village before 1975. He implemented different water harvesting structures to catch every drop of rain by developing drainage system, trenches, check dams, drainage plugs, percolation tank etc. by developing and designing micro-watershed specific schemes. After implementation of the project the crop production of the village increased and ultimately the livelihood of the people.

Source : Empowering Village Communities for A Sustainable Water Future - A Resource Book for Jaldoots