How villagers in drought prone Bundelkhand revived this river using MGNREGA funds

Small streams and rivulets are never perennial in India’s Bundelkhand region. This is a region of ravines. And even though it gets over 800mm of rainfall, because of the topography and lack of natural aquifer, almost all the rain flows away through runoff. Rivulets and streams here only have water during the monsoon season, but for most of the year they are dry. But in this parched region, a rivulet called Odi has water throughout the year. This stream is completely rainfed and only 20 kilometers long. But when Down to Earth’s team visited in the middle of March it was still flowing. What could be the reason? What made this stream different from most of the other streams in the region? And what role did Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme or MGNREGS play in its revival?. Odi starts at a place called Madawara, in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Before it empties its water at the reservoir of the Jamni dam. But in this journey, Odi also satiates the water requirements of eight villages. Work on reviving the stream began in 2018. It was completely funded by money from MGNREGA. The villagers along with an NGO drew up a three-stepped plan. The first step was to remove the silt that was choking the check dams. The villagers then deepened the streambed and finally planted nearly 25,000 saplings along the side of the banks of the stream. The roots of the trees would allow easy percolation of water into the soil helping the stream to retain water throughout the year. This work that nearly lasted for a year, gave employment to 558 families and created nearly 71,000 man-days of work. Approximately Rs one crore was spent to revive this stream. Odi’s transformation into a perennial stream also increased the fortunes of all the eight villages along its banks. The total arable land around these eight villages is about 6,000 acres. But before the waterworks, the villagers could grow only one crop, once the rains came. But after the rejuvenation, these villages could grow more than two crops a year. An additional 700 acres of wasteland was also made arable. All this led to a 69% increase in the average annual incomes of all the families in the area. The average incomes increased from Rs 40,200 to Rs 68,000 per year. The revival of Odi is testimony to the fact that water scarcity and drought need not be a curse for a water deficit region like Bundelkhand. Numerous streams and rivulets flow through the region which if restored properly could lead this water deficient region to a water surplus one.