In one year the small village of Gadrata, Rajasthan earned 0.15 Million US$

The secret: Rainwater Harvesting

Seekar, Rajasthan, India

This is the success story of the small village of Gadrata and its hamlets (overall about 50-55 families) in the Seekar district of Rajasthan and how water means gold!

A few years ago Smt. Amla Ruia, Chairperson of Aakar Charitable Trust and a resident of Mumbai, Maharashtra, motivated and supported the villagers of Gadrata to build a Check Dam to solve their water problems. Until that time groundwater levels in their wells were in serious decline. The Gadrata-Check Dam has produced fantastic results with wells, hand-pumps and ponds upto a range of 7-8 kms receiving recharge from the structure and groundwater-levels have increased significantly. Villagers had never grown vegetables before the construction of the check-dam, but in the year of 2008-2009 they earnt around Rs 9 Lakh  (about 20,000 US$) from irrigating tomatoes, cauliflowers, onions, brinjals, gourd and other vegetables.

Benefits to the village because of the Check-Dam:

• Vegetables crops could be produced
• Wheat, Mustard, Millet and Fodder yield increased many times
• Diesel expenses decreased significantly as groundwater levels rose

Note: GRI was highly impressed by the work done by Aakar Charitable Trust thus the GRI team is making detailed reports on the rainwater-harvesting works and village economy development works of Aakar Charitable Trust in Rajasthan.

The detailed reports will be published in the coming Editions of GRI.