Strategy

The Art of Living devised a three-pronged approach for its river projects:

Comprehensive: Provide local solutions in a scientific manner that mimic natural systems for restoring water.

Sustainable: Solve the immediate needs of giving people access to safe water and also create systems that ensure reliable supplies in the future.

Community-driven: Empower local communities through capacity building frameworks.

Two main reasons for the success of our river projects are

• adoption of a structured, strategic planning process
• all the steps adopted to reach our goals has fulfilled the 3 pronged criteria

These are the steps adopted:

Desilting river beds and water bodies: It deepens the river bed, making it possible to collect more water. The silt can be used by farmers as it is rich in nutrients.

Tree plantation: The loss of tree cover has been, to a very large extent, one of the sole causes of the drying up of little streams that emerge from the hills and feed rivers.

Boulder checks: Made of local stones only, this is a local yet scientific solution to slow down the speed of water, in turn reducing soil erosion.

Recharge wells and bore wells: Sustainable, community driven solutions to recharge underground water. They are well like structures that are dug in the path of the river and lined with locally made cement rings. They allow water to percolate to the water table underground.

Water pools: Made at the conjunction of two streams, these pools have a specific layout - a smaller pond to trap silt and a larger pool for storing the overflow.

Change in the cropping pattern: The aim is to wean farmers away from water intensive crops and chemical farming to natural farming and crops that symbiotically nourish each other.

In our effort to revive rivers, we naturally align ourselves to the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals 6, Water and Sanitation, and 13, Climate Action.

Boulder Checks - slows the speed of water

Recharge Well - takes water underground

Water Pool - an oasis for cattle

Our village has been facing a water problem for the last 15 years. Now we have water in wells and the groundwater is abundant, not only in our village but in the vicinity as well.

- Balaraman, Farmer, Salamanthanam village, Vellore district, Tamil Nadu

The Impact

From improving groundwater levels to employment generation, our river projects have created a long-lasting and powerful impact. Following are our areas of impact:

A rise in groundwater levels: The primary impact of the river restoration projects has seen improvements in groundwater levels in the 7,500 sq. Km implementation area, over 65 percent of which is classified semi-critical, critical or overexploited by the Groundwater Surveys and Development Agency (GSDA).

Increasing farmers’ incomes: The consistency in water supply has augmented farmers’ incomes through improved agricultural yields and increased the number of crops per year, directly reducing farmer suicides.

Curbing water tanker mafia: This has helped to curb the water tanker mafia that has proliferated in the target regions during the past decade.

Community engagement and employment generation: A significant proportion of these river restoration projects, executed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, generated 6.5 lakh days of direct rural employment.

• 900 jal sevaks (water warriors), trained through capacity building workshops, created focused grassroots leadership in the villages.
• 30,000 people were further sensitized through multi-level engagement, consisting of training, meetings and mass media use.
• This approach of community engagement facilitated social equity, for instance in the Naganadhi River Rejuvenation project in Tamil Nadu, nearly 90 percent of the ongoing project workers are women.

Multiple partnerships with the governments: The success of the projects undertaken in partnership with the governments has resulted in major changes to the water policy and current government structures.