Tackling drought: How Shirpur learnt water retention

Till recently Rohidas Ishwar Kakni was too familiar with the drill mdash jostle with nearly 5000 others for just an hour at the common village well to draw his paltry daily ration of water and then wait another 24 hours to begin all over again Thatrsquos now a thing of the past mdash the onion farmer from Sanjvi Old village in Shirpur taluka in northeast Maharashtrarsquos Dhule district is no longer on the brink of despair or reeling under an unforgiving unrelenting drought like the rest of the stateThe Pavra community from Dabkyapada in Shirpur is looking forward to a good yield this year The project has ensured a constant supply of 18 crore litres of water to the village PicsShailesh BhatiaThe change in fortune has been brought about by a controversial water conservation project mdash dubbed the Shirpur model mdash after the taluka it was first implemented inAmrish PatelThe project implemented in 2004 has been rather divisive many water conservationists and experts including a governmentappointed committee had written it off as mere quackery with no scientific or technical foundation But its many success stories have been hard to ignore so much so that the government passed a resolution on May 9 2013 to replicate the model across MaharashtraWritten offThe model envisages threefold water conservation measures recharging of wells with water from canals construction of bandhs on streams and widening and deepening of streamsIt was the brainwave of Amrish Patel a former MLA from Shirpur constituency who is now an MLC and Suresh Khanapurkar a retired officer of the Groundwater Survey and Development Agency Pune Their goal was to make the droughtprone taluka which has 149 villages selfreliant in its water needs The project was implemented in 65 most backward and parched villages of the talukaThe idea took off from the uniqueness of the soil of the region Shirpur lies in the basin of the Tapi river and onethird of the region is covered with rich alluvium comprising layers of yellow silt sand and Deccan basalt boulders which make it tough to retain waterThatrsquos where the modelrsquos ingenuity kicks in A check dam acting like a buffer is built to collect water flowing from the catchment area all through the year The stream is then widened at the check dam Within a year the widened structure can hold 18 crore litres of water ensuring constant supply to the villageKnow your soilOn Thursday midday visited four villages mdash Wadi Sanjvi Old Dabkyapada and Horyapani mdash inhabited by tribal groups in the taluka The surplus water and green cover in the region belied all expectationsVikram Lalji Pavra 21 a farmer from Horyapani who owns 10 acres of land said till the model was implemented he couldnrsquot even grow cash crops like baajra Today he practises crop rotation and grows onions and other vegetables along with cottonKhanapurkar said we have brought the current water crisis upon ourselves ldquoIt is a manmade tragedy Groundwater has been indiscriminately exploited to grow waterintensive crops like sugarcane Besides acres of forest land have been levelled for commercial gains in the last25 yearsrdquo He stressed on identifying the soil structure of a region before blindly going ahead with water conservation measures Each region has its own natural soil and sedimentation characteristics There are places in India that get maximum rainfall but still rely on tankersrdquo he addedSmaller the betterPatel said the project was successful because it was done on a small scale there were no huge dams land acquisition and rehabilitation of people which would take years mass migration or massive distribution of water involving more than one state ldquoIn the last 12 years we have successfully implemented 155 small projects at a cost of Rs 40 crorerdquoThe projects have been funded by private companies he said ldquoWater conservation should be ongoing regardless of a poor monsoonrdquo he suggested Rahul Dande project coordinator said the project has checked migration Today a number of farmers are returning to their once arid land and in time they will able to earn R3 lakh per year through sale of crops ldquoWe recently had a bumper crop of onions from a single village mdash Taradi mdash which sold for over Rs 21 crore in the export marketrdquo