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| Saving Villages |
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 This story is of village Kakvasa in Guna district, MP which is a drought prone area. There is scanty rainfall and the ground water has fluoride content which is affecting people in the area. Due to lack of education and awareness, people were unable to harvest rain water. The ground level water was decreasing as well.
Initially a survey was conducted for developing Rain Water Harvesting structure (RWH), for which several villages were visited & collected data for villages with low water table.
After screening 54 villages & conducting various community meetings we short listed village Kakvasa for our RWH project intervention activities. Lack of water resources & extreme poverty made the villagers helpless. With not a single tube well or hand pump for drinking water their condition worsen & village women had to walk at least 3 km to nearby villages to collect drinking water. The major problem faced by villagers was that due to shortage of water their fields were running dry in turn affecting their livelihood & to add to the woes their cattle also started dying in the summer season.
The water level was so low that they cannot afford to dig their own well or hand pump & moreover they never got united to take the initiative at the village level. GIDF officials realized the sensitivity of the issue, conducted meetings with the villager & made them understand the concept & importance of Rain Water Harvesting structure in their village. We briefed them about the project initiative by GIDF & the required contribution from their side in terms of providing a suitable piece of land by the village. After getting their consent we completed all the legal formalities. Finally the construction work started even villagers came forward & physically supported in the construction of the reservoir. As a result the combined efforts of villagers & GIDF’s team bore fruits as the reservoir was completed in a period of one month.
Finally in the monsoon season there was plenty of rainfall in the area & the rain water harvesting structure worked as per our expected results as it stored all the water which came through different channels from the hilly areas storing around 20,75,000 cubic meters of water. In all 6,700 villagers & an estimated 9,000 live stock got benefited. Not only village Kakvasa but nearby villages Bhulaya, Bleka, Fattukhedi, Semra, Nanndarkhedi, Udaipuri, Sekhpur, Sakatpur & Dundhankheri were also benefited by this initiative that GIDF carried out.
Moreover, with this reservoir ground water level also increased, villagers joined hands & got a hand pump installed which in turn helped them in meeting their daily needs of drinking water & water for their live stock & fields which revamped their livelihood making them self sustainable.
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