MGNREGA water conservation project turning Rajasthan villages from desert to oasis

BARMER (Rajasthan): It is the tale of a little hamlet Kurla in the Barmer district of dry Rajasthan. Some rainwater conservation projects undertaken by the Gram Panchayat authorities under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have turned the village into an oasis.

Barmer is located in the western part of Rajasthan forming a part of the Thar Desert. Barmer is the third-largest district by area in Rajasthan and the fifth-largest district in India. Occupying an area of 28,387 square km. Being in the western part of the state, it includes a part of the Thar Desert.

In the 18th century the name "Barmer" or "Balmer" was adopted by the British rulers of India and is derived from the name of the earlier 13th-century ruler Bahada Rao Parmar (Panwar) or Bar Rao Parmar (Panwar), it was named Bahadamer ("The Hill Fort of Bahada").

The people of this district have been in constant fear of survival for water. There is no sufficient water supply for the villagers. Rainwater is the only hope of these villagers. 

Also Read: Assam: Govt issues SOP for picnics after Dergaon accident

“Once the people of this village have to go to far three km to bring drinking water. But we are constructing some water reservoir in each household of the village to preserve rainwater. Now each household can get sufficient drinking water from the reservoir throughout the year,” said Kanwar Ram, head sarpanch of Kurla Gram Panchayat.

Ram, who is heading the Gram Panchayat with three villages, was speaking to a 12-member team of Assam journalists who visited the village on Wednesday as part of Bikshit Bharat Sankalpa Yatra.

“Each water project has been constructed for Rs 3.60 lakh of which Rs 1.20 lakh was been managed for labour works and Rs 1.80 lakh for materials required,” Ram said

Also Read: Assam: Two arrested for alleged links with ULFA-I in Sivasagar

Though the district receives a reasonable 710 millimetres (mm) of average annual rainfall, it has been drought-prone because the hilly topography would aid runoff and the rocky terrain does not allow water to percolate. The water conservation structures have changed the situation.

Each reservoir has a capacity of 35,000 litres of water. Each reservoir has a water purification mechanism to supply safe drinking water to the household.

The water conservation projects have been taken up alongside of the houses constructed under Prime Minister Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G). 

Altogether 688 such raian water conservation projects have been taken up by the district administration since 2020. 422 projects have been completed, while 266 projects are still under construction,” Barmer district commissioner Arun Kumar Purohit said.

“Of 1.70 lakh PMAY-G houses were targeted, 1.78 lakh have been completed and only 5,000 houses are under construction stage,” Purohit said.

Since 1948, drinking water has been supplied to Rajasthan through a project known as the Indira Gandhi Canal Project, which project previously known as the Rajasthan Canal Project. It covers an area of 600 Km long and 45 Km wide of the Thar Desert in North West of Rajasthan. The project was first conceived on October 29, 1948, and was taken up by the Central Water and Power Commission in 1951. The project was renamed in 1984 in honour of the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Another project, the Narmada Canal is a contour canal that was taken up in Western India which brings water from the Sardar Sarovar Dam to the state of Gujarat and then into Rajasthan. The main canal has a length of 532 kilometres in Gujarat and then 74 kilometres in Rajasthan). The dam provides drinking water to 1336 villages and 3 towns in Rajasthan.

“Presently, various schemes are going on under the Jal Jivan Mission (JJM) to provide drinking water to the people. 25 per cent of such JJM schemes are already completed and people are getting water from these projects. Till now 2,765 villages of this district have been covered under JJM,” Purohit said.

When asked the DC said the changing the face of climate and global warming are not affecting this project. “There is no rain deficit in these areas. We have not seen any change in the rain pattern. In the last season also there was excess rainfall in the areas,” he said.

The DC said to meet the climate change demands, the district administration has stressed more forestation in the villages. The Bermer district has 6,992 hectares of forest cover according to a 2019 forest assessment.

“The Indira Gandhi Canal provides water to the Thar Desert. These canals also prevent the spreading of the desert to fertile areas. Very few local species of trees can survive the harsh desert climate, hence species of trees not native to the region are planted,” the DC also said.

The local government is now finding convergence of MGNREGA with other schemes to continue employing the village residents as dependency on MGNREGA has increased.