SaciWATERs

Monday, July 30, 2012

Availability, Consumption and Water problem in Budheda and Sadhraana

Budheda, a village situated in the outskirts of Gurgaon is located at about a distance of 15 kms form the city. In Budheda, the water is a little saline; making it very hard to drink. Many of the households use PHED water. But this process of supplying water is dependent on electricity. as electricity is used to store water. However, our study revealed that sweet water is also available in some of the places. Due to the climate change and less rainfall, the underground water level is decreasing. Another reason is that the ground water is being extracted at a very fast rate, and hence the scarcity of pure drinking water. Some areas of the village witness sweet drinking water, hence the number of boring (using submersibles) in those areas are more.

Rainfall is a reason to celebrate in Budheda, because rainfall has gone drastically down with the years passing by and when it rains, it brings relief to the people. Elder sections of the people usually recall the heaviest rainfall in 1977. According to them, in 1977 it rained so heavily that the place flooded for a couple of days, and boats were used for transportation .

We also surveyed another village named Sadhraana. It is about 20 kms from Gurgaon city and 5 kms from Budheda. Sadhraana is also called as “pandito ka gaon”, which means the village of pandits. Shadrana, again houses people of different castes which include SCs, Rajputs, Brahmins, Yadavs etc. Water is again a problem in Shadrana. The water supplied by the PHED is sweet, i.e. the area where the PHED boring is done, has sweet water. But the PHED water supply doesn’t reach to all parts of the village. The water supply by the PHED is completely dependent on electricity. The water is supplied only when the power is available. The richer section of the village draw water from the pipes using an electric motor first. Hence, the poorer sections of the village always have to face the difficulty in accessing the water. Budheda and Sadhraana, both face water problems. But, the fact that water being wasted can not be ignored. Hence, people should be made aware of conserving water.

A meeting with the PHED officials and the Panchayat members of Sultanpur and Jhanjhrola khera was organized, in which it was decided that people found guilty of wasting water would be fined. Hence, in this way there would be a check on the wastage of water.

In these two months of field survey in Budheda and Sadhraana, I had a great experience, and learnt many new things. . First of all, the issues of water in peri -urban area can be seen from different perspectives of vulnerability, accessibility, etc. Culture, tradition and life-styles of those villages were interesting to note.

In Assam the water problem is very much different from Haryana. In Assam, water is a reason for many problems in the village. Every year, thousands of people become homeless due to flood. Flood washes away the crops fields; many households even face famine like situation. The situation is very devastating there. Many diseases have spread by the floods like cholera, malaria, etc. People died because of flood and the crops are also washed away. But here in Sadhraana and Budheda people face problem due to water shortage. The ground water level is about 80-90 in there. The irregularity or scarcity of monsoon rains is the main reason of low productivity of monsoon crops.

Prithviraj Borah

IIT Guwahati

Student Intern

(Gurgaon), SaciWATERs

Drinking water access in Sultanpur: notes from a Dutch perspective

When leaving for India from the Netherlands, with the purpose of field research about drinking water access in peri-urban Gurgaon, I did not really know what to expect from ‘the Indian village’. What would be people’s main water resources? Would there be a government-organized supply or would people rely more on traditional water sources? And would drinking water scarcity be an issue?

For my MSc thesis in International Development studies, I joined SaciWaters’ peri-urban project in Gurgaon for the past three months. Most of my field research was conducted in the village of Sultanpur. A large part of this village is served by government (PHED) water supply, but this supply is erratic and the quality of the water is not trusted to be drinkable by many. The supply does not reach everywhere, as the southern part of the village is excluded from the network. For drinking water, most people rely on the groundwater from public hand pumps or private tubewells. Only a few drink the supplied water and many cannot afford a filtering system. But as groundwater tables are falling, due to climatic change and peri-urban pressures, the water is slowly becoming saline, thereby threatening the potable water reserves.

Now that the research is done and I am about to return to my home in the Netherlands, it is interesting to reflect upon the water situation from a Dutch perspective. I will return to a country where 24/7 water supply is no more than normal. From village to city, no part of the country is unserved by the public water networks. Moreover, the quality of the water is said to be among the best in the world: recent research showed that Dutch tap water is of better quality than the expensive mineral water that can be bought in bottles. As we have a single-tier supply, this high quality water is also used for bathing, washing and even flushing the toilet. For most Dutch people, opening the tap and water not coming out, would be simply unthinkable. I personally cannot recall such a thing happening even once in my lifetime.

Comparing our drinking water situation to that of Sultanpur, the differences are obviously huge. The physical labour involved in obtaining drinking water for the household, is something that belongs to the past in the Netherlands. People have long forgotten about hauling water from wells and catching rainwater in reservoirs. It is eye-opening to see how the people of Sultanpur had to fetch their own drinking water to their homes. Men and women, elderly and children, all could be seen carrying the heavy matkas with about 15-20 litres of drinking water on their head or shoulders. It is hard to imagine having to do this twice a day, for drinking water only! The time that it takes to walk up and down to the pump, waiting for your turn and then filling up the pots, which requires some physical labour as well, should not be underestimated.

Another thing that struck me was the debate about the quality of the PHED supplied water: is it filtered well enough for drinking or not? Many villagers choose to remain using their traditional groundwater sources for drinking water, even though these are depleting. According to the PHED however, the water is filtered well and suitable for drinking. Such debates are never heard in the Netherlands, where the water quality is carefully monitored and tested in order to secure healthy supply. A public testing of the supplied water in the village might help in establishing more clarity about the actual water quality. Even if the water leaving the treatment plant is safe to drink, contamination might occur during the transport, caused by breakages in the pipelines.

There are many more differences that I could write about, for instance the open sewage system in many Indian villages and the enduring influence of the caste system on water security between different population groups. But one should also keep in mind that the general situation of both countries is very different. The Netherlands is a small, low-lying and water-rich country. In fact, keeping the water out is a more salient challenge than dealing with water scarcity, such as can be experienced in the hot and dry Indian summers. As a highly developed country, the investments needed for a good quality public water network are more easily made than in India, where the scale of the investments needed is much larger as well (India being 70 times bigger than the Netherlands in terms of population and 80 times in terms of area).

Doing field work in Sultanpur has been a great learning experience for me, and brought me many new insights on drinking water access. Most of all, it has shown me that many things I used to take for granted, are not so commonplace at all.

Afke van der Woude

Wageningen University

Student Intern

(Gurgaon), SaciWATERs

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Water; problems in Budheda and Sadhraana

A Peri-urban area, after an interval of time, becomes urban and comes under the process of urban gigantism. It is an area which witnesses constant change; and due to the problem of this urban gigantism the resources in those areas are depleted. Water, as a natural resource also comes under the threat of being depleted. Hence, making sure and doing our best to secure water in Peri-urban areas is a thing of priority. Budheda and Sadhraana are two villages located in the Peri-urban areas of Gurgaon city. These two villages face the problem of water. Pure, safe drinking water is a problem here.

Budheda faces the problem of saline water. Water extracted from the ground there is saline. We interacted with people belonging to many communities spreading across Rajputs, Brahmins, Yadavs, Lohaars, Naais etc. In Budheda the majority of population belong to the Harijan community. The PHED water is first stored in two tanks named “Double tunkey”, and then it is supplied to the whole village through the pipelines. There are 990 households and we surveyed 101 households. We were welcomed in some households but we were also not allowed to survey in some households.

What we learnt in Budheda regarding water problem is that the water is saline in most part of the village and the PHED water supply doesn’t meet the day-to-day requirements of the people. Rich households use electric motor to draw water, and hence it becomes more difficult for the poorer section of the people to fetch water. Same is the case with Sadhraana. In Sadhraana we surveyed 50 households, again spreading across all the communities including Rajputs, Brahmins, Yadavs, Lohaars, Naais etc. Sadhraana is called “Pandito ka gaon”, which means village of the pundits (Brahmins), but the majority of people belong to Harijan community. Sadhraana too faces the problem of water. The water supplied by the PHED in Sadhraana is sweet, but the borings in the fields and the other part of the village releases saline water, which also affects the agricultural productivity.

Budheda and Sadhraana, both face the water problems but it cannot be denied that water which reaches the households is also wasted to a great extend. Hence people should be aware and should not waste water. A meeting with the PHED officials and the Panchayat members of Sultanpur and Jhanjhrola Khera was organized, in which it was decided that people found wasting water will be fined. Hence, in this way atleast wastage of water could be controlled.

Tanmoy Das

IIT Guwahati

Student Intern

(Gurgaon), SaciWATERs

Monday, July 16, 2012

Stakeholders Workshop, Gurgaon

DATE: 22.6.2012

VENUE: RAMADA, BMK, GURGAON

The second stakeholders’ workshop in Gurgaon under the IDRC Supported project ‘Water security in periurban South Asia: adapting to climate change and urbanization’ was organised on the 24^th of June, 2012 at the Ramada, BMK, Gurgaon. Dr. Vishal Narain began by highlighting the agenda of the meeting which was mainly to:

- Assess how far the PHED had come in terms of performing the tasks agreed to at the last meeting to improve the water access of communities in the villages of Sultanpur and Jhanjhrola Kheda

- Identify any other areas that needed face to face dialogue between the water users and the PHED (Public Health Engineering Department)

- Identify the further course of action during the last year of the project to improve water security in these two villages

- Identify ways of continuing this process of dialogue between the PHED and the water users beyond the project period

Dr. Vishal Narain then highlighted some of the work that had been taken up by the PHED and the progress made since the last meeting as also some of the issues that had been raised by the PHED in relation to local water management practices.

The PHED made a few suggestions and urged the villagers to try and pursue those at their level. These included -

· Informing the PHED about the illegal connections in the village, so that FIR could be lodged against those who pursued such practises.
· Forming a Water Committee to monitor the work and maintenance of the system

Some more suggestions that came from the PHED included compulsory registration of personal tubewells with the Central Groundwater Board; otherwise they would be seized very soon by the authorities. On enquiring about the tank set up by the PHED in Sultanpur on a portion of a private land, the PHED officials informed that it could not be shifted from the current location, but the owner could be compensated. Also regarding the alternate day availability of water for some of the households in the Sultanpur village, the PHED mentioned that as per their records, they were supplying 70 litres per day per person, but due to illegal connections, most of the water was being taken away by other households leaving some without any water.

The meeting concluded with some concerns that were raised by women panch members from Sultanpur, who felt that water quality testing was very important. Apart from this, there was a need to provide an alternative source of fresh water especially considering the poor families who did not have any means of filtration. Also a pipe connection for households across the railway line was of urgent need.

Summary and Conclusions

This meeting saw a lot of change in the attitude of both the villagers as well as the PHED. Since the purpose of the meeting was to foster dialogue between the water users and providers, and to find ways to jointly improve or solve the problems, both sides conducted themselves very well. As against the usual blame game and anarchy characterising the relationship between the water users and providers, this had taken the form of a disciplined, structured and focused interaction to chalk out a future course of action.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Community Based Climate Change Training

1. Background

Khulna is one of the most vulnerable coastal cities of Bangladesh. The peri-urban communities of Khulna are often overlooked from development agendas of urban and rural government. As a part of our peri-urban water security project, we conducted a detail need assessment of the peri-urban communities and we found out that most of the community groups have no knowledge of climate change impacts. When the matter was discussed with the community level stakeholders it is understood that climate change training will be very effective for capacity building of the local communities and helps them in adaptation to climate change impacts in Khulna. Thus, we provided four community based climate change trainings in Khulna.

2. Methodology

A community based need assessment program was conducted by the ILS at different peri-urban locations of Khulna. Participatory methods (FGD, stakeholder consultation, interviews) were taken up for need assessment, training design and final training dissemination.

3. Major expectations of the communities

Before the training, we learnt the participant’s expectations from the training program. Only few participants (10 out of 80) had a little experience in topics related to climate change. However, most of participants had no training on climate change issues. The following expectations were found from the attendant trainees in the training programs:

· What are the causes of sudden change in the nature?

· To acquire knowledge on water and climate change issues

· What are the responsible causes of climate change?

· What are the causes of water pollution?

· To know the causes of water scarcity?

· Causes of sudden rainfall and excess temperature

· To know the solutions for climate change impacts

· What would be the future of water security

· Causes of water problems in Khulna

· What are governmental steps regarding climate change

· What are the causes of lowering of water table?

· To know about arsenic pollution in water

· To know about salinity intrusion

· What are the impacts of climate change on human health

· Want to know about climate change impacts and adaptation

· Why and how climate is changing

· How could we mitigate the impact of climate change and what major steps should be taken to mitigate climate change impacts?

· To know about the plan and program for climate refugee/displaced people

· How Bangladesh can mitigate climate change impacts?

4. Major discussion held

Around 80 participants attended the day long training program conducted in Khulna. Male and female participants were 50 and 30, respectively. Training session started at 10:00 AM and finished at 5:00 PM. Mrs. Umme Kulsum, a local climate change expert conducted the training sessions. She asked three common questions; which at later stage were used to evaluate the training program. The questions were:

Q1. What is your favorite season?

Q2. What is the difference between weather and climate?

Q3. What is the responsible cause of climate change?

All participants conveyed that they have no clear idea about climate change, so that they wanted to know about climate change. They wanted to know how CC is occurring and what could be done to solve the problem of climate change impacts? Mrs Kulsum gave a simple lecture on impacts of climate change that are being faced by the coastal communities of Bangladesh. Then, she related these impacts with their responsible causes (science of climate change). She also discussed the sectoral impact and adaptation strategies of Bangladesh, and how local people could adapt this situation with the available resources. In the end, Mrs. Kulsum also discussed the Governmental policies and activities related to climate and development in Bangladesh.

Finally, an evaluation test was conducted by asking questions based on the training topic. Participants conveyed that this training will be helpful for household’s awareness and community level awareness.

5. Major Impact of climate change in Peri-Urban Khulna

After a schedule discussion on climate change impacts, participants were divided into groups to document their local experiences of climate change. Documented impacts significantly varied between male and female stakeholders. Male members focused on agricultural impacts including heat stress, water logging, and environment pollution, whereas, female participants focused on water related stress such scarcity of drinking water and outbreak of water borne diseases. Female participants also documented the difficulty in collecting drinking water from long distance. They said that household’s income generating activities, such as homestead vegetable production, poultry, goat and cow rearing have been reduced significantly in their areas. The community stakeholders documented the climate change impacts in the peri-urban areas of Khulna as following:

Scarcity of drinking water
Agriculture land becoming fallow
Lowering of groundwater table
Environmental pollution due to absent in drainage system
Groundwater pollution due to flood
Human stress due to excess temperature
Households and trees damage due to cyclone which hamper communication and economic loss
Increased water logging condition
Reduction of working efficiency
Skin disease, diarrhea, and cholera outbreak
Drainage congestion due to waste
Life standard is hampered
Due to excess and less rainfall' agricultural production is reduced
Increased household’s poverty and loans
Loss in shrimp and fisheries firms
Impact on livestock and homestead gardens

6. Recommendation by the Trainee participants

Participant requested that ‘Community Based Training on Climate Change’ should be arranged at the local venue, so that more people could participate in these training programs for better capacity building of the peri-urban communities of Khulna.

Photo Album of the Training Programme

GROPUP-1: ALUTALA AND PUTIMARY PERI-URBAN COMMUNITY