NGO effort, MGNREGA funds help women restore, repair water bodies in Jhansi dist

By Bharat Dogra*
Maanpur Tank, located in a village of the same name in Babina block of Jhansi district, was constructed during the times of Chandel kings several hundred years back. It is spread well over a hundred acres of land and has been a source of pride for this village for a long time. An irrigation canal that takes off from the outlet of the tank has provided a very important source of irrigation for this village for a long time.
However in recent times the canal and the outlet had been badly damaged so that the irrigation capacity of this tank had been very considerably eroded. Hand pumps became more difficult to operate with water level going down. Many women had to cross the main road to fetch water and an accident injured several of them.
During Covid times there were distress conditions in this village and people badly needed some immediate livelihood support as well. Combining the two needs together Parmarth voluntary organization planned to take up cleaning and repair work in this tank. A Jal Saheli or woman volunteer working on water issues named Geeta made a particularly important contribution for mobilizing people. Later she received the water warrior award from the government and another award from the UNDP as well.
Due to paucity of resources initially Geeta and her co-workers sought to create only a temporary structure made of sand-sacks to plug the seepage. However impressed by their brave efforts, some of the more influential villagers now started coming forward to support them. The panchayat also extended its helping hand so that more durable repair could be taken up. As a result of this the irrigation and water recharge from tank could again become more protective for the village.
Similarly in Lahaar Thakurpura villages of the same development block (Babina) a tank spread over 80 acres of land had been seriously harmed in recent years by heavy siltation and even higher growth of water hyacinth. Parmarth started a campaign for its cleaning and this received a good response from the administration as well, resulting in allocation of MGNREGA funds for its restoration and repair. Some senior officials took a keen interest and personally visited the tank-site to supervise the work.
The removal of hyacinth proved to be a big problem but finally good success was achieved in removing this and a lot of silt. The vast sheet of clean water provided a beautiful view and the administration chipped in with some further stabilization and beautification work. However some of the tiles were obviously fixed hurriedly and already repair work is needed. The lighting work has also been left half-complete.

Some of the most promising work on tank restoration has been taken up by women led by jal sahelis

Some villagers feel that the effort made here will be amply rewarded if some irrigation benefits are also provided. As with repair work there is now more water retention capacity, they feel that an irrigation canal should be created so that the tank can be used for irrigation in addition to its present use for fisheries.

Some of the most promising work on tank restoration has been taken up by women led by jal sahelis in Bara Malhera block of Chhatarpur district. Here in Chaudhri Khera village a much-needed tank had been neglected and had fallen out of use due to certain strong superstitions relating to harm that would come to those who try to reclaim this. Ganga, a jal saheli, challenged these beliefs and mobilized several women in cleaning and reclaiming this land.

This involved not just work relating to removing silt and dirt, but also creating a temporary sack bund on a rivulet to get water flow for the tank to fill up after a long time. After all the brave efforts of Ganga and her friends succeeded, the village has benefited greatly from water in the once condemned tank.
In another village of this block a student Babita Rajput led an effort of several women to dig a 107 meter canal across a hill to bring rainwater collecting in a nearby forest to the village. This work was once considered too difficult to be considered seriously, but once the brave women initiated it, several others also joined it and the work could be completed successfully.
These are just a few examples of how relatively small investments, helped by the bigger contributions of people and particularly women, can provide very cost-effective solutions to situations of water-scarcity. Such efforts should get much more attention, instead of tying up vast resources in massive dam projects whose gains are often lesser relative to investments and in addition there are several serious social and ecological adverse impacts too.
---
*Honorary convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include “When the Two Streams Met”, “Man over Machine” and “Navjeevan”

Comments

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan* An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai* The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.

Subaltern voices go digital: Three Indian projects rewriting history from the ground up

By A Representative A new wave of digital humanities (DH) work in India is shifting the focus away from university classrooms and English-language scholarship, instead prioritizing multilingual, community-driven archives that amplify subaltern voices . According to a review published in the Journal of Asian Studies , projects such as the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), the Oral History Narmada archive , and the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre are redefining how the country remembers its past — often without government funding or institutional support.

Beyond Lata: How Asha Bhosle redefined the female voice with her underrated versatility

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The news of iconic Asha Bhosle’s ‘untimely’ demise has shocked music lovers across the country. Asha Tai was 92 years young. Normally, people celebrate a passing at this age, but Asha Bhosle—much like another legend, Dev Anand—never made us feel she was growing old. She was perhaps the most versatile artist in Bombay cinema. Hailing from a family devoted to music, Asha’s journey to success and fame was not easy. Her elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, had already become the voice of women in cinema, and most contemporaries like Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, and Noor Jehan had slowly faded into oblivion. Frankly, there was no second or third to Lata Mangeshkar; she became the first—and perhaps the only—choice for music directors and all those who mattered in filmmaking. Asha started her musical journey at age 10 with a Marathi film, but her first break in Hindustani cinema came with the film "Chunariya" (1948). Though she was not the first choice of ...

Search This Blog