All along the 60-km drive from Maheshwar town on the banks of the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh to Lachora village in Khargone district, the weather is quite hot, with the temperatures hovering around 40˚C and the landscape brown and dry. Nearly all the fields along the highway bear a deserted look.
The scene changes dramatically as one approaches the Pandukhal Faliya hamlet in Lachora village. In this hamlet of about 15 families that belong to the Bhilala tribe, residents can be seen tilling their farms, which are surprisingly green and have moist soil. “Our dam has water that we use for growing vegetables,” says Champa bai, her pallu pulled over her head, as she tends to her crop of bhindi (okra). The cement check dam was built across a stream a few metres away, she says.
Another farmer, Jeldha bai, says her dugwell now has about 15 m of water. “The check dam has raised the groundwater level, increasing the water in the well,” she says. “Earlier, we could not cultivate rabi [winter] crops because there was no water for irrigation. But now we also grow wheat,” she adds.
Pandukhal Faliya is about 65 km south of Indore. Water harvesting and landscape resto-ration works being carried out here, and in other villages on the north and south banks of the Narmada river basin in Khargone, are also expected to benefit people of Indore. According to Indore Municipal Corporation, the installed capacity of surface water sources for the city is 594 million litres daily (MLD), of which Narmada meets 360 MLD.
These projects are part of the Narmada Landscape Restoration Project (NLRP), a one-of-a-kind-project in the country launched in 2020, says Nitesh Kumar, project manager and India program lead at Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a Seoul-based inter-govern-mental and international organisation.
Funded by the US Agency For International Development and the National Thermal Power Corporation, the five-year project, which will end in June 2025, is being implemented by GGGI in partnership with the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.
“We are developing a series of community initiatives to increase water availability and quality in the Narmada. Once achieved, this model will provide evidence to push for payment for ecosystem services (PES) under which cities will pay the people undertaking the conservation projects,” he says.
PES is a market-based initiative to finance nature conservation, in which the beneficiaries or users of ecosystem services pay for them.
These ecosystem services may include the supply of food, water and timber (provisioning services); the regulation of air quality, climate and flood risk (regulating services); opportunities for tourism and education (cultural services); and essential underlying functions such as soil formation and nutrient cycling (supporting services).
A number of countries, such as Germany, China and the UK, use the PES model for watershed protection and climate change mitigation. But in India, PES is an evolving concept. In the case of NLRP, it is proposed that the village residents undertaking landscape restoration works to improve the quantity and quality of water in the two tributaries of Narmada will eventually receive financial benefits from Indore city dwellers and agencies or industries that use this water.
According to Lakhan Patidar, project associate agriculture with GGGI, a range of sustainable landscape practices are being implemented under NLRP in an area of 12,825.53 hectares (ha) on north and south banks of Narmada’s catchment. Of this, 6,217.81 ha are under for-ests and 6,607.54 ha under agriculture.
The project is currently focusing on Nani and Vansavali, two tributaries of the Narmada in Khargone district, from where water for Indore city is lifted. A total of 16 micro watersheds have been selected for intervention, of which eight are in the catchment of Nani and six are in that of Vansavali.
“Through the project, we aim for a 20 per cent increase in the quantity of water and a 25 per cent reduction in runoff pollution in both Nani and Vansavali,” says Patidar. “We have a detailed monitoring strategy and plan for measuring the change in water quality and quantity, which includes sampling from different locations, both surface water and groundwater,” he adds.
GGGI has conducted aquifer mapping to identify optimal sites for water harvesting structures and watershed works at different locations in the project area. Various structures including cement stop dams, loose boulder structures, gabion structures and farm ponds were constructed to harvest rainwater based on the topography.
This has helped re-store several local streams and rivulets feeding into the Nani and Vansavali tributaries. With community involvement, plantations have been developed along these rivulets, and villagers are growing fodder grass in some areas.
In Bagdara village on the north bank of the Narmada river, a stop dam was built on a rivulet at a cost of Rs 14 lakh. This rivulet, which typically ran dry by January-February, now provides sufficient water for irrigation even in the summer, thanks to the stop dam constructed two years ago.
“Earlier, I had to wait until July for the monsoon to sow cotton. But now, I can sow it in May and plant wheat in the rabi season,” says Harna Singh, who owns 0.5 ha of land near the stop dam.
A similar transformation has occurred in Gulavad village, where four check dams were built over a 2-km stretch of another rivulet. “Our dug well used to go dry by February, but since the check dams were constructed, it has water even in April-May. Now, we can cultivate both cotton and wheat, and our cattle have water too,” says Kailash Yadav, a farmer in his 60s.
The village residents are responsible for the maintenance of the water harvesting structures. “Opening and closing the gate of the stop dam is our responsibility. We keep it clean and safe,” says Champa bai, one of the seven members of the water user group in Pandukhal Faliya. Trained to operate the gates, local farmer Bhagwan bhai ensures the gate is opened in June and closed after Diwali to store the harvested rainwater.
Restoring the Narmada’s landscape requires active participation of local forest-dwelling communities and tribal groups. According to Neeraj Gautam, senior project assistant with GGGI, forest-fire fighting groups with 10 members each have been trained in three forest villages (Beklya, Navrangpura, and Sirsiya) on the north bank of the Narmada.
The project provides financial incentives to these groups if they successfully prevent forest fires. Ashok Bhavre, a Bhil tribal member and president of Beklya village’s joint forest management committee, says, “Village residents have identified the 10 people who have been trained to become forest-fire fighters. Last year, we had three forest fires in our area. This year, we want to ensure there are none.”
“We have also created a short film, Jadui Jungle, that we screen in villages near the forests. Many residents get very emotional watching the film as their lives depend on the forests,” says Jitendra Thakur, program coordinator with Samaj Pragati Sahayog, a local non-profit implementing the project with GGGI.
The project is providing liveli-hood to communities. In Beklya village, Bhil adivasi women have formed a self-help group (SHG) to collect leaves of the palash trees, also known as the flame of the forest to make plates and bowls (dona- pattals).
“We collect the leaves between May and January,” says Shivkanya, president of the SHG that was set up two years ago. Shaitan bai, the oldest member of the six-member SHG, says, “Two women go to the forest to fetch palash leaves. The leaves are dried for two days but some moisture should still be in them. We then stitch the leaves to make dona and pattal.”
According to her, one palash leaf makes one dona, but a pattal takes five to six leaves. These are then pressed using a machine provided to the group. “We sell a dona for Rs 2 and a pattal for Rs 4 each. So far, we have sold 1,750 pieces and earned Rs 3,500. We have another 2,000 pieces in stock,” says Shivkanya.
Meanwhile, in Lal Talai Faliya of Nalwat village on the south bank of Narmada, six Barela tribe farmers have been given lac seed for lac cultivation on palash trees for an extra income. “Last December, residents were taken to Seoni to show them how bangles and varnish are made out of lac. A kg of lac sells for anything up to Rs 400 and farmers can earn from it,” says Umrai Singh, president of the village JFMC.
In the first four years of the project, apart from restoring waterbodies and providing livelihood opport-unities, NLRP has helped increase the groundwater table by 17 per cent, says Kumar.
But, if the project is to made sustainable, the PES component will have to come into play. This means that the municipal corporation or the people of Indore will have to agree to pay for the ecosystem services on Narmada. But increasing the water bills of urban consumers is a political issue and often meets with stiff resistance.
So far, the Indore Municipal Corporation has extended its support to the project. In a letter on January 30, 2023, Divyank Singh, chief executive officer, Indore Smart City Development, wrote that the project “is developing a proof of concept for impact of sustainable landscape measures of water quality and quantity, which then will help it develop ‘Payment for Ecosystem model’”. Whether this translates into actual money transfer remains to be seen.
“In times of increasing water stress, PES model being piloted in the Narmada river basin offers a sustainable solution for water security. It ensures that cities and other water users financially support water conservation, recognise the river’s essential services, and compensate the communities protecting its health and vitality,” says Kumar.
This was first published in the 16-31 July, 2024 Print edition of Down To Earth