Water Warriors

Bharat Dogra

Bundelkhand region in central India is spread over 14 districts of two states– Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It has frequently been in the news due to water scarcity but now the JalJeevan Mission is hard at work to provide a tap connection in every village home. While people are happy about this, there is also concern regarding the adequacy of water sources. With the water table already declining in a large part of the region several people are apprehensive that with bore-wells extracting more water to feed into pipelines, water sources would soon be depleted badly unless water conservation can be stepped up in very significant ways.

With the increasing importance of water conservation, the inspiring work done by Jal Sahelis (women water friends or water protectors) has attracted a lot of attention in recent times. These are women volunteers encouraged and trained to work on water conservation, sanitation, and related issues by a voluntary organization Parmarth, recognized widely in these villages by their sky-blue sarees, without any salary or honorariums they have contributed much to water conservation as well as improving water supply and sanitation.

Recently this writer visited several of these jal sahelis at their homes, farms, or training places. Profiles of four of these jal sahelis are presented below.

Sirkunwar
Extreme personal distress and adversities can sometimes push people into despair and loneliness, but some also respond with a strong determination to overcome extremely difficult situations. Sirkunwar is one of those people who never give up. Her struggle is all the more inspiring because this led her not only towards providing better security for her family but she could go much beyond this to help hundreds of people in her village and some neighbouring ones as well.

Sirkunwar is a middle-aged woman from Udguwan village in Taalbehat block (Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh). As their farming-based livelihood faced several problems, her husband had to frequently go to Indore city for work. Here he had a serious accident due to which he has been disabled. Even after several years he cannot walk properly and cannot do any work requiring much physical activity. Now she had a lot of hopes from her son to help the family to get some security. But one day he suddenly died at a very young in what appeared to be an accident but had been an assault. Now Sirkunwar was suddenly denied her son’s help and instead had the additional responsibility of helping her daughter-in-law and her two children.

What has been Sirkunwar’s response to these adversities? She has gone right ahead to take up several social responsibilities relating to the welfare of her village and neighbouring areas. She in fact had the honour of becoming the first Jal Saheli under this programme which has been widely appreciated.

Sirkunwar played an important mobilisation role in the considerable stepping up of water related programmes in her village, resulting in the construction of three check dams and providing more hand pumps, hence meeting the needs of conserving water as well as providing water supply nearer home. A lot of water conservation work is being done under the NREGA program of rural employment, and Sirkunwar also helped to improve it, first independently and then also by becoming a mate under this program. Her involvement has been helpful in improved functioning, including more timely payment of wages, of NREGA.

As several households had been left put in the first phase of toilet construction, she took up a campaign to get these toilets constructed, resulting in the construction of about 120 more toilets. She has also campaigned for improving the drainage system and has extracted an assurance from the Pradhan or village headperson that this work will be taken up soon.
Sirkunwar makes periodic rounds of Anganwadis and mid-day meal cooking centres to see if the nutrition and maternity care programs in her village are functioning properly or not. Sirkunwar has extended her social mobilization role beyond her village and contributes with her experience and enthusiasm in neighbouring areas too. Her presence in various development initiatives and meetings of the area is considered a must. Not just villagers but even village and block-level officials have taken to addressing her as ‘NetaJi’.

Sona Saharia
Sona was sitting with some of her family members near her farm. The lush greenery of crops, fruit trees, and vegetable plants served as a symbol of the improving prospects of this Saharia tribal family based in Bamhori village of Talbehat block, Lalitpur district (Uttar Pradesh).

However, her face grew grim as she recalled the condition till just a decade back—For the most part we were not able to cultivate our fields, or else the yields on farmland were so low as to make the entire effort non-viable. Hence the family had become dependent on migrant labour work for sheer survival. My husband went to Indore or other places, generally to work in brick kilns. Sometimes I too went. We had to work and live there in very difficult conditions.

Her husband added—there were certain phases when we got caught in very exploitative conditions and despite toiling very hard we could hardly send anything back home.

Sona continued—A lot of the problems arose due to lack of water. So when we learned that efforts were being made to conserve water we decided to come back and see if something can still be done in our village. After all we have land here, and the desire to go back to our farm-based livelihood was always there.
When they came back to their village, they found some young men and women from an organization called Parmarth visiting their village repeatedly, holding meetings to discuss the possibilities of improving water conservation.
“This is exactly what I had yearned for, so I quickly became involved with their efforts”, Sona recalls.

The Parmarth visitors too were on the lookout for village-based volunteers who could help with community mobilisation. The most promising women volunteers were being selected as jal sahelis (water friends) and taken for training workshops and exposure visits to see good examples of water conservation work. Sona liked it all, all the more so when she was selected as a jal saheli. In addition, a wider community-based organization on water-related issues called paani panchayat was also formed.

Now Sona started mobilizing women for water conservation work, whether taken up under NREGA (rural employment program) or in other ways. As most such work involves work under NREGA, these women were involved in trying to improve the functioning of NREGA work too. Things began to look up once people were involved in the functioning of the program and in issues like site selection. The most promising water conservation work here was taken up on Naraininullah where a check dam was constructed using the NREGA budget. As a result, neglected, deserted fields started blooming with green crops. While about 50 acres of land benefited directly from this irrigation, the water level in wells rose over a much wider area, helping other farmers too.

With more water available now, Sona and her family also returned to farming with more hopes and enthusiasm, determined to be successful in earning a satisfactory livelihood within their village.

Sharda Vanshkaar
Sharda may appear to be a very simple, also very gentlewoman from the remote village of Bundelkhand, but in reality she has some very extraordinary achievements to her credit for which she recently received the prestigious ‘Catch the Rain’ Award from the President of India, Draupadi Murmu, at a big presentation ceremony in New Delhi.
Sharda belongs to a small farmer family in Vijaypura village of Taalbehat block (located in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh). She has been observing closely that due to water scarcity, many farmers are not able to cultivate their fields properly and hence have to accept work in exploitative conditions as migrant workers far away from home. So when some activists from a voluntary organisation Parmarth came to her village to organise meetings on water conservation, Sharda responded enthusiastically and mobilised about 30 other women to work for water conservation in cooperation with Parmarth.

Most villagers appeared to agree that some work was urgently needed to tap the water of Baruariver flowing nearby so that the thirsty fields could get water. Unfortunately, an old check dam on the river had fallen into disrepair and there were no signs that the funds or approval for a new structure could materialise any time soon.

Pushpa
Pushpa lives in a very remote village Khakraun of Mohangarh block (located in Tikamgath district of Madhya Pradesh). As she says—this is a remote village of a remote development block.

However, the graduate young lady was not overwhelmed by the remoteness of her new surroundings. She decided to study further in a Master of Social Work course. What is more, she was always looking out for opportunities to use her education in ways that would contribute to the welfare of her village. She got together several children who had lagged in school education and started teaching them.

Her efforts soon attracted the attention of a voluntary organisation Parmarth which was trying to mobilise and train several women for water conservation and other related constructive works. Pushpa appeared to be ideally suited for this role and she was soon selected as a ja lsaheli. She started attending training workshops and went for exposure visits to villages of Sagar district where exemplary water conservation work had been carried out earlier. This widened her horizons and she started thinking of similar possibilities of improving water conservation in and around her village where water scarcity was frequently an important constraint for people trying to improve or enhance their rural livelihoods.

She now had a better appreciation of the need for mobilising more people and by talking over with her friends in her village, she soon managed to create a group of about 25 to 30 women who were willing to come together to work for the community’s welfare.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 6, Aug 4 - 10, 2024