A Walk for the Cause of Water Conservation

The initiative of Jal Sahelis or water volunteers in Central India has won widespread appreciation in India.

- BHARAT DOGRA

Several of them have received awards for their inspirational work. When last year the Prime Minister also expressed his admiration for these efforts, this further encouraged Jal Sahelis who decided to take up a significant project at a wider level.

This initiative has been mobilized by the Parmarth voluntary organization mainly in the Bundelkhand region, under its director Sanjay Singh. So far, the presence of Jal Sahelis had been seen and admired for village-level initiatives. Perhaps a time had come now for realizing their wider collective strength to strengthen water conservation efforts and programmes.

After considerable discussion, senior members of the Parmarth team like Sanjay Singh and Gaurav Pandey came up with the idea of a foot march that would bring together a large number of Jal Sahelis to be together for a number of days, reaching village after village to know about water-related problems there and suggest solutions on the basis of the inspirational work they had been carrying out in their own villages for some years.

This, it was hoped, would also strengthen their own sense of solidarity and empower them in terms of the realization of their unity and co-operation. Bundelkhand region, comprising 14 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, has often been in the news due to water scarcity but at the same time it should be emphasized that this region has important assets and strengths which if tapped properly can end this scarcity.

However, the solutions must be based on several specific features of the region and a lot can be learnt from traditional wisdom of conserving water and collecting water, particularly in tanks. A significant number of such tanks go back about a thousand years to the times of Chandela kings.