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Poornima Devi hasn’t forgotten those harsh summer afternoons when she, along with the other women of Neeche Mohalla (colony) had to listen to abuses hurled at them as they walked past men to fetch water for their families. The only community dugwell in their colony in the Jharia coalfield area of Jharkhand had gone dry and was filled with muck.
Walking to a dugwell in the neighbouring habitation meant setting their self-respect aside and keeping their heads down till they got back home with pots of water. It was a daily nightmare and they suffered it for years till they decided to take matters into their own hands and desilted and revived their dugwell.
“Water used to be the biggest problem of our lives. As we walked to the other colony to fetch water, menfolk gave us gaalis [verbal abuse]. They mocked us and told us to do odd jobs before drawing water from their dugwell. We used to seethe with anger but didn’t know what to do,” narrates Poornima, a resident of Neeche Mohalla, Enakothi, in ward no 35 of Jharia Circle under Dhanbad Municipal Corporation (DMC).
“One day we decided that enough was enough. We couldn’t take abuse anymore and decided to desilt our own dugwell,” she said.
Neeche Mohalla’s dugwell now has water all through the year and has never gone dry since the women took charge of it in 2017 and desilted it with fawda [spade/shovel] and hathoda [hammer].
“Often, people from other neighbouring colonies, such as Ena, Islampur, Industry Colliery Mohalla, Indira Awas Mohalla and Parsatand Mohalla, now come to our dugwell to fetch water in peak summer period when several water bodies in the area go dry,” Poornima added.
Seeing the determination and enthusiasm of the women of Neeche Mohalla, their dugwell was further cleaned up and repaired last year, in 2024, as part of a pilot project under Government of India’s Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT 2.0).
Brickwork with plaster in the inside walls of the dugwell, construction of a parapet wall and platform around the dugwell along with an iron grill cover and pulley have been carried out with funding from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
“Although we had revived our dugwell, it was still kaccha with no boundary wall. Drawing water from it was risky as we used to balance ourselves on bamboo sticks placed on the mouth of the dugwell. After the repair works, we now feel safe using our well,” said Kaari Devi, an elderly lady from Neeche Mohalla.
Neeche Mohalla’s dugwell is now an example of successful shallow aquifer management, commonly known as SAM, under AMRUT 2.0 that targets to have access to clean water for all urban citizens, increase coverage of sewerage and septage. Simply put, a shallow aquifer is the first layer of groundwater which is tapped upon digging the ground. Dugwells tap this layer of water and have been a source of water for centuries.
“The shallow aquifer pilot project in Dhanbad is showing positive results as the water table in project areas has shown a steady rise and local people are happy. The quality of shallow aquifer water is also good and we are regularly monitoring it,” Raviraj Sharma, Dhanbad Municipal Commissioner, told Down To Earth (DTE).
According to Gayatri Devi, somewhere around 2011-12, the dugwell in Neeche Mohalla, their only source of water, went dry. Over a period of time, it was filled with garbage and debris.
“In 2017, we decided to revive our own dugwell. Menfolk in our colony were least bothered. We approached the village youth who agreed to clean the dugwell with us. But there came a point when the youth got disinterested as we didn’t hit water. Rather there were large rocks at the bottom of the dugwell,” narrated Gayatri.
It is then that women decided to descend into the womb of their dugwell and dig it deeper to hit a shallow aquifer.
“We removed three tractors full of debris from our dugwell. Everyone thought we had gone mad. Menfolk did not believe we could revive our dugwell but we proved them wrong,” she said with a smile.
Meanwhile, according to Poornima, groups of women took turns climbing down the open well using a ladder and desilted it. “When we hit a large rock, we used hammers to break it and finally we hit water. Since then our well has never gone dry, not even in drought years. It meets all our water needs,” she added proudly.
The area of DMC is divided into two broad areas — the non-coalfield and coalfield — with a total of 55 wards. The Jharia coalfield area within DMC is largely a coal mining zone and related economic activities. It is here that Neeche Mohalla, Enakothi, is located.
This region of Jharia has been identified as an extremely water-stressed zone, according to Megh Pyne Abhiyan (MPA), a non-profit that works on water issues in East India. MPA, along with Dhanbad Municipal Corporation, implemented the SAM project in the urban local body (ULB) under AMRUT 2.0.
Before the project was launched, DMC carried out a survey of all waterbodies, including dugwells and ponds, within its municipal limits. “Since sanitary staff has a reach in each and every mohalla, we used our 800 sanitary workers and their ward supervisors to do this unique survey, which was completed within one month,” informs municipal commissioner Sharma.
Thereafter, MPA used the DMC’s survey of waterbodies to identify SAM project sites in August and September 2022, when it visited Neeche Mohalla. “We wanted to study the role and use of dugwells by communities in the coalfield areas. We also wanted to break the myth that the shallow aquifer was not important for the local people,” said Eklavya Prasad, managing trustee of MPA.
“We initially identified 208 dugwells which were filtered down to 18 and finally we took up five locations for the pilot project under AMRUT 2.0 in Dhanbad Municipal Corporation, including Neeche Mohalla. Women there requested us to get their dugwell repaired and restored, as it was their only source of water and they had desilted it after hard labour,” says Prasad.
Between January and July 2024, the dugwell in Neeche Mohalla was repaired and improved at a cost of Rs 1,10,726 provided by MoHUA under AMRUT 2.0. Shallow aquifer management works including rainwater harvesting and cleaning and revival of water bodies was done at four more locations in DMC.
The results of all five pilots are encouraging, said Prasad. These case studies were shared during the 4th Annual Urban Waters Forum held at IIT ISM Dhanbad on February 5-7, 2025. Participants from several ULBs attended the deliberations.
“Shallow aquifer management is very important for Dhanbad. Groundwater is falling rapidly and borewells are banned in Dhanbad city municipal area. Water leakages and illegal water connections is a huge problem. Only one-fourth of households do rainwater harvesting,” Ravi Raj Sharma, Municipal Commissioner of DMC said during the Urban Waters Forum.
In the first phase of AMRUT 2.0, 10 ULBs were selected for pilot projects — Dhanbad, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Thane, Pune, Rajkot, Jaipur, Gwalior and Kolkata. Based on their success, SAM projects have now been expanded to 75 ULBs across India.