MISSION THIRST AID

Restoration of traditional water tanks has rejuvenated life in parched areas and helped revive agriculture

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But the seemingly dead calmness that greets you in Vellinipatti, a village in Madurai district, belies the intense struggle of the local people for water. For years the 1,500 people of this village, who primarily depend on agriculture for livelihood, had to fight with each other over every drop of water available. Over 30 years of encroachments had turned their 1000-year-old, 27-acre water tank into a ruin and choked water supply. But today all that has changed. Their tank is overflowing with water.

Similarly there are hundreds of such tanks in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherri that have been renovated through an initiative by NGO Dhan Foundation. “We have realised that reviving surface water through community efforts is probably the only way to take the pressure off from groundwater and restore livelihoods,” says Dhan’s executive director M.P. Vasimalai. Water tanks, one of the oldest man-made ecosystems, have irrigated about 6.5 million hectares of land since the early 1950s. But over the decades, their numbers had declined.

The road to their revival was meticulously planned. For instance, the organisation conducted a detailed survey of the water table with the help of local people, civil, hydraulic and irrigation engineers and then devised a restoration strategy. With inputs from government agencies and local communities, the tanks were renovated within a timespan of two-three months. The cost of the whole renovation project—Rs 20 lakh—was shared between the Government, the funding agency as well as the village community.

“As a social system, tanks have served and benefitted various groups of the village community, such as farmers, fishermen and especially the women who had to trudge long distances to fetch water,” says A. Gurunathan, a programme leader of the project. The support that the local people are giving to this initiative is also commendable. Earlier, encroachments in Athigarikulam tank in Andipatti of the Theni district had forced farmers to migrate to other villages due to the non-availability of water for irrigation. But with the initiative of the local people and with the assistance of the district collector, the tank was revived.

Courts too have stepped in periodically, giving a muchneeded fillip to these community initiatives. “The efforts have not just triggered a water movement, but given back the management of water in the hands of the community, as has been the case for centuries,” adds Vasimalai.

(India Today, May 7, 2007)