Empowerment — Solving the intractable problem of water poverty
How can one build a grassroots movement to solve, in a timely manner, what is potentially the biggest issue facing us all?
The recent image of a dried-up lake in Chennai shook us all to the core. This is a city of nearly 20 million people — and it had run out of water. To make things worse, India is projected to have 20 such “zero water” cities by 2021.
The stats are as terrible as they are staggering:
- Currently, 600 million people in India face extreme water stress — nearly half the country
- 85% of India’s water is utilized for agriculture. However, by 2030, India will meet only 50% of its water requirements
- By 2050, water scarcity will cause a 6% drop in the country’s GDP
Water is one of the major challenges that OVBI is taking on — with a vision to eliminate water poverty and shift India from a state of water poverty to water plenty by 2030. A bold vision indeed, and we need bold steps to address the massive challenge in front of us.
Solving such a massive problem requires us to think in innovative ways. The usual top-down approach of government infrastructure water projects is likely not sufficient or can be implemented fast enough to get to the goal. What else can we do?
The OVBI approach is a hybrid one — work top-down with the government, NGO partners and local authorities (check out how we are doing this in Rajasthan) as well as bottoms-up from the local villagers themselves. This article focuses on how we are approaching the latter.
The goal is clear — empower the affected, i.e. the villagers to solve the problem themselves.
- Educate them about how they can solve it themselves
- Show examples of how it has been done
- Give tools to empower them, at an individual level
A Million Recharge Wells
Small recharge wells have proven to be wonderful at improving the local water table. The challenge is we need a lot more of these, compared to a larger check dam. The problem from a rural villager’s perspective is where to build one (i.e. precise location) and how to build it (i.e. equipment, raw materials, design, process, labour).
This is what we are hoping to solve for — using precise local terrain analysis, rainfall information to help decide where a recharge well can add value. And provide this information (along with simple to follow how-to instructions) as a packaged, simple to use mobile solution so the villager is empowered to strike out and solve their local challenge themselves.
The good news is that simpler recharge wells take only about 10 man days of work. This could mean a villager, with 4 of her/his fellow villagers, can build a recharge well, by themselves, in two days! And if a few of these intrepid villagers then share their experience and help neighbouring villagers also dig their own — now we have the beginnings of a viral movement!
Building a ground-up “movement” is hard in the best of times, but designing a mobile app solution that can be usable by the average Indian villager and has the ability to scale and be viral will be both a technology and design challenge.
This is exactly the challenge we at OVBI are taking on.
Visit our website or join our Linkedin group to stay updated!
In 2019, Overseas Volunteers for a Better India (OVBI) Water team is well on their way to meet the target of water infrastructure projects in 105 villages, creating more than 1.5 billion gallons of water capacity impacting 160,000 individuals in Indian states of Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Karanataka and Rajasthan. Our work has just started and there is a lot more ahead of us.
Your donation of only $1500, can help eliminate water poverty in a village of 2000 residents and transform India from a state of water poverty to water plenty by 2030. Learn more on the Eliminating Water Poverty website.
Join our Linkedin Group to connect with individuals around the world working on solving water issues.
