Bhawar’s village — part of a central Indian tribal belt that runs through seven states — was for long defenceless against parched, dry weather.

The Union government wants to replicate the Dewas model in every district through the Jal Shakti Abhiyan, the Jal Shakti ministry’s programme to conserve rainwater and recharge aquifers in the country, part of the Narendra Modi government’s target to reach tapped drinking water to every household by 2024.

Also Read | Jal Jeevan mission goes digital in five states

The Dewas model

Devnaliya, once barren and unproductive, is now dotted with 45 small orchards owned by its residents. There is good reason why conserving rainwater was the only reliable way to ensure people had enough water to meet their needs.

The village lies on a bed of impermeable basalt rock of the Deccan plateau, surrounded by the Vindhya range. Groundwater is virtually inaccessible because of the rocky topography, which also prevents rain from penetrating into the soil.

During monsoons, most of the rain would just run off, just like in the rest of India. The country’s 120-day June-September monsoon season typically sees intense rain showers for about 40 to 50 days. However, the country conserves only about 8% of the monsoon rains, according to data from the Jal Shakti ministry. This is what the Jal Jeevan Mission wants to change and Dewas is a model.

The district had found a mention in one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radio addresses. On March 22, the PM launched the second phase of Jal Shakti Abhiyan, the Jal Shakti ministry’s flagship water-conservation campaign. It’s called “catch the rain, where it falls, when it falls” and is being rolled out across the country’s 734 districts covering over 600,000 villages. It involves the simple task of digging pits, restoring traditional water bodies and geotagging them.

“We have enough water to irrigate our fields and for our personal and household needs because the rainwater saved is enough to last the entire year,” says Bhawar.

In Devnaliya, the mission has picked steam. Every farmer has a rain-collection hole. Antar Singh, 75, points to his monsoon pond. It was constructed using a ratio of 7 to 10 feet deep and 1 hectare wide. Farmers were funded to build these pits from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

“This has resulted in increases in yield productivity and every family has enough water to irrigate their fields. There is no other way to go about it,” says Raja Ram Mory, an official of the Dewas-based Samaj Pragati Sahayog, an NGO that works to conserve water.

Why it matters

Without such efforts, India could soon face “day zero” conditions when taps run dry. According to data from the state-run policy think tank NITI Aayog, nearly 600 million Indians face “high to extreme water stress” and the country’s water demand is likely to double by 2030, potentially costing a 6% loss in the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050.

India has already begun experiencing wide rainfall variations. Digging farm ponds to trap monsoon rain that otherwise runs off quickly from parched land can be a sustainable solution and increase land productivity by as much as 300%, according to World Resources Institute.

Also Read | Inside India’s new plan to deliver water

The Jal Jeevan Mission has several components, such as reaching piped water to every household and setting up community-managed water conservation projects. For the financial year 2020-21, ₹11,000 crore was allotted for the mission.

Dewas has had a head start in conserving water. A decade ago, the Madhya Pradesh government had constructed an earthen embankment locally known as the Mahegaon dam in a catchment area near Devnaliya.

The earthen dam stored rainwater on vast stretch of 50 hectares of catchment area. However, the water was of little use as there was no mechanism to bring it to people’s houses and fields.

The Madhya Pradesh government, under the Jal Jeevan Mission announced in 2019, embarked on an elaborate plan to bring water to the end-user. The mission has a provision to partner with reputed NGOs in accomplishing its water goals.

The Mahegoan catchment area resembles a large freshwater lake, but all of it is stored rainwater. “We worked on a community basis to devise a plan to bring the water from the Mahegoan dam to 10 villages,” says Mory.

The state’s electricity department was roped in to provide two electricity transformers on the bank of the dam’s lake. Funds were also collected from the community to install three pumps of 15 horsepower each to draw water through underground pipes.

Rainwater harvesting thus fulfils 100% of this central tribal belt’s water needs. Residents pay ₹100 per bigha of land (about 3 acres) as recurring costs to maintain the system to the state electricity department, says Sundar Singh, a local agriculture department official.

NGOs in Dewas, such as Samaj Pragati Sahayog, now train farmers from other states, such as Maharashtra, to conserve water to give an impetus to the Jal Jeevan Mission. “I always say water is our guest. If we stop water from flowing away, we can ensure our guest stays with us a little longer,” says Narendra Singh, a trainer.

(This is the third of a four part series on India’s water crisis and the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission)