Rural water

		Editorial
		Reviving Catch Water By Gita Kavarana
		Akashganga: The bounties of rain By Anil Agarwal
		In focus / cover story
		Are water PPPs here to stay?
		News Updates
		Delhi Water Shortages on Near Horizon
		Policy
		UP Stands Up for Groundwater
		Best Practices
		Narayanpur
		When Krishaks become Bhagiraths
		Science & Technology
		Bamboo drip
		Drip irrigation stat
		Rain in a Bottle
		Water Quality Standards
		Media Point
		Book Review
		Water Frames
		Water Statistics
		Reader's Space
		Case of Ishwariya Village on Roof top Water Harvesting
		People for Water
		Contributing Authors
		Gita Kavarana
		gita@cseindia.org
		Nikolas C Steinberg
		water@cseindia.org
		Sumedha Malaviya
		sumedha@cseindia.org
		Romit Sen
		Mohammed Shehfar
		Shehfar@cseindia.org

Reviving Catch Water

When we were in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district in December 2010 as part of our interactions with village communities on water issues, we saw that irrigation was largely groundwater-based, like in many other parts of the country. Dhar district is one of the overexploited districts of Madhya Pradesh and is a fluoride affected area. When we asked the farmers why they were not doing any groundwater recharging, they said that although this was necessary, this work was beyond their capacities. And this was in Madhya Pradesh, where the country’s largest watershed development programme was running successfully since 1994, the Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Programme. Our travels across several villages in Madhya Pradesh made us realise that the idea of water harvesting needed to be revived and pushed to gain momentum to become a nationwide movement.

Nearly 12 years ago, CSE launched its campaign on rainwater harvesting. We have come a long way since then – rainwater harvesting is firmly placed in the policy paradigm. Many states have incorporated rainwater harvesting in their policies, laws and schemes. Many NGOs are working on rainwater harvesting and enthusiastic and committed individuals are doing a fantastic job of showing what can be done by simply holding rainwater where it falls. The Central Ground Water Board has prepared a master plan for artificial recharging for the entire country. Yet, there is a yawning gap between these plans and groundlevel implementation. The National Water Mission has a target of improving water efficiency by 20% by 2020. What about having a target for groundwater recharging?

When CSE launched its rainwater harvesting programme, nobody understood what it was all about. Anil Agarwal, on the other hand, firmly believed that capturing India’s monsoon rains during the short period of not more than 3 months in the year, could be the answer to India’s water problems. He said,” an average Indian village needs 1.2 hectares of land to capture 6.57 million litres of water in a year for cooking and drinking. If there is a drought and rainfall levels dip to half the normal, the land required would rise to a mere 2.4 hectare. Thus, there is no village in India that cannot meet its basic drinking and cooking needs through rainwater harvesting”.

With this in mind, CSE launched its campaign on rainwater harvesting. Catch Water was the campaign newsletter. The newsletter, true to the campaign’s aim of “making water everybody’s business”, endeavoured to be the people’s voice and to showcase their efforts. It was initially brought out in several Indian languages as well as in English. Somewhere, along the way, this effort got lost.

Today, we are trying to revive the newsletter. This is the first issue, and in this year, it will be brought out every two months. We request our readers to send us in water stories from all corners of the country – the issues, the problems, innovative solutions, people’s solutions and technological solutions. We would like to disseminate these efforts in all areas of water management – urban, rural, water supply, sanitation, water quality, rivers, floods, pricing, industrial use, watershed – in fact, anything and everything to with water. This first issue remembers the initial campaign days with a piece by Anil Agarwal.

Read on and we look forward to your contributions and your efforts to make this newsletter truly a voice of the people.

Gita Kavarana

What changes does drip irrigation bring to farming?

Study: In a 2010 study, “Impact of Drip Irrigation on Farming System: Evidence
from Southern India” by Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, researches examined the before-and-after effects of 50 farms growing bananas that switched from sprinkler irrigation to drip irrigation between 2007 and 2008 in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. The results are as follows: