Integrated Water Resource Management

Some of the beautiful children in Sihgrawan Khurd
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Today we got to see how simple engineering schemes can make enormous differences to people's lives. We travelled to look at the work in Sihgrawan Khurd village where WaterAid and its partner Haritika have been helping the 1276 people in the village for 3 years. An Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) approach has been adopted and its physical successes were evident through a number of schemes:

1. The village has an electric pump which pumps the water from the source (1.5km away from the village) to 3 water tanks within the village. Previously, the women and children spent a large part of the day walking to the source to collect water, now they have a short walk to the water taps at the tanks. The water is dosed with chlorine to ensure its safety and quality is tested regularly.
2. A simple open drainage system has been constructed alongside the road to drain all the run off water and this is used to irrigate land, this  channel is maintained by the villgers to prevent siltation and blockages.
3. The villages pay 30 Rupees a month per family for the water supply (a small number with a connection to their homes pay 60 rupees for the better service). This money is used for the operating costs (electricity for the pump and chlorine) and for maintenance and continued improvements. 
4. A huge part of the work in the village has been the construction of the irrigation wells, these open wells store water from the monsoons, help to recharge the aquifers and are deep enough to supply water even at the end of the dry season.  Each of the 17 wells cost 1 lak (100, 000 rupees) and took 4 months to construct by hand.

IWRM - the physical, social and economic impacts

Drainage channel and ground water recharge pit
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We then returned to the village and listened while the villages discussed the improvements and how IWRM has affected their lives:

• The women were hugely interactive in the discussion asking us questions about our lives and explaining how they saved up to 5 hours a day by not collecting water and how everyone was now cleaner with clean clothes.
• Before every house hold had someone ill with stomach problems and diarrhoea, now diarrhoea and malaria have now almost disappeared from the village.
• Every person in the village owns some land and with the irrigation systems even the poorest farmer can earn and extra 10,000 rupees a month from selling crops at market. With a certain supply of water they can now grow different crops which include, chilies, wheat, sugar cane and ground nut.
• The wealth of the village has increased 4 fold since the project began and there are now more tractors in the village and 60% of people have upgraded their homes, as a real sign of our times they were keen to tell us that 40 families even have a mobile phone! 

We the obliged by singing a couple of numbers from our rapidly expanding repertoire which now includes 'The wheels of the bus', 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes', 'You are my sunshine' and the ultimate crowd pleaser 'Holi Holi'! The women joined us to sing, dance and celebrate the success of the village.   We then visited a check dam structure. Designed by the partners engineers (there are 3 who cover 47 villages between them) these simple but impressive 2m high reinforced concrete gravity dams store flood water from the monsoons, which is then used to irrigate the land in the dry season.

There are 5 check dams in series with a catchment area of 15km2, each dam supplies 500 acres of previously un farm-able land with water, and the resulting crops were flourishing, including the carrots and radishes, which we got to taste!  The dams and "River Dhasan" were dry, as region is drought declared and has had no rain since July 2006, when the monsoon finished 3 months early, but the flood water was enough to supply the crops in the crucial growing periods.  In this project the partners are really helping by providing the technical solutions and helping the community request the funds and assistance from the local government. Each dam cost 476, 500 rupees and took 20-25 people 3-4 months to construct by hand. 90% of the cost was supplied by the government with the community providing the rest and the labour.  It is amazing to see how much effect simple engineering can have on a community. Life in the village is still rural and hard work, but people are making a good living and the improved health, wealth and happiness was overwhelming.  After a late lunch in a service station enroute we set off on the 4 hour drive back to Gwalior. Dan Lambert & I managed to secure ourselves one of the comfier cars and it was one of those great journey's spent watching the achingly beautiful sunset and sharing our hearts.