Water Tanker for Har Ghar Jal certified village in Marathwada
Beginning winter, 90 villages are dependent on tanker water supply in Aurangabad district alone
Recently visited a village, Karajgaon, in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. Karajgaon is situated in the Aurangabad block around 30 km east of the city. It has recently been declared a 100% Har Ghar Jal village under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).
Interestingly, it is also in the list of villages currently being tanker-fed by the district authorities as part of drought relief measures. This again highlighted that the slipback of the schemes is a major challenge for rural drinking water supply.
Status of Water Supply in Karajgaon
In Karajgaon, water is supplied through a single village scheme (SVS) based on a well. The current water supply scheme is built under NRDWP and has a source 1 km away from the village. Under JJM, retrofitting of an SVS has been done and a new source of water has been proposed, 8 km from the village near a dam named Lahuki. Surprisingly water is yet to reach the village from the new source. In the last two years, the well had a good water level because of good rains in the region. But this year, rainfall is minimal and the well is yielding approximately 15 mins of water supply. GP used to supply water on alternate days.
Now that, the well yield is meager, the village is dependent on two water tankers per day. People also rely on private wells for their needs.
Slipback is the major challenge to JJM
Source failure-induced slipback of the schemes is going to go up in the coming months. Marathwada has received very little rainfall this year. At the start of November, the number of tanker-supplied villages in Aurangabad district is 90. This number is likely to increase in the summer with a temperature rise. There are many reasons for slipback, but the source failure is likely to be the catalyst of the slipback process, and the community may question the reliability of the water supply through such schemes. To run the scheme, ensuring water is the need of the hour. Or else we will likely be in a cycle of creating infrastructure every 5–10 years. Again, water availability is a result of efforts needed at every level of society, from governments to the community.
Prioritising Resilience
Nadiyam, a coastal village in the Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu is also a 100% certified village under JJM. It gets blended water from two sources, one from its groundwater-based SVS and the other from combined water supply schemes (CWSS). CWSS are regional schemes supplying water to towns and villages and they are dependent on dams. In a way, the village is resilient to water stresses such as drought, and groundwater depletion. There are no such arrangements for Karajgaon at the moment except meager supply from water tankers.
In a drought-prone region like Marathwada, where it is very likely that there will be deficient rainfall most of the years, building resilience is a sensible move. Some of the measures like effective regulation, changes in cropping patterns, water conservation measures, and regional groundwater recharge initiatives can help prepare for the risks. Importing water from other regions is a tricky endeavor; it should be the last option on the list of initiatives to build resilience.
There are many success stories of water management in the Marathawada region which made villages water self-sufficient, and Karajgaon can take inspiration from these villages to have a water-secure future. Though working at a smaller scale is relatively easy; attaining regional water self-sufficiency should be the goal to sustain the rural drinking water sector.
