In my engineering element !
Trip Start
Feb 24, 2007
1
6
14
Trip End
Mar 09, 2007
Sihgrawan Khurd village, Chhatapur District, Madhya Pradesh,
India
Saturday, March 3, 2007
The village now has an electric pump which pumps the water from the source (1.5km away from the village) to 3 water tanks within the village. Before the women and children spent a large part of the day walking to the source to collect water, now they have a short walk to the water taps at the tanks. The water is dosed with chlorine to ensure its safety, interestingly there wasn't a single health and safety sign around the chlorination, and quality is tested regularly. A simple open drainage system has been constructed alongside the road to drain all the run off water and this is used to irrigate land.
...and an old "Soak Pit"
I discussed the drainage with one of the partners engineers, as it was actually quite silted up due to the high sediment load, and was assured that it was regularly cleaned out by the villages. The villages pay 30 Rupees a month per family for the water supply (a small number with a connection to their homes pay 60 rupees for the better service). This money is used for the operating costs (electricity for the pump and chlorine) and for maintenance and continued improvements. A huge part of the work in the village has been the construction of the irrigation wells, these open wells store water from the monsoons, help to recharge the aquifers and are deep enough to supply water even at the end of the dry season. Each of the 17 wells cost 1 lak to and took 4 months to construct by hand.We then returned to the village and listened while the villages discussed the improvements and how it affected their lives. The women were hugely interactive in the discussion asking us questions about our lives and explaining how they saved up to 5 hours a day by not collecting water and how everyone was now cleaner with clean clothes. Before every house hold had someone ill with stomach problems and Diarrhea, now Diarrhea and malaria have now almost disappeared from the village. Every person in the village owns some land and with the irrigation systems even the poorest farmer can earn and extra 10,000 rupees a month from selling crops at market
An irrigation well
. With a certain supply of water they can now grow different crops which include, chilies, wheat, sugar cane and ground nut. The wealth of the village has increased 4 fold since the project began and there are now more tractors in the village and 60% of people have upgraded their homes, as a real sign of our times they were keen to tell us that 40 families even have a mobile phone! We the obliged by singing a couple of numbers from our rapidly expanding repattoir which now includes 'you are my sunshine' and 'Holi Holi' and the women joined us to dance and celebrate the success of the village. For me though, the highlight of today was the visit to the check dam structures. Designed by the partners engineers (there are 3 who cover 47 villages between them) these simple but impressive 2m high reinforced concrete gravity dams store flood water from the monsoons, which is then used to irrigate the land in the dry season. There are 5 check dams in series with a catchment area of 15km2, each dam supplies 500 acres of previously un farm-able land with water, and the resulting crops were flourishing, including the carrots and radishes, which we got to taste! The dams and "River Dhasan" were dry, as region is drought declared and has had no rain since July 2006, when the monsoon finished 3 months early, but the flood water was enough to supply the crops in the crucial growing periods
Drying Chillis
. In this project the partners are really helping by providing the technical solutions and helping the community request the funds and assistance from the local government.Each dam cost 476500 rupees and took 20-25 people 3-4 months to construct by hand. 90% of the cost was supplied by the government with the community providing the rest and the labour. It is amazing to see how much effect simple engineering (yes i do know I'm sad) can have on a community. Life in the village is still rural and hard work, but people are making a good living and the improved health, wealth and happiness was overwhelming.
After a late lunch in a service station on route we set off on the 4 hour drive back to Gwalior. The journey with Useff (now mine and Dan's best friend) was interesting and after ridding the world of mosquito's and wasps we discovered that giraffes would have very sore throats but look great in mini skirts! :)
