For more than four decades, Choudharykhera village in Madhya Pradesh struggled for access to water. Located in Chhatarpur district, a part of the Bundelkhand region, the village typically sees scanty rainfall. It does have Baba talab, a pond believed to exist since the Chandel era (between the 9th and 13th centuries), but its 30-m-long embankment had been breached for as long as residents could remember. This meant that even if the pond got filled with some rainwater, most of it flowed away. Even the handpumps remained dry.
“To get water, our options were to walk some kilometres away to smaller waterbodies, or borrow from residents of other villages who have borewells,” recalls resident Gangabai Rajput. “We knew the solution to the crisis was to repair the breached embankment of Baba talab. But due to the ‘curse’, no one in the village would come forward to take up the responsibility,” she says.
The “curse” Rajput refers to was a superstitious belief in Choudharykhera village that whoever repaired the embankment would meet with a tragedy. While Rajput does not remember when this myth started, people’s fears were strengthened around 30-40 years ago. A resident of the village took the initiative to repair the pond, but lost both his sons soon after he began the work. “The village began to believe that repairing the embankment would destroy all of us,” says Rajput.
“In 2019, I decided that we had been stuck in a water crisis and superstition for too long,” she says. She was inspired to act after interacting with Parmarth Samaj Sevi Sansthan, a non-profit in the Bundelkhand region that began a jal saheli initiative to encourage women in the region to work on improving access to water.
Initially, when Rajput approached the subject of repairing the embankment, the residents, in particular the men, turned her down. Her family too, was hesitant. “But I kept approaching the women—after all, we face the brunt of the water crisis. At the same time, I began the first step in repair, which was filling the breached portion with soil,” she says. Slowly, a few women joined her and when nothing untoward occurred in the village, more people participated.
Parmarth Samaj Sevak Sansthan aided the effort by providing funds for some materials and tools and installing an outlet in the embankment to help channel water. However, the biggest requirement for the repair was people’s labour, which was brought by Rajput, says Dhaniram Raikwar, a social worker with the non-profit.
By the rainfall season of 2020, the embankment was repaired. For the first time in decades, the pond got filled with water. Now, five years later, the waterbody is full, and a fish population has been established, providing a livelihood opportunity, says Rajput. “The handpumps are also getting water and we are able to effectively irrigate our farms,” she says. In 2023, Rajput was bestowed the “Swachh Sujal Shakti” Award from the President for water conservation.
This was first published in the 16-31 January, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth