Population growth and an increasing vulnerability to climate change means that India faces an uphill task in effectively and efficiently tackling its water problems. It has shown that almost 54 percent of India faces high to extremely high water stress, and resulting in heightened agrarian distress in the country.

India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development,( NABARD), launched a Water Campaign on 22nd March 2017, aimed at covering around 1, 00,000 villages across 200 districts in vulnerable and water stressed areas in the country. The main objective of the campaign:- is to reach out to the rural communities to promote awareness around the need for conservation, preservation, and the efficient use of water resources. To that end, issues such as rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, and better agronomic and irrigation (more crop per drop) practices will be promoted. For this initiative, NABARD has partnered with the Swami Vivekanand Shiksha Samiti(SVSS)

Activities & Output of Campaign:-
As part of this initiative, a ‘Day in a Village Campaign’ will be organized in all the villages by the appointed Krishi Jaldoots (water ambassadors) in each district. The water ambassadors will be selected from local farmers and individuals with a good grasp and knowledge of the problems of their respective areas. The Jaldoots will interact with the villagers and spread awareness using various communication aids including posters, visual documentaries, street theater, and folk art.

A Jal Samvaad has also been planned, which is an interactive forum for group discussion focusing on water-related issues, and identifying local best practices and solutions to tackle them. The session will also educate the villagers about various government initiatives and schemes focusing on water and agriculture.A resource mapping exercise will be conducted in the target villages. This will help identify key water structures in the villages, their existing status, renovation needs of existing infrastructure, and innovative solutions to address the water issues of the village.The aim is to create a Water for Agriculture Resource Map, with input from the villagers, which will help local panchayats, NGOs, banks and other agencies undertake activities for water conservation through government schemes, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).

One of the target state under NABARD’s Water Mission is Madhya Pradesh, a state in district Sehore, Bhopal with a long history of acute problems of drought and water shortage, and continued water disputes with its neighboring states. State authorities believe water conservation is an important area of focus, and have been trying to spread awareness regarding the same. SVSS will be involved in effectively communicating and generating key messages from the Water Campaign for mass circulation and awareness. The outputs generated from this campaign like the resource maps, good water management practices and emerging livelihood options and investment potentials would inform and help shape SVSS’s ongoing efforts to climate proof. Outcome of Campaign:NABARD’s Potentially Liked Plans (PLPs) for select districts of M.P. The PLPs trace out credit plans for the year 2016-2017 in key areas like agricultural infrastructure, farm credit and renewable energy, among others. There is a huge potential to develop effective climate change adaptation practices through bringing in the right kind of investment and ensuring adoption of sound techniques in areas such as irrigation, planting of crops, and animal husbandry. SVSS will work to incorporate cost-effective climate adaptation strategies with mitigation co-benefits in the selected districts. One of the aims of this exercise is to provide a good framework for scaling up such ground level practices on a larger scale in future.

In the context of the water campaign, SVSS would also help in monitoring the progress and success of the campaign through specifically devised indicators focusing on knowledge dissemination to farmers, enhanced credit flow in creation of water infrastructure, increase in area of irrigation and improvement in farmers’ overall income in Sehore, Bhopal District of Madhya Pradesh.Through this initiative, SVSS hopes to support NABARD in its mission to find people-eccentric solutions for managing water stress in India, an important step in the country’s development agenda. 60 farmers groups (3-4 farmers per group) have taken to micro-irrigating their farms and have benefited 264 households. The Block Model of Irrigation (BMI) has been implemented in Rajukhedi hamlet in Sehore district of M.P. Here 18 small holder SC community farmers whose lands are adjacent, have set up a common system for micro-irrigation of their otherwise degraded acre of land. The water management together with the System for Crop Intensification has brought in incremental returns in crop productivity. The campaign is supported by Nabard.