Couple of years
There is no waterfall we see
Because of the watershed treatment
Slow. It reduces the speed.
In the last episode, we took a journey with the Paani Foundation
and learned about their competition between thousands of villages
to see who can install the most amount of water harvesting structures in a 45 day period.
In this episode, we journey again with the Paani Foundation’s Chief Advisor, Dr. Avinash Pol
to the village of Velu, located in an arid area of the state of Maharashtra, that receives around 250-300 mm (8-12”) of rainfall per year.
Velu was the first place winner of the very first water cup competition held in 2016.
Velu! (announcement of winner)
(celebrations)
This was a huge deal for them.
And when I visited more than three years after their victory, they were continuing to work on their groundwater recharge projects.
This part of India receives nearly all of its rainfall during the 3 month monsoons.
They can then be dry for the entire 9 months remaining in the year.
So all of the water they have for drinking and farming comes in a short period of time,
and needs to last all the way through the long, dry season.
Once creeks and ponds have dried up after the rains, people are mostly getting water for their homes and crops by pumping from hand-dug wells.
This groundwater is the life blood of the village.
When wells run dry, villagers have to import water in tanker trucks or migrate away in search of work until the monsoons come again.
This is why recharging groundwater is the focus of the Water Cup Competition.
When water harvesting structures are built that soak the monsoon rains into the ground, groundwater resources increase very quickly,
and this is what has happened in the village of Velu, since they won the competition in 2016.
We travelled over bumpy roads to Velu village to see the unique design they have developed for recharging the groundwater table.
We arrived at the village, where we were met by a gang of older men on motorcycles who would take us throughout the watershed to see their work.
So right now we are in the Village Velu
which is in Koregaon taluka, in district Satara of Maharashtra.
This is one of the innovative projects.
On the back side of me, you can watch a percolation tank
The purpose of the percolation tank is
to percolate the water,
after the rainy season.
And it starts to increase the groundwater table.
But, but,
due to the improper site...
This percolation tank is made on a rocky area.
That's why the water does not percolate into the ground
In the rainy season, the water goes from this area (gesturing)
This is called the "waste weir".
And it reaches to the river, at least for four months.
And this water will remain for the full year,
because it is on the rocky base.
So although this reservoir has a large watershed of over 1,100 acres,
it was built over bedrock and was not soaking any water into the groundwater table.
Even though lots of rain would runoff during the monsoon season,
the water would just spill through the reservoir and flow on down the stream,
and out of the village, without recharging the groundwater table.
Meanwhile, as the village was drying up, 4 water percolation tanks, just up from the village, sat mostly empty.
These tanks were built originally to fill with rains and recharge the groundwater in the village,
but they have much smaller areas of land draining into them,
and had not filled during the last 25 years of relative drought.
The villagers realized that if they raised the level of the spillway,
what Dr. Pol referred to as a waste weir,
then the water level in the whole reservoir would rise,
and instead of all the water gushing through the spillway,
they could get the water to flow through a gate on the other side of the reservoir.
This gate then puts the water into an underground pipeline,
that flows by gravity using no electricity,
and the water is moved across the land, to the other 4 percolation tanks to fill them up.
From the tanks, the water soaks into the groundwater table,
and is stored in the ground for village and farm use.
So instead of a huge amount of water being lost out of the village quickly, as surface flow, during the rainy season,
it now seeps slowly underground, making it available not only for Velu,
but for the many villages downstream of Velu as well.
Due to this project,
all percolation tanks are now filled with full of water,
which increases the level of groundwater.
All the wells get recharged.
All the bore wells get recharged
And another important thing is that
you can hear a voice of the...
you can hear a voice of the animals.
Birds.
You can hear!
This voice, which is not heard a few years back,
because, totally, it is a dryland
Now, from a couple of years,
we preserve all this forest land.
And that's why the ecosystem also, is now changing.
Velu village is a really advanced example of the work of the Paani Foundation.
They have solved their water problems.
And of the thousands of villages that competed in the Water Cup Competition in the last 4 years,
over 1000 of those villages in the state of Maharashtra can say the same:
they have completely and permanently solved their water problems with a stable system for recharging groundwater.
They have established water resilience and defeated drought.
So what’s next?!
The Paani Foundation doesn’t use the word Permaculture to describe what they do, but their work is permaculture to its core.
From the permaculture perspective, water management structures serve as the bones of a landscape system,
and built on top of those bones, we find the body of organic soil, forests, thriving ecosystems, biodiverse agriculture, and prosperous communities.
Water is not the end of the design, it is the beginning.
The "Water Cup" competition is just the first step.
And now the Paani Foundation has moved on to the next phase of their work: the 'Prosperous Village' Competition.
This next phase of the competition is only open to the 1,000 villages that completely solved their water issues during the first competition.
The duration of this next competition is 2 years, and it goes in depth into these 6 main topics that the villages are judged on:
1) Soil and water conservation
2) Water management and budgeting
3) Restoring soil quality and health
4) Increasing tree cover and growing forests
5) Creating protected grasslands of nutritious and palatable grasses
6) Creating the basis for every family to increase their income
So imagine, for a moment, what type of cooperation and coordination it takes for a village to achieve all these goals over the entire landscape that it governs, and to win the competition.
Water and soil management on every farm and common land,
tree planting and forest establishment on private and community lands,
and having every single family in the village prosper from these developments.
These people need to truly reckon with social, economic, political, and physical realities,
in a wholistic design for their village, in order to accomplish this.
And as we’ve seen, the benefits are not just for the people,
but habitat, species diversity, and ecosystem health are also increased.
That, right there, is permaculture at its core!
The Paani Foundation has had thousands of villages recharging their aquifers,
and now, over 1000 villages working in a holistic manner on their ecological, economic, and social prosperity.
So far we’ve looked at just 2 of these villages, Garavadi and Velu, and the scale of the land that they have improved.
So imagine these projects we have seen, multiplied thousands of times.
In just 4 years the Paani Foundation has created 550 billion litres of water storage capacity
and trained 51,000 people in watershed restoration.
(Aamir Khan): It steals our food, it steals our water
Let's shoot the drought!
It steals our food, it steals our water
Let's shoot the drought!
It steals our food, it steals our water
Let's shoot the drought!
They don’t use the word 'Permaculture' to describe what they do, but I’m naming the work of the Paani Foundation as the biggest permaculture project on Earth.
Please make sure to subscribe and join us for our next episode of India’s Water Revolution,
where we travel across India, to the State of West Bengal,
where we tour the water harvesting projects in remote tribal villages,
where good work is being done on the most marginal lands by the most marginalized people.