People power delivers groundwater solutions in India
A village-based groundwater project in India, supported by ACIAR, has provided the foundation for an approach that now underpins India’s national groundwater program and is being trialled in several other countries.
Early support from ACIAR has provided vital proof of concept for a groundwater management strategy in India that develops expertise within local communities. Known as Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustaining Groundwater Use through Village-level Intervention, or MARVI, the project has connected smallholder farmers with actions they can take to conserve the groundwater they use for irrigation.
It has helped village communities to recognise groundwater as a shared resource that provides both farming and domestic water supplies, and to work together to manage it. This includes the introduction of a new legal structure for community-level, cooperative groundwater management.
Professor Basant Maheshwari from Western Sydney University leads the MARVI project which began as a 4-year ACIAR-supported project in 2011. Following the initial project’s success, MARVI has continued to evolve and expand, earning growing support in India and internationally.
Working with villages
Professor Maheshwari said the advent of electric and diesel pumps in India had allowed farmers greater access to groundwater to irrigate crops. But it had also increased the rate at which the aquifers were depleted.
This has proved an increasing challenge in India in recent decades. Regulation has had limited success in improving aquifer management. Recognising this issue, Professor Maheshwari developed the MARVI project in 2011, tapping into the power of communities to find solutions.
Image
Bhujal Jankaars, local groundwater experts, take groundwater measurements from a well and record them in the MyWell app developed as part of the MARVI project.
He said the project began by assessing the available groundwater resources and ways to improve supply.
‘We looked at ways to improve the recharge of aquifers,’ said Professor Maheshwari. ‘For example, we put check dams on local creeks, which hold up the surface flow water in places where it’s likely to connect with a local aquifer.’
It also trained local farmers as citizen scientists, called Bhujal Jankaars (BJs), a Hindi word meaning ‘groundwater informed’. Professor Maheshwari sees the BJs, and building the knowledge and skills of local people, as key to the success of MARVI.
Each village has its own BJs, trained to check groundwater levels, rainfall, water quality and other parameters, and share this information and what it means for future water supplies with their communities.
We’ve also tried to help local farmers understand what they can do to use less water but still maintain or improve their livelihood income – growing crops that use less water, for instance, mulching crops, or using different irrigation methods such as drip or spray irrigation.
Professor Basant Maheshwari Western Sydney University
This has introduced farmers to a range of options, which has led them to change their cropping and water use decisions. ‘But we really see ourselves as facilitators, rather than telling them what to do,’ added Professor Maheshwari.
MARVI also specifically engaged women in target communities, who often saw themselves as unconnected with groundwater issues. But when aquifers run dry, women and girls are usually responsible for carrying in domestic water from neighbouring areas, often from many kilometres away.
‘When you explore the issues with women, they realise that, yes, they do have a role,’ explained Professor Maheshwari. ‘So we expose them to ways to take part.’
Image
Expanding on MARVI learnings, villagers are coming together to form Village Groundwater Cooperatives. Photo: MARVI
This includes potential roles as BJs. In the initial project only one of the 36 BJs was a woman, but many more have been trained in these advisory roles as MARVI has expanded.
The project has also provided learning resources to schools, community groups and other organisations to help local people understand groundwater as a shared resource, and the need to monitor and manage it.
Support and expansion
Professor Maheshwari said when MARVI first began it was a small-scale project to improve groundwater management in 5 villages in the state of Rajasthan and 6 villages in Gujarat, focusing on practical help for local people.
‘The support of ACIAR in the beginning was essential,’ he said. ‘ACIAR provided the funding and the ACIAR approach allowed us to develop a hands-on approach that would make a difference on the ground and connect with the people in the villages.
By the end of the 4-year project, we had a proof of concept to show that you can engage with local people, who can monitor things on the ground and start making changes.
Professor Basant Maheshwari Western Sydney University
Early support from ACIAR then transitioned to support from the Australian Government’s Australian Water Partnership (AWP), which joined with the Government of India and the World Bank to scale up MARVI’s approach.
Today the MARVI approach is part of the Government of India’s $US1 billion national groundwater project, Atal Bhujal Yojana, which is developing village water security plans and interventions for 20,000 villages in 7 states.
Internationally, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Botswana are already trialling the MARVI approach, and the support of the Australian Water Partnership may see it expanded to Laos, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
The MyWell app developed to help monitor the 350 wells in the initial project now allows users to add a site anywhere in the world. They can record water levels in wells or other structures, and check rainfall and other dam water level data. The app is available in 11 languages used in India as well as Arabic, Farsi, French, Khmer, Lao, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Thai and Vietnamese.
Joint management
Professor Maheshwari said the groundwater aquifers that villages in India draw on are often very localised. It has taken many years of monitoring and discussion to help farmers recognise that they are all drawing from the same resources.
‘Through community engagement and monitoring, farmers have started to understand the limits of their local groundwater system. Falling groundwater levels are a village-level issue and need to be tackled at the village level,’ he said.
Image
A local Bhujal Jankaar or BJ (groundwater expert) discusses groundwater science at a meeting with others in his village. Photo: MARVI
Village Groundwater Cooperatives are a new development for the MARVI program. These voluntary cooperatives provide a legal structure that allows villagers to jointly manage their groundwater resources. Six cooperatives are expected to be formed in 2024.
Professor Maheshwari said it was gratifying to see farmers and villages come together in this way. These cooperatives are the first of their kind in India to achieve groundwater sustainability at the village level.
Extended impact
Dr Robyn Johnston was the ACIAR Research Program Manager, Water, in the closing stages of the ACIAR involvement in MARVI. She said the project’s success shows how local involvement and ownership of research can make a real impact.
‘I think the real power in this project is getting everybody together to understand what’s going on and having local people as a trusted source of information,’ said Dr Johnston.
‘At the end of the ACIAR-supported project, we worked with the Australian Government’s Australian Water Partnership to promote the results, which has then taken the program further, moving it into the development space.
‘The scaling up of MARVI from a research project into a broader development initiative is the ideal outcome for ACIAR investments,’ added Dr Johnston.
Learn more about the project, ‘Improved village scale groundwater recharge and management for agriculture and livelihood development in India’ via the ACIAR website.
The Bunnings hardware store chain, although a favourite of Australian gardeners and renovators, is not the sort of place you’d associate with a scheme to tackle one of the most pressing problems facing agriculture in the developing world.
But villages in rural India are using $5 rain gauges bought from a western Sydney Bunnings store by Professor Basant Maheshwari as part of an innovative scheme to give them control over how their groundwater is managed.
ACIAR has partnered with Western Sydney University to provide an efficient water management tool for monitoring groundwater reserves as large parts of India bake in extreme heat and record droughts forcing the evacuation of whole villages.
