2007-07-10, by John Ringland
Before joining the conversation, please read and accept this Invitation to a Conversation.
I've been busy building a system theoretic ontology in OWL - I doubt if
that'll make sense to many people - I'll explain another time - but below is a
very uplifting story I came upon on the net
here - it's also a great metaphor for many things.
Hope in the midst of loss
[This is the story of] the river Arvari - which till the early
Nineties had dried up. Today, it flows quietly in the scorching heat,
despite scanty rainfall during the past three years.
How the people of Rajasthan, which has no perennial river running through the
State, brought back dead rivers - Rupa, Sarsa and Arvari in Alwar districts - to
life for their own benefit is a story that needs to be told and retold, as a
lesson to others in practising simple traditional wisdom.
It is a story of people who did not give up facing the environmental problems
in their area - chronic drought, degraded land, distress migration and poverty.
Neither did they get bogged down by the administration.
The ecosystem of the Aravalli range, which earlier sustained the region, has
been ravaged since the Seventies. Monsoon run-off washed away the top soil,
crops failed regularly, women trudged long distances to fetch a mere pot-ful of
water, not a single blade of grass could be seen for grazing cattle, aquifers
emptied. Through the Seventies and Eighties, Aravalli lost 40 per cent of its
forest cover and each year, four per cent of the Aravallis was becoming a
wasteland, according to reports.
The fate of the entire region was such that, recall old-timers, the richest
and the poorest of the villages were the same as far as their economic condition
was concerned. Ecological destruction had caused economic and social
degradation. Yet nothing was more dramatic than the transformation of the
villages along the banks of the dried up Arvari in the following years.
It was in October 1985, when five young men arrived from Jaipur to Kishori
village in Thanagazi Block in Alwar district - declared a "dark zone" by the
State then, owing to lack of water. They belonged to Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS),
and NGO. Though not quite realising it the men had actually come to the right
place at the right time.
Talking to The Hindu, the TBS secretary, Mr. Rajendra Singh, reminisced: "It
was like coming to a battlefield, not knowing whom to fight. Then Mangu Ram
Patel, an elderly man from nearby Gopalapura village, told us to talk less, dig
tanks and build johads to get results."
It was an eye-opener for TBS representatives. Before they lost rights over
their common lands and forests, the people of the region had a rich tradition of
building johads - small earthen check-dams which capture and conserve rain
water, improve percolation and recharge groundwater. The tradition was still
alive in the collective subconscious, but yet no one was willing to come forward
and help.
For six months, 15 members of TBS worked up the first talab (pond) and only
after it got filled up with rainwater were people convinced, and word spread
like wildfire in all neighbouring villages. Since then, TBS - which acts more as
a facilitator now - with the help of villagers, has constructed 3,500 such
water- harvesting structures in 650 villages of Alwar.
Between 1992 and 1997, the region received good rain and the direct result of
conserving water in johads brought life to the rivers of the district. The
Arvari, particularly, has become a lifeline now, helping locals contradict the
myth that the present precarious drought situation is due to the failure of the
monsoon alone. For those who judiciously harvested water, there is no drought -
be it Rajasthan, Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh.
According to Mr. Rajendra Singh, despite poor monsoons since 1997, the basin
of the Arvari has discovered perennial water, prosperity and abundance which is
seeing the people through difficult times now. As against only seven per cent in
1985, the entire agricultural land is under cultivation now, while the milk
production has increased ten fold. "Every single rupee invested in a johad,
increases the annual income of the village by four times," he said.
The people have shown that without any Government support, they have
rejuvenated a degraded landscape. They have shown that good water management
means prosperity. It took only 20 per cent of the trapped rainwater to
regenerate the place and revive the river.
Strict rules have been self-imposed to use both ground and river water. Water
intensive crops like sugarcane are not allowed. To ensure that the Arvari
remains clean and to solve any dispute, 70 villages have come together to form
the Arvari Parliament.
Today, in all aspects, Alwar district comes across as a huge success story.
"But then it was not without its share of hurdles," pointed out Mr. Rajendra
Singh. If at all the Government did anything, it only created obstacles. In
1985, when the TBS volunteers constructed the first-ever johad in Gopalapura
village, the State Irrigation Department immediately served a notice for "committting
an illegal act" because under the law, all streams and rivers are owned by the
State.
Later when TBS motivated the villagers to plant trees in the upper part of
johad's watershed to prevent it from getting silted up, the State Revenue
Department slapped a fine of Rs. 5,000 for illegally planting trees on its land.
Yet again, when the Arvari regained full flow and the ecology improved, the
State Fisheries Department banned villagers for fishing but allowed private
contractors. But each time the villagers persisted, fought and won because it
was they who had earned everything for themselves.
The story of Bhaonta-Kolyala and its neighbouring villages only proves that
the marginalised should not wait for a tragedy. The poor should not always have
to pay a price for the Government's constant search for ineffective
mega-solutions and critical neglect of micro-problems. The people only need to
be given a sense of hope to achieve the impossible. Alwar's landscape, today,
dotted with waterbodies and flowing rivers, is not a mirage in the desert. It is
a reality to be made an example of.
Before joining the conversation, please read and accept this Invitation to a Conversation.
|