Solution Exchange discussion: Water Budgeting by Communities from United Nations Volunteers, Jharkhand - Experiences
Compiled by
Pankaj Kumar S.
Ramya Gopalan
Ravi Niwash
Arunabha Majumder
Ajit Sheshadri
Pankaj Kumar S
K. A. S. Mani
Mihir Maitra
Jyotsna Bapat
Depinder S. Kapur
Pran Ranjan
D. Umrikar Satish
S. C. Jain
Viren Lobo
Rahul Banerjee
Summary of Responses
Comparative Experiences
Maharashtra
This participatory project undertaken by Government of Maharashtra, works in 26 of the 33 Districts in the State. The Government facilitates the community to carry out water budgeting to understand demand & supply. Capacity building is done in using management tools and providing technical services. Under the project, AFPRO has conducted CWB in 28 villages of Jalgaon District and is working towards forming an aquifer level institution with self-regulatory community norms.
Wastelands Integrated Research Project (WIRP) (from Depinder S. Kapur, WaterAid India, New Delhi)
This project supported by SPWD and conducted by SOPPECOM attempted to estimate the minimum water required to meet food and non-food biomass requirements of a unit family in the State’s dry zones. The results obtained serve as the norm for estimating equity in water distribution for ensuring equitable food, biomass and livelihood promotion.
West Bengal
Engaging Youth Clubs to Address Problems of Drought (from Pran Ranjan, (Society for Promotion of Wasteland Development (SPWD), Ranchi)
Since 1987, SPWD is working with an organization named Jamgoria Sevabrata on water in Purulia district. Here, village people with the help of youth clubs have done work on their private and common lands to address drought situations firstly for a single critical crop and later on ensuring water for a second crop.
Madhya Pradesh
Samaj Pragati Sahayog undertook the project, in which the forest department controlled the top and bottom portion of a watershed, and did not allow conservation work, depriving the watershed of a water-harvesting source. Similarly, three big landowners owning the middle of the watershed would not allow for water retention structures. The NGO finally built them in an area with low retention capacity. These conflicts, were resolved through mass and legal action.
Andhra Pradesh
APFAMGS Project (from K. A. S. Mani, APFAMGS Project, Hyderabad)
A culmination of field-level data collection by the community wherein the community collects and discusses the data and disseminates the results on display boards in the village centre. Using this, water budgeting is carried out by farmers within the same drainage basin. While NGOs facilitate this exercise, farmer facilitators are trained to compute the budget, discuss the water balance, and work out an appropriate cropping plan matching the resource.
Related Resources
Recommended Organization
Depinder S. Kapur
K. A. S. Mani
Recommended for promoting Crop Water Budgeting (CWB) as a tool to empower farmers for deciding appropriate crop system matching the available groundwater
Recommended Website
S. Ramesh Sakthivel
Recommended Documentation
S C Jain
Ajit Sheshadri
Rahul Banerjee
Pankaj Kumar S
Understanding Water Budgets and Balances
The Water Balance
The Physical Environment
Ramya Gopalan
Recommended Contact
Responses in Full
Arunabha Majumder
Ajit Sheshadri
Pankaj Kumar S
K. A. S. Mani
- GMC are currently involved in technical data collection in 638 habitations and reaching out to 5, 00,000 farmers
- 3584 farmer volunteers (men and women) are involved in collecting technical data
- Daily rainfall measurement is collected from 194 rain gauge stations
- Daily groundwater levels are monitored from 90 monitoring wells
- Fortnightly groundwater levels are monitored from 2032 monitoring wells
- Fortnightly discharge measurement are carried out from 1114 monitoring wells
- Seasonal groundwater quality measurements are carried out from 300 drinking water wells
- Annual Crop water budget exercise (Sept, Oct 2005) have been carried out in 38 Hydrological Units attended by 8442 farmers from 505 habitations.
Thus, in our opinion, water budgeting needs to be quite comprehensive beginning with the involvement of the community in data collection, data dissemination, awareness building, computing the water budget and most importantly, making the correct inferences for appropriate follow up.
To sustain the data collection process and to cover the operational cost of data collection, GMCs are collecting a moderate charge for any data request by various governmental agencies, researchers, consultants. A data catalogue has been published and put up on the web site www.apfamgs.org giving details of site location, parameters measured, units, frequency, accuracy etc.
Value addition to the field data is done and processed data such as Maps, Hydrographs, Bound Reports or data in digital format is also made available.
Three years of data collection by the community has removed the mask of secrecy on data and has made available real time data in a transparent manner to the entire community. Data collection by farmers also provides immediate feedback, thus ensuring data authenticity, quality and overall reliability. Data awareness by farmers has increased knowledge on data collection procedures, thus making the entire village to emerge as a pressure group in monitoring data collection and recording. We have also seen that well-informed and knowledgeable farmers with access to technical data have initiated small but appropriate interventions to restrict over-exploitation of aquifers. Participatory aquifer management has
also bestowed on the farmers the responsibility of the upkeep of the aquifers and sustainability of the
groundwater resource.
Mihir Maitra
Jyotsna Bapat
S. Ramesh Sakthivel
Depinder S. Kapur
Pran Ranjan
D. Umrikar Satish
S C Jain
Viren Lobo
Rahul Banerjee
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