Perspective on Water

Perspective on Water

Perspective on Water:

In the purview of Natural Resource Management (NRM)

• Public-partnership on water management
• Participatory Approach to implementation of conservation projects
• Utilization of scientific temper and active research in the field of NRM
• Combining traditional resource conservation techniques with modern technology
• Ensure water availability to the farmers for second crop in the same year
• Linking water with peoples’ livelihood options like watershed development

BISWA, a social development organization based in Western Orissa since 1994 is at present operational in 10 other states of India. The main thrust of the organization is to mobilise rural and semi urban population into Self Help Groups for dissemination of micro finance activities (integrated approach of micro-credit, micro-enterprise, micro-insurance and social development). Within micro-finance initiative, efforts are taken to credit link the farmers to meet agricultural expenses. Over the years, there has been a felt need that these farmers should be equipped with sustainable means of increasing their productivity, to achieve a wider goal of alleviating poverty.

BISWA and initiatives in water

BISWA has active involvement in mini watershed promotion to help the farmers in kharif stress irrigation and partial Rabi irrigation. It gives major emphasis on strengthening farmers organisations by empowering them and training them in conflict management, leadership development, gender mainstreaming etc. Hatibari eco-watershed development is a profound demonstration of organic farming, Biofertiliser and Pest control, low-external input agriculture and efficient water management practices.

Apart from targeted water conservation projects, BISWA views overall environmental conservation as an encompassing component. Because of the serious efforts made by BISWA to bring environmental consciousness in the People of several districts of Orissa, BISWA has been selected to work as a Functioning NGO in forest area development programmes in Deogarh and Keonjhar districts funded by JBIC. BISWA also emphasizes on promoting enterprises related to Environmental care and efficient use of Natural Resources. BISWA is conducting studies on Resource Conservation Technologies for agro farming and Garbage, Waste Management in Rural and Urban Sambalpur District.

Our Perspective

We have huge deposits of fresh water on earth’s surface as well as in its sub-surface layers. Water in these deposits is in a state of perpetual movement from one compartment to another. However, inputs in each compartment are balanced by an equal output, so that a state of dynamic equilibrium is maintained. If withdrawal from any of these exceeds the input the pool size diminishes. We perceive that the speed with which rain water disappears, has to be explored. Imagine there is a hectare of land in Barmer, one of India’s places, receiving 100-mm of water in the year, common even for this area. This means that there is as much as one million litres of water enough to meet drinking and cooking water needs of 182 people at a liberal 15 litres per day. Even in the villages suffering from drought this year, it is not as if there was no rain. Saurashtra villages, the worst affected, also has 100-300 mm rainfall but they let the water go. It does not matter how much rain is received if there is no means to capture it, either directly or indirectly after the seepage. Cherrapunji, with 11,000mm annual rainfall, also suffers from drinking water shortages. Therefore, the efforts should be at mitigating the obstacle in loss of utilizing the rain water to revitalize the existent hydrological cycle. Another issue to be tackled is the erractic nature of the Indian rainfall. In Orissa, 78% of the rainfall is received in the monsoon season (June to September) and remaining 22% is available in eight months.

Table No. 1

Water Resources: India & Orissa (Unit in BCM)

The Public-Private Partnership in the Resource Conservative Techniques involves action research to be conducted under an eminent Investigator, who will utilize scientific temper alongwith the community experience to design water scarcity mitigation solutions. The outcome of such action research effort could be piloted initially to understand a wider benefit to the larger population. An active collaboration with the ongoing Government projects on water resource conservative technologies, both for drinking water purpose as well as for irrigation is another avenue for development.

Drainage is an essential part in completing the hydrological cycle, therefore the importance should be provided to both conserving the water as well as at creating proper drainage channels. In this regard, watershed development seems an ideal project to revitalize the eco system and also, to integrate the public-private model of programme delivery. Community participation is a key in the conceptualization as well as the implementation of the project. For, people are the best informants of the water resources and availability of water round the year. Organising people into Community based Organisations (CBOs) like the Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Farmer Groups (FGs) is identified as a method to implement the projects and percolate the benefits through group effort. The involvement of the local self governing bodies i.e, PRI’s in the loop of research as well as programme implementation is also sought as a mode for empowerment of the community level leaders

Direct benefit to end users

In any model to be implemented in the water sector should have a direct and ready impact on the lives of the end users. We believe that this benefit should be measureable in terms of increase in yield and its economic benefit to the farmers with the introduction of irrigational facilities. Once the relationship of direct benefit from water scarcity mitigation projects is understood through visible outcome to the end user, they will be enthusiastic to become active participants.