The infamous Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River in India was initiated with World Bank loans. It was designed primarily to irrigate 1.8 million drought-prone hectares in the state of Gujarat. Despite the extensive canal and pipeline network, the 20 million people in Gujarat have this year experienced their worst drought for a century. When I visited in April more than half its villages- almost 10,000—were drought-declared. Virtually all the state government water reservoirs had dried up, and emergency water-tanker distribution, new bore drilling, well-deepening and pipeline extensions were underway. Yet only nineteen of the 243 wells dug in one district struck water-some were still dry at 150 metres. Many dairy cattle had died and the remainder were giving very little milk. While I was there, newspaper headlines announced the first human casualties. The state government had set up 3000 relief work projects employing 450 000 people, and a range of NGOs had formed a network to lobby the state and national governments on people's small-scale solutions to water- related hardship. One such organization is Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia partner Mahiti Sanstha, which works with around 20 000 people in the Bhal region. Villages in the Bhal region are located in the low-lying sandy, semi-arid and very drought- prone coastal parts of the Saurashtra area. Most are clusters of mud-walled, tile and thatch-roofed huts on flat, saline plains, with between one and two and a half thousand inhabitants. The population is about 60% Koli Patels—ex-fisherfolk who are now tenant farmers, 25% Darbars-a high-caste landowning group who dominate most villages, and 15% other castes and Dalits, or outcasts. In the 60 or so villages where they work, Mahiti forms two kinds of groups: water management committees and women's self help groups. I met 58 women who made up the self help group in Sandhida village. They described how they had all been both isolated and hopelessly indebted five years ago. Now, their solidarity gives them 'the strength of 58 women'-a strength they have used to pressure the local 'collector' and the Darbars in their community. All the village girls now attend the local primary school, while six girls and four boys are away at secondary school. Yet in nearby Khungam village we met young girls working as diamond cutters. They have no opportunity to go to school and were still at work after dark. There is still much work for Mahiti to do. | Water management committees in the villages where Mahiti works are made up of four women and three men. Water is an all- consuming concern for most women, whose day is structured around various trips to collect water for home and livestock, or around the arrival of the government water tankers every eight days in those villages whose water supply has dried up. In some villages, the committees have organised to deepen the village 'tanks'-or dams-and line them with plastic, which stops water salination and reduces seepage and evaporation. We saw some lined tanks still holding a few weeks' water supply when conventional dams were dry. Mahiti is now sponsoring trials of various pumping and filtering arrangements for the tanks, to counter the silt and often collapsing walls. Many self help groups also loan funds to members who want to use a government incentive scheme for installing roof-water tanks. Those who can put up 30 percent of the cost receive the remainder as a subsidy. In Rajpur, a hamlet with few government facilities-no electricity, inadequate roads, no water pipeline, no school teacher or primary healthcare centre — half the 37 families belonging to the self help group now have these tanks. Most people in Rajpur work as tenant farmers. Mahiti told them: 'If you bring all your 80 families united in one meeting, it will change your lives in three years.’ When the Darbars [the upper castes] want something, they are united and they get it in three years.' At every village we visited in the Bhal region, women gave us an overwhelming welcome. Their struggle against the hardship of the drought is constant, and their poverty is grinding. These women work in the fields whenever one of the big landowners will hire them for the one cropping season possible each year in the region. At best they earn around 3 rupees, or AUD1.50 a day, and they're lucky to average 14 days work a month. Most are up at six to cook, clean, and manage the household and livestock not only for their nuclear family but often for some inlaws as well. Their energy and determination, along with the information and training Mahiti can provide and resources from Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia is making a real difference at the community level, with 'small is beautiful', practical, equitable and environmentally sustainable strategies to conserve water. |