Water warriors

A lot has been written on India's vast and ancient experience in rainwater harvesting. But no concrete effort has been made to use these traditional innovations. There is no village in India which cannot meet its drinking water needs if it adopts the kundi technology developed by the people of Rajasthan's Thar desert. The technology is very simple. One can take a piece of land and artificially slope it in a way that any water falling in this catchment area runs into a well in the centre or a side of the land.

News - In Short

coastal campaign: The National Fishworkers Forum began a two-month campaign in Gujarat to draw public attention to the centres move to dilute Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991, and frame new law for coastal zone management. Members allege such measures would lead to the sale of Indias 7,500 km coastline and marine waters to private players. Throughout the Gulf of Kutch, unplanned industrialization threatens coasts and peoples livelihoods, said the forums chairperson.

Uttarakhand bars Van Gujjars from enetering state forest

in the second week of April, 200-odd Van Gujjar families were stranded in Uttarakhand after the state forest department barred them from entering their summer homes. The Van Gujjars move to Uttarakhand's Govind National Park in summers and then move to Uttar Pradesh's Shivalik forests in winters. But this year, Uttarakhand's forest department refused to grant them permits, saying that they come from Uttar Pradesh and can't use the state's

Manna Singh

Manna Singh, a farmer by profession is the chairman of Sitapur project in Madhya Pradesh. Couple of years back, 46-year-old Singh was sent as a district representative to Anna Hazare for getting trained. In the year 1996, Union ministry of rural development supported the Sitapur project with a financial aid of Rs 12 lakh. The work started in 1997 and is expected to be completed soon.

Laxmi Narayan Joshi

Laxmi Narayan joshi, watershed committee chairman of Saipur village, has been a source of inspiration to the villagers. The watershed work started in 1998-99. Medbandi, a stone embankment built on the lower side of the agriculture field on a hill slope to conserve soil and moisture and help create a level field for cultivation was done in about 300 hectares (ha) of agricultural land. A pond of about 1.5 ha of land with 8,000 cubic metre storage capacity was also built.

Ram Karan Bhadana

Ram Karan Bhadana, a Gujjar is not involved in sheep raring as others, but is committed towards the development of the village. He is a well-known activist for development works in the village with a population of 2,000-2,500. He was actively involved in creating awareness, giving importance to tree and pond worship, making ponds and removing encroachments from pastures.

R Devendra

Sixty-year-old Devendra is the president of the Kedar Village Tank Farmers Society in Tamil Nadu. The society was formed in 1989 and there are around 217 members working with it from 13 different communities. The society operates and irrigates an area of approximately 119 hectares. The Centre for Water Resources, Anna University gave the society Rs 27.6 lakh for the research purpose in 1990.

Jawan Lal Rebari

Initially involved in adult education and health activities, Jawan Lal took it as a challenge to transform degraded lands to productive assets in Barwa village for about 110 families.

Manukhbhai Suvagia

Concerned over the water level in the region of Suarashtra which had receeded from 15 metres in 1990 to 120-210 metres in 1998, Mansukh Bhai Suvagia, a 37-year-old government servant decided to initiate steps to tackle the problem. With the help of villagers, he launched a Lok Fund scheme and collected more than Rs 1 lakh to build 17 check dams in the area. "These are the cheapest check dams in the whole country," says Suvagia.

A village betrayed

THE concept of joint forest management JFM is based on the interaction of forest departments with local people. However, the interests of people and forest departments could at times be at variance, as in Salehpur, a Gujjar-dominated village in Haryana near the border with Himachal Pradesh. The Hill