Usage of toilets in India is over 95 per cent, reveals new NSSO survey

 The rapid survey suggests that 42.5 per cent of rural household toilets and 87.9 per cent of urban household toilets have access to water (Photo: Jitendra)

India’s Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) has released the Swachhata Status Report, 2016, which states that the usage of toilets is 95.6 per cent in rural India and 98.8 per cent in urban areas.

These figures were found in a rapid survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under MOSPI during May-June 2015. It studied 73,176 rural households and 41,538 urban households. It covered all states of India, except Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura where it could not be conducted due to logistical problems and limited availability of time.

The rapid survey suggests that 42.5 per cent of rural household toilets and 87.9 per cent of urban household toilets have access to water. The survey also talks about solid and liquid waste management. More than 36 per cent of urban areas are reported to be equipped with a proper liquid disposal system. Around 36.7 per cent of villages havepakki nali (permanent drain) and 19 per cent of villages have katchi nali (temporary/non-cemented drain) as drainage arrangement to deal with waste water coming from rural households.

The survey says that an estimated 52.1 per cent of people in rural areas practise open defecation. Among the states surveyed, Jharkhand fares the worst, with Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha showing a high rate of open defecation. In urban India, the percentage of persons practising open defecation was much lower at 7.5 per cent.

Percentage of population practicing open defecation in rural areas (Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation)

The report also brings together all relevant information about different sanitation programmes being implemented by the government. Some important findings of the report are as follows:

• The report says that more than 5.8 million toilets were constructed during the year 2014-15. This exceeds the target of 5 million individual rural household toilets.

Individual rural household toilets constructed over the years (Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation)

• Rajasthan tops the list in construction of rural household toilets, followed by West Bengal. Besides, 1,109 community sanitary complexes, 25,264 school toilets and 8,377 anganwadi toilets were constructed under Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin).

School and anganwadi toilets constructed over the years under SBM (Gramin) (Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation)

• More than 4.9 million household toilets were constructed after the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), indicating substantial acceleration in the pace of construction after its launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2,
• It is seen in graphs 2 and 3 that while there has been an increase in individual household toilets over the years, the number of school and anganwadi toilets has drastically decreased.
• In urban areas, only 1 million toilets were constructed against a target of 4.2 million household toilets until March 31, 2015.
• The new mission aimed to rope in private and public sector companies for the construction of toilets. Until March 31, 2015, only 3,466 toilets were constructed in schools by corporates, while PSUs constructed more toilets at around 141,000.
• Around 81,400 toilets were constructed under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in 2015-16 as against 672,000 toilets constructed under the same scheme in 2014-15. The number may have come down as SBM has stopped the convergence of the mission with MGNREGS. A 2015 report published by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) finds that there was no convergence of schemes from 2009-12, and between 2012 and 2014, only 6 per cent convergence was observed between the sanitation mission, MGNREGS and Indira Awas Yojana (housing scheme for rural poor).

Drought proofing India

The water level in 91 major reservoirs across the country as on April 13 2016 stood at just 35.839 billion cubic metres as against 253.388 BCM.

(Anil Agarwal, founder editor and director of Down To Earth and the Centre for Science and Environment respectively, wrote this piece in 2000 when India was reeling under one of its worst drought spells. For a detailed analysis of droughts in India, see 2016 Annual State of India’s Environment Report.)

It doesn’t matter how much rain you get, if you do not capture it you can still be short of water. It is unbelievable but it is true that Cherrapunji in Meghalaya which gets 11,000 mm annual rainfall, still suffers from serious drinking water shortage.

Now contrast with this. Just the simple richness of rainwater availability that few of us realise because of the speed with which water, the world’s most fluid substance, disappears. Imagine you had a hectare of land in Barmer in Rajasthan, one of India’s driest places, and you received 100 mm of water in a year, common even for this area. That means that you received as much as one million litres of water —enough to meet drinking and cooking water needs of 182 people at a liberal 15 litres per day. Even if you are not able to capture all that water—this would depend on the nature of rainfall events and type of runoff surface, among other factors —you could still, even with rudimentary technology, capture at least half a million litres a year.

In 1991, India had 587,226 inhabited villages with a total population of 629 million giving us an average population of 1,071 persons per village, up from 942 persons in 1981. Let us, therefore, assume that the average population of an Indian village today is about 1,200. India’s average annual rainfall is about 1,170 mm.

If even only half of this water can be captured, though with technology inputs this can be greatly increased, an average Indian village needs 1.12 hectares to capture 6.57 million litres of water it will use in a year for cooking and drinking. If there is a drought and rainfall levels dip to half the normal, the land required would rise to a mere 2.24 hectares. The amount of land needed to meet the drinking water needs of an average village will vary from 0.10 hectares in Arunachal Pradesh (average population 236) where villages are small and rainfall high to 8.46 hectares in Delhi where villages are big (average population 4769) and rainfall is low. In Rajasthan, the land required will vary from 1.68-3.64 hectares in different meteorological regions and, in Gujarat, it will vary from 1.72- 3.30 hectares (see table: Every village in India can meet its own water needs). And, of course, any more water the villagers catch can go for irrigation.

Does this sound like an impossible task? Is there any village that does not have this land availability? India’s total land area is over 300 million hectares. Let us assume that India’s 587,000 villages can harvest the runoff from 200 million hectares of land, excluding inaccessible forest areas, high mountains and other uninhabited terrains, that still gives every village on an average access to 340 hectares or a rainfall endowment of 3.75 billion litres of water. These calculations show the potential of rainwater harvesting is enormous and undeniable. There is just no reason whatsoever for thirst in India.

Therefore, it is possible to drought proof the entire country. Not just drinking water, most of India’s agricultural fields should also be able to get some irrigation water to grow less water-intensive crops every year through rainwater harvesting.

Source: India Meteorological Department for normal rainfall data and projections of average population in 2000 based on Census of India data for 1981 and 1991.

Social startups changing landscapes

Climate change has been a heated topic of debate in all circles. While every country wants to look good, they don’t want to accept policies at the cost of their ‘development’. There are conferences globally that talk about new conditions but the decisions and execution remain in the grey area.

There are positive signs though. For instance, the Indian government also announced future campaigns like ‘Fresh air, my birthright’, ‘Save Water, Save Energy’, ‘Grow More Plants’ and ‘Urban green’. On the other hand, the private sector initiatives in the country have already been proactive in the past years to promote a more responsible approach to the environment. Their area of competence varies from waste management to eco-tourism, to organic farming and so on. Here are some of them listed below:

Alternative energy

Energy is one of the most crucial elements for reducing the Co2 emissions. These enterprises have experimented different ways of producing them

Nokoda is a Bihar based social enterprise which developed a technology to convert waste into energy

Sustain Earth has created a cheap, resistant, and easy-to-use method to generate energy from cows’ manure

Urja Unlimited started from the consideration that “It is ironical that the rural poor pay twice as much as urban consumers for lighting needs” and has developed cheaper solar solutions targeted to them

ONergy operates in East India to provide clean energy solutions to villages

Waste Management

If alternative energy found a broader user base in rural areas, waste management – the most visible symptom of a polluted environment – remains largely an urban problem

Sampurn(e)arth started in Mumbai and expanded to the rest of the country, this social enterprise promote waste recycling as well as waste pickers’ dignity

I Got Garbage operates in Pune, Hyderabad, Vellore, Vizag, Hubli, Dharwad, Mumbai, Kottayam and Pondicherry. Users are encouraged to segregate waste and ‘hire a ragpicker’, who are able to earn more income by selling segregated garbage to different recycling centres.

Green Nerds has engineered a patent pending idea into an automatic garbage machine to segregate waste into easily manageable blocks.

Saahas is a Bengaluru based company that encourages waste management at a hyper local level

Clean Upper Dharamshala Project aims to clean up and recycle waste in Mcleodganj

Paperwaste headquarted in Hyderabad, picks up paper waste from individual households and corporate and take it to the landfil

EcoFemme produces sanitary pads made of fabric which help reduce the problem of disposal

In areas where the IT boom has been particularly prominent (South and West India) e-waste management has become a new concern, as well as a new opportunity for business

BinBag The Assamese Founder of the Bengaluru based start up Achitra Borgohain ensures that through his company e-waste is properly recycled.

Ecoreco has developed a technology to process e waste, being also able to export it

ReNewIt collects computers and other electronic devices disposed by big corporate companies which are still in good conditions. After fixing them and clear the data, they sell it back to the market at a very reasonable price

Eco Tourism

Eco Tourism generally focuses on the first of the three ‘Rs’ (Reduce, Recycle, Reuse), by trying to reduce the amount of waste produced by tourist.

Here you can find two links that list 12 travel social enterprises: link 1 and link 2

Organic farming

Agriculture contributes to 20 per cent of carbon emissions in the world. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN has disclosed that “Organic agriculture not only enables ecosystems to better adjust to the effects of climate change but also offers a major potential to reduce the emissions of agricultural greenhouse gases. Moreover, mixed farming and the diversity of organic crop rotations are protecting the fragile soil surface and may even counteract climate change by restoring the organic matter content.”

In India, some of the organisations involved in Organic Farming are

AgSri has been promoting the Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI), a set of agronomic practices that involves using less seeds, raising seedlings in a nursery, and following new planting methods, with wider plant spacing, and better water and nutrient management to increase cane yields.

Chetna Organic is working toward implementing organic methods for the cultivation of cotton, which is currently one of the most polluting in the world

Bee The Change taking advantage from the fact that farmers can keep bees only if they grow organic products, the Founder Shrikant Gajbhiye encourages them to introduce the striped insects in their farms. This, in turn, not only offer an additional source of income from the sale of honey and wax, but it helps increasing the annual yield.

The Apple Project works with apple growers in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and help them become owners of their organic produce.

Urban initiatives

Finally, pollution is a problem that results from the lack of communication between urban and rural worlds. Lack of information about the ‘other reality’ causes several issues like the inability of urban dwellers to distinguish between healthy and chemical products and the lack of access to urban market for organic farmers. These organisations are working in this field

The Living Greens encourages urban dwellers to cultivate their own vegetables on their rooftops to re-gain contact with the food they consume

Daana Network works with cooperatives of organic farmers and provides them with a distributing platform for their products. For the moment they operate in Hyderabad sourcing products from all over south India.

Aura Herbal has created a fashion brand to sell only herbal textiles. They are engaged both in B2B and B2C operations

I Say Organic delivers certified organic products in different Indian cities

The Bee Man

The new name for the butterfly effect is the ‘bee effect’, at least these days. These buzzing clusters of little black and yellow insects pollinate almost 70 per cent of the crops that feed 90 per cent of humanity. But this  long and intricate natural chain, created by these busy bees, has been getting altered.The sudden drop in bee populations worldwide is threatening the balance of the ecosystem with unpredictable consequences.

Shrikant Gajbhiye is the Founder of Bee The Change, which offers free beekeeping training to farmers and forest populations in Maharashtra.He argues that when bees are kept alongside farming activities, production increases between 20-200 per cent besides, of course, getting to sell honey on the market.

A study in the UK has revealed that honeybees contribute £200 million a year with the services they indirectly enhance through their activities, and £1 billion with what they pollinate. Similar studies are available in few other countries, but the function of bees in the food chain is the same everywhere. In the US, some species of bees have virtually disappeared, the European Union has admitted their risk of extinction, and in India the number of the insects has drastically decreased – some point out RFR emitted by mobile phones and towers as one of the main causes. And this alarming fall in bee numbers is alarming everyone.

Given these assumptions, talking about ‘bee effect’ to indicate the massive consequences that can result from a relatively small cause, does not seem an exaggeration..This is why Shrikant’s venture is not only about producing honey, but is directed towards broader outcomes.

Two years ago, after graduating from IIM Kozhikode, he took up a five-day hobby course on beekeeping at a government institute in Pune, and fell in love with the striped honey-makers. “I learnt some of the most amazing facts about bees and the role they play in the ecosystem by means of cross pollination.” This opened my eyes not only on the key role bees play in nature, but also on the potential they have in changing the lives of people at the bottom of the pyramid,” says Shrikant.

In the last few months, Bee The Change has trained more than 500 farmers and forest populations, and currently its network counts 50 trainees. “As part of our operations, we meet farmers in rural areas and provide them with bee boxes and free training. Then, once they start bee-keeping, we buy back the honey at a pre-determined price.Ours is a not-for-profit outfit, and we generate income by selling this honey to retailers under our own brand.”

For farmers, the proceedings of honey and wax sales are only one of the numerous gains. Bees are an investment with high returns: the crop yield increases and products become healthier. “Bee-keeping and pesticides don’t really go hand in hand because chemicals cause the insects to die. So the farmers are asked to refrain from using pesticides while rearing the bees,” explains Shrikant. This automatically reduces the use of pesticides. Twenty-five Bee the Change trainees are working towards obtaining the certification for organic farming, which they usually apply for in groups generating cooperative work.

It is not easy to persuade farmers to take up the challenge because beekeeping requires an investment. Says Shrikant:“A bee box costs around Rs.5000 and bees start producing honey only after a few months. Usually, in areas where we haven’t worked before, one out of ten farmers is willing to keep bees for a year. But once this farmer shows an exponential increase in crop production, others follow.”Also, each bee colony can give as much as two more bee colonies through division each year providing additional income.

Srikanth’s organisation works with populations in the forests a little differently:“We train them in techniques of natural honey hunting, which consists in extracting honey from existing combs without hurting the bees. This allows them to increase their income, and bees to be preserved in the wild.”

Shrikant says that there are very few organizations working on a similar models, but most of them working only with farmers, whereas Bee the Change includes populations living in the forests.“Also, these organizations have priced their products in the premium range; whereas we have kept our product accessible,”says he.

Lack of training facilities for bee keeping in Maharashtra, unavailability of bee colonies, difficulties in maintaining a system of support for trainees, getting over negative preconceptions against bees, language barriers, and lack of funds are some of the challenges Bee The Change had to go through. However, Shrikant says: “We dealt with these problems by getting ourselves trained first. We work with experts who help us with training and support, and importing colonies from elsewhere. We believe that exemplifying success stories is the best way of spreading awareness and gaining social interest.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17&v=SqV46eAioPM

Currently, the number of colonies in nature is very low. This results in the costs of mobilizing and installing these colonies is much higher than the price of the colonies itself.“We are trying to rear the bee colonies in nature, breed them, and multiply them through our network to such levels that economies of scale can be exploited to increase our operational efficiency,”says Srikanth. Moreover, to further diversify the sources of income, Bee The Change is also planning to start training groups of women to produce organic honey and wax-based cosmetics.The relevance of what Bee The Change is doing is undoubtedly huge and the team, which counts 20 volunteers, seems to have a great time in the process. Shrikant quotes Steve Jobs when he concludes:“Atleast make a dent in the universe, else, why even be here.”

However, in a venture where resources are not abundant and ambition must scale up ten times faster that the venture itself, not a dent, but a revolution is the goal.

Check more about Bee The Change here.

Rural prosperity through community action

Sunderbai Gaekwad took the toughest decision in her life a decade ago--to return to her village from Mumbai. Even the precarious existence in Mumbai's slums looked good in comparison to life in Hiware Bazar, her village in Maharashtra's semi-arid Ahmednagar district, hit by constant drought and crop failure. "The village didn't offer any hope," she says. Gaekwad doesn't regret the decision. "This year, I earned Rs 80,000 from the onions I grew on 8 acres (over 3 hectares, ha). I am no more a daily labourer," she says.

Gaekwad returned to the village in 1998 after hearing that the state's Employment Guarantee Scheme (egs) was being implemented in her village. "Work on demand was the incentive," she says. "But what made the difference was the water conservation work that the village took up using the scheme." Gaekwad started sharecropping soon after her return on 2 ha.Water ensured by watershed development gave assured returns; wages from egs work supplemented that. In 2007, she bought 3 ha with a bank loan and started growing onions. The gram sabha (village council) stood guarantee. She doesn't need egs work anymore, like most other villagers.

Returning home
Gaekwad's story is emblematic of Hiware Bazar's reversal of fortunes. In the past decade, people who had left the village in search of work have been returning in a steady stream. Going by the official panchayat records, 40 families returned to the village between 1992 and 2002 from Pune and Mumbai. They had migrated out in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the return of these families, the number of households increased to 216 in 2007. This reverse migration began in 1995 with the implementation of the egs, but the seeds of the turnaround were sown a few years before that.

In the 1970s, Hiware Bazar, famous for her champion Hind Kesari wrestlers, lost its fight against ecological degradation. With just 400 mm of annual rainfall (Maharashtra's Marathwada region in which the district lies gets 882 mm), the village needed to protect the forests in the surrounding hills--its catchment areas--but didn't. "The naked hills shocked the elders in the village. They were home to mogra flowers and fruit trees once," remembers Arjun Pawar, the sarpanch of the village from 1975 to1980. As the hills got denuded, the runoff from the hills ruined the fields. Agriculture became unrewarding. Drought was chronic and acute--a slight drop in rainfall resulting in crop failure. The village faced an acute water crisis, its traditional water storage systems were in ruins.

In 1989-90, hardly 12 per cent of the cultivable land could be farmed. The village's wells used to have water only during the monsoon. Families began to shift out, first seasonally, then permanently. Those left behind further cleared the dwindling forests for survival. "Even government officials shifted out and soon Hiware Bazar became a punishment posting," recalls Maruti Thange, a 56-year-old farmer. Shakuntala Sambole, a 50-year-old villager now an anganwadi helper, recalls the days when water was not available. "I abandoned farming my 7 acres (2.8 ha) and became an agricultural labourer, earning Rs 40 a day," she says. Now she has bought 4 acres (1.6 ha) more and grows tomatoes and onions. She earns around Rs 100 a day just from selling vegetables.

Today, a fourth of the village's 216 families are millionaires. Hiware Bazar's sarpanch, Popat Rao Pawar, says just over 50 families have an annual income over Rs 10 lakh. The per capita income of the village is twice the average of the top 10 per cent in rural areas nationwide (Rs 890 per month). In the past 15 years, average income has risen 20 times.

Implementing EGS
Hiware Bazar has scripted this miracle by using egs funds to regenerate the village's land and water resources, by creating productive assets like water conservation structures and forests. "Living in the rain shadow area with less than 400 mm of rainfall per annum has its blessings only when you know how to manage water," says Pawar.

Though the turnaround for the village began in earnest with the implementation of egs, people had started working towards a revival earlier. The panchayat elections of 1989 were an important milestone. Pawar, who won unopposed, immediately started work for water conservation.

The district was brought under the Joint Forest Management programme in 1992. In 1993, the district social forestry department helped Pawar regenerate the completely degraded 70 ha of village forest and the catchments of the village wells. With labour donations, the panchayat built 40,000 contour trenches around the hills to conserve rainwater and recharge groundwater. Villagers took up plantation and forest regeneration activities. Immediately after the monsoon, many wells in the village collected enough water to increase the irrigation area from 20 ha to 70 ha in 1993. "The village was just getting a bit of life back," remembers Pawar.

In 1994, the gram sabha approached 12 agencies to implement watershed works under egs. The village prepared its own five-year plan for 1995-2000 for ecological regeneration. The plan was the basis on which egs was implemented. It ensured that all departments implementing projects in the village had an integrated plan. ''We started out in 1995 with egs work under forest department officials, building contour trenches across the village hillocks and planting trees to arrest runoff," says Tekral Pandurang, a farmer who worked under egs.

In 1994, the Maharashtra government brought Hiware Bazar under the Adarsh Gaon Yojana (agy). agy was based on five principles a ban on liquor, cutting trees and free grazing; and family planning and contributing village labour for development work. The first work it took up was planting trees on forestland; people were persuaded to stop grazing there. To implement this, the village made another five-year plan. An integrated model of development with water conservation as its core was adopted. An ngo, the Yashwant Agriculture, Village, and Watershed Development Trust, was created as the implementing agency for development works under agy. "Villages and the government should be partners in development; but villages must be in the driver's seat," says Pawar.

The village invested all its funds on water conservation, recharging groundwater and creating surface storage systems to collect rainwater. The 70-ha regenerated forest helped in treating the catchments for most wells; 414 ha of contour bunding stopped runoff; and around 660 water-harvesting structures caught rainwater. The state government spent Rs 42 lakh under egs in the village to treat 1,000 ha of land, at Rs 4,000 a hectare. It was money well spent.

Miracle of water
Hiware Bazar is now reaping the benefits of its investments. "The little rainfall it receives is trapped and stored into the soil," says Deepak Thange, who worked on its watershed programme. The number of wells has increased from 97 to 217. Irrigated land has gone up from 120 ha in 1999 to 260 ha in 2006 (see table Intense cropping). Grass production went up from 100 tonnes in 2000 to 6,000 tonnes in 2004. Sakhubai Thange, a 70-year-old villager who has been cutting grass for the last 25 years, recalls the time when overgrazing had made grass scarce. "The efforts put in by the people of the village for soil and water conservation have created a surplus," she says. The grass-cutting season lasts three months, beginning Dussehra. Nearly 80 people go to the forest to collect grass. Rs 100 per sickle has to be deposited with the Village Development Committee, says Sakhubai Thange. Her son, Sambhaji, who accompanies her to collect grass, says, "Residents of Bhuvre Patar village come here to collect grass, aspiring to be like us."

With more grass available, milch livestock numbers have gone up from 20 in 1998 to 340 in 2003 according to a government livestock census. Milk production rose from 150 litres per day in the mid-1990s to 4,000 litres now. In 2005-06, income from agriculture was nearly Rs 2.48 crore. Projections are that the 2006-07 figures will be substantially higher, after a good monsoon, with onions alone having been estimated to fetch Rs 1.8 crore.

According to a 1995 survey, 168 families out of 180 were below the poverty line. The number fell to 53 in a 1998 survey. There are now only three such households in Hiware Bazar. "There has been a 73 per cent reduction in poverty, due to profits from dairying and cash crops," says Pawar. The village has developed its own set of bplindicators access to two meals a day; capacity to enroll at least two children in school; and expenditure on health. According to Pawar, those who can't spend Rs 10,000 a year as under these heads are considered below the poverty line in Hiware Bazar. This is around three times higher than the official poverty line. Nobody asks for work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (nrega), which has replaced egs on a nationwide stepped up scale.

Hiware Bazar's strong, participatory institutional set-up has facilitated success. The gram sabha has the power to decide on a range of issues, including identifying sites for water harvesting structures, sharing water and types of crops to be cultivated. The village voluntary body is its implementing arm.

The village's biggest innovation is its water budget (see box Water audit). The village's second five-year plan (2000-2005) focuses on sustainable uses of the regenerated wealth. Habib, a volunteer with the Yashwant trust and Hiware Bazar resident, says, "The essence of the experiment in watershed literacy comes from the gram sabha. It is here that decisions are made. The greatest environmental planners are the villagers themselves."

Save up on a rainy day

The Ahmednagar lesson drought-proofing is about managing both plenty and scarcity

A kolner village resumed its lucrative floriculture in 2005--three years after abandoning it due to drought. Raghu Thange, a farmer, has earned Rs 5 lakh this financial year selling chrysanthemums. The 15-metre open well on his 5-ha plot has water up to 6-8 metres. He has now bought five cows and plans to use organic manure for the next phase of floriculture. 

The village has learnt bitterly from the drought, says Anil Mehetre, former sarpanch of Akolner. The memory of this period--spread over three years from 2001 to 2003 has still not disappeared. The first ever cattle camp had to cater for more than 400 animals in the village; fodder was scarce, prices shot up to Rs 600-700 per tonne; crops had virtually failed even as people drilled deeper and deeper to extract groundwater for irrigation.The village became notorious as the 'tubewell-village' as the flower and vegetable farmers struggled to keep their operations going. "Ten tankers visited the village every month to provide relief for water scarcity," says Mehetre. He recalls that the entire village was in a state of deep crisis. People asked him to resign from the post ofsarpanch.

When the state soil and water conservation directorate approached the village for work under egs, there were ready takers. The agricultural department suggested work on small water structures. "During that period, almost 2,500 people worked on these structures in the village," says Mehetre. The officials of the directorate explain that during the drought, the village treated almost 400 of its 2,000 ha area for soil and water conservation by building bunds along agricultural fields. In addition, the five micro-watersheds in the village were worked upon--200 ha of continuous contour trenches were dug to hold water and over 100 earthen plugs--loose boulder dams were made on the drains to impede the flow of rainwater and to recharge groundwater.

The difference, the village leaders say is noticeable. While floriculture has resumed with added water in the wells, the big change they see is in the attitude of people. "In the past, when we had good rainfall we still needed tankers to provide us water in peak summer. But we have not seen a tanker for the past two years. Now when it rains, the water stops," says Thange. "The water level in the wells, which had plummeted to about 90 metres in 1998, is now stable at 10.5 metres in 2007," confirms Sarode Sarkale, the block agricultural officer of Nagar block.

The challenge remains as villagers continue to exploit groundwater. When asked whether the village had any restrictions on the crops it grew, Mehetre voiced his helplessness. He said it was not possible to restrain villagers from exploiting groundwater or growing water-guzzling crops. But he also said there was one difference in this good rain period now people were taking on drip irrigation so that they could better conserve water.

Thange confirmed this. "I do not want to repeat the experience of the last drought," he says, adding that he has already put in drip for his vegetable and floriculture field. He believes he will have answers when next the rain fails.

This is the question that haunts the district. Every two-three years the rains fail; sometimes for over three years in a row. When this happens the district goes from prosperity to near destitution. Every time it is more difficult to recover farmers are deeper in debt and more distressed. But this year there is a new confidence. "We can cope with less than normal rainfall because we have invested during the drought in soil and water conservation," explains Vikas Patil, director, department of agriculture of the district.


Ahmednagar district lies in the Maharashtra plateau, with flat agricultural land on undulating terrain In most seasons, the hills are bare and dry. Farmers survive mainly on groundwater and levels are declining. Rainfall is variable. In the past 15 years, many years the rains have almost totally failed--even when rains have been bountiful water has been scarce. The average rainfall is around 400-500 mm. But it's persistent failure that breaks the district's back--this happened from 2001 to 2003. Drought and devastation took over.

Water, jobs and soil
In Ahmednagar, there was a clear correlation between the intensity of drought and egs spending on watershed work and soil conservation (see graph Clear correlation).In 200 3-04, the critical drought year, spending shot up to almost Rs 106 crore, a big chunk of the total of Rs 338 crore spent between 1995-96 and 2006-07. This Rs 106 crore went towards making 201 farm ponds, doing 20,000 ha of continuous contour trenching, another 3,400 ha of compartment bunding and building over 1,000 check dam-like structures in different streams and drains to improve water harvesting. In this period the district built over 70,000 water-harvesting structures. In addition, it treated through trenching and field bunding another 190,000 ha. Of the district's area of just over 1.7 million ha, roughly 11 per cent was worked upon for soil conservation. "We have in these years of scarcity used funds to plan for relief against drought," says Patil (see graphic Ridge to valley).

 The impact is tangible, say officials, citing three indicators. First, there has been a drastic decline in the demand for employment in the last few average and high rainfall years. In 2006, the district spent as little as Rs 7 crore on building water structures. "No one is ready to work on our public employment programmes. This is because agriculture is booming and labour is short," says Uttam Rao Karpe, the chief executive officer of the district's zilla parishad. This year he says nearly Rs 50 crore lies unspent of the funds for soil and water conservation. A look at the employment demand statistics shows that April-December, 2007, only 7,000 households demanded work, as compared to the 30,000-odd in 2006-07 under nrega.

Secondly, the area under crops has increased, farmers have moved to cash crops and yields have risen. "Agriculture has become productive and lucrative," says Karpe. The best indicator is that while during drought there was a desperate shortage of fodder and farmers preferred not to sell sugarcane but use it as fodder, now there is excess sugarcane in the district, say officials. 

Thirdly, and key, is the improvement in the water table of the district because of soil and water conservation. In the district, roughly 20 per cent of the 1.2 million ha of cultivated land is irrigated. But the bulk of this--75 per cent--is well irrigated. Farmers use dug-wells, which tap the shallow aquifers, and increasingly deeper and deeper tubewells for cultivation. The district groundwater authorities monitor 200 wells to check water levels. Their data shows, on average, there has been a 5-metre rise in water levels between the peak drought period of 2003 and 2007. Analysis of individual wells across different watersheds confirms this trend. While water levels dropped to 19 metres during the drought of 2003, the near average rainfall the following year has seen an increase and stabilization. Less than average rainfall is not a problem anymore.

The key challenges in the future will be to improve productivity, with use of techniques to minimize water use and changing cropping patterns. "The district administration is promoting drip irrigation to counter the increasing use of borewells," says Patil.

The next big challenge, say officials, is to protect watersheds--mostly lands under the forest department. "Till now we have mainly worked in the storage zone and recharge zone, not in the upper areas of the watershed," says Ajay Karve, deputy director, district groundwater department.

In some cases, labourers could not be motivated to work in the hilly areas due to the lower wages prevailing there, says Mahesh Baosar, the forest range officer who supervized watershed works in upstream areas. "In some villages of the district the areas under watershed projects were treated twice, both by the forest department and agriculture department which has implemented majority of watershed works in the district," says Baosar. 

"The next phase needs to focus on runoff or hill areas," suggests Karve. This will ensure the district is drought-proofed.

The message from Ahmednagar is clear if we can create productive assets then drought relief can become drought-proofing. Currently 330 districts in India are implementing nrega. The question is what will the money for employment be spent on? Between 1995 and 2006, Ahmednagar spent Rs 340 crore, or Rs 28 crore a year on soil and water conservation. This has allowed it to cope with drought.

Under nrega, each district, on average, has spent Rs 44 crore, but the bulk of this has not been on water conservation. Despite the officially stated 'non-negotiable' focus on water and soil conservation, funds in most states are being spent on roads and buildings. Till July 2007, 22 other states have negligible allocation for water conservation. Three states--Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan--accounted for 96 per cent of water conservation works under nrega.

The second lesson is 'how' the drought relief money should be spent to create productive assets. In Hiware Bazar, the village panchayat evolved a five-year plan. It then used the money provided by different government schemes--from egs to the Total Sanitation Programme--to work its plan. It first treated the forest and the catchments for its village wells; it then took up water conservation and soil conservation. It used short-term drought relief funds for long-term development. 

This will be the biggest challenge for nrega. Conceptually, decentralization is part of the scheme. The village has to make a development plan; the district has to make a perspective plan; the projects have to be cleared by thegram sabha and implemented by the panchayat. The question now is how this scheme can indeed replicate the lessons of Hiware Bazar.

The third lesson is the role of coordination between the 'on what' and 'how' factors. In Ahmednagar, it is clear that the potential of water conservation will only be realized when the watersheds under the control of the forest department are part of the programme. But even that is not enough. These watersheds, which are used intensively by people to graze their animals, will only be protected if people are involved in planning and reap the benefits. Similarly, all the water recharged through soil conservation and water-harvesting work will not be enough if people overuse and over-exploit. This will require the management of plenty as much as that of scarcity.

It is here that village institutions like those in Hiware Bazar hold the key. While every village may not be able to curtail the use of water or control cropping patterns, it is clear that local leaders will have to find ways of dealing with sustainability. They know that the failure of rains is inevitable. The question is if they can make sure that when the rains fail, drought is not inevitable. 

Yes, small farms can be profitable!

Rupees 10 lakh every year, from one-hectare (ha) land -- an unbelievable proposition for all those bought up on the much-propaga ted idea that small farmlands are unprofitable. But Ramesh Chander Dagar has made this proposition into a reality. A visit to his farmland in Akbarpur Barota village, Sonipat district, Haryana can be quite an eye opener. The farmland resembles the laboratory of any agricultural scientist. Says Dagar, "I am a simple farmer, who has studied only up to the 10th standard. I used to keep hearing claims of the government that small land holdings are not viable for agriculture. And that set me thinking. About four years back, I set aside one ha from my agricultural land and started experimenting on it. Today I am confident that this land can give a minimum income of Rs 10 lakh per annum." 

Dagar follows what is known as integrated organic farming. "Such farming does not merely mean not using pesticides," he says. "It also comprises many other practices such as bee keeping, dairy management, biogas production, water harvesting and composting. A good combination of all these practices is sure to make organic farming successful, both ecologically and financially," adds Dagar. 

Today he is busy spreading the message of integrated organic farming in his home state. With support of other farmers, he has set up the Haryana Kisan Welfare Club, which has branches in all districts in the state. Close to 5,000 farmers are active members of this club and they are fast spreading the word around. In states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat there are now efforts at replicating organic farming clubs. 
Learning by doing Dagar started farming with a mere 1.6 ha land in 1971; today he owns close to 44 ha, all of which is completely under integrated organic farming. A clear understanding of three factors -- the market demand, the natural resources available and maintaining the product quality -- helped him succeed. Most organic farmers find it difficult to get good markets for their produce, but not Dagar. "Before sowing a new crop, I first do a market survey and understand the demand. It is only when I am 60 per cent sure of getting returns, do I take 40 per cent risk," he says. And in most cases it works to his good. 

Almost all seasonal vegetables, fruits, paddy, wheat, mushroom and flowers are grown organically in Dagar's farm. He has also started growing exotic vegetables and fruits, such as lettuce, baby corn and strawberry, for export. This innovative farmer has set aside one ha for research purposes (Dagar's research lab). "Through this land, I want to prove wrong all those who doubt the profitability of organic farming. With a bit of hard work and understanding of nature, any farmer can earn a minimum of Rs 10 lakh per annum. I do not understand why everyone is running after a job?" he asks. 
Dagar's research lab Dagar's lab oratory is a visual extravaganza. One can witness composting taking place at one end, flowers growing at the other end, a farm pond with fishes, and a biogas plant. And all these elements in his farm are interlinked through various agrocycles and together generate an annual income of Rs 13-14 lakh (see table: Farm gold). Moreover, the farm saves precious energy by using solar power.

Farm gold Source of income Annual income (Rs in lakh) Vermicompost 5 Dairy 1 Mushroom 3 Honey 4 Fishery 0.3 Total 13.3 Source: Ramesh Chander Dagar 2004, Akbarpur Barota village, Sonipat, Haryana, March 30, personal communication

Let us look at the cycle of vermicomposting followed in Dagar's farm. "Almost all Indian farmers burn the left over of paddy crop, locally known as pawal. Actually this is an excellent raw material for vermicompost (compost made using earthworms). Through its use, I produce 300 tonnes of vermicompost, annually," says Dagar. "A part of that is consumed in the fields and rest is sold at a rate of Rs 3 per kilogramme (kg)," he adds.

Dagar claims vermicompost is the best soil-nutrient for not only does it help the soil retain moisture but also reduces water consumption by almost 25 per cent. He provides 2 kg of earthworms free of cost to farmers, who pledge to go in for organic farming He also uses thepawal to grow mushroom, which fetch him close to Rs 3 lakh per annum. Apart from vermicompost, Dagar also produces the normal compost; the total annual generation of manure from his farm is about 600 tonnes. Dagar aims to increase this to 1,000 tonnes by the end of this year.

Another agrocycle at the farm is dairy, biogas and composting. There are about 50 buffaloes in Dagar's dairy. Their gobar (manure) is fed into an 85 cubic metres capacity biogas plant. Setting up the plant cost him about Rs 1 lakh. The gas is then used in his personal kitchen, and also used to run the fodder-cutting machine. The 'waste' from the plant goes to the composting pits.

Dagar's farm pond is the site of yet another innovative cycle. Most farmers avoid having such a pond since that would eat away precious agricultural land. Says Dagar, "We tell farmers to go in for water harvesting, but do not make sure it makes economic sense to them. This predicament set me thinking. And I decided to go in for water harvesting, which also gives immediate benefits." His farm pond collects rainwater, which is used in the dairy to wash buffaloes. "I have also introduced fish into the pond; that fetches me about Rs 30,000 per annum. So, I am not only recharging groundwater, but also making money out of it," explains the organic farmer.

The most important element of Dagar's farm practice is bee keeping; it increases his crop output by 10-30 per cent (bees are very effective in natural pollination). Also the honey produced has great demand . Dagar has about 150 bee boxes; each generates about 35-40 kg of honey. His total annual income from honey is Rs 4 lakh. "Bee keeping is a very profitable business that can be undertaken by even a landless farmer. And one farmer can benefit an area of about 2-3 km, the normal area covered by one bee," says Dagar.

Dagar has also set up solar panels at a total cost of Rs 4 lakh; he spent Rs 67,000 on it and the rest came from a government subsidy. At his farm, solar power is used to run the pump that draws groundwater for irrigation. The surplus power is used to recharge batteries of the household inverter. The farmland has a green house spread on an area of 500 square metre, which is used to grow expensive crops that fetch him Rs 1 lakh per annum.

Spreading the word 
Today Dagar is busy spreading the word of integrated farming throughout the country. Farmers from Haryana are playing a lead role in the mission. The Haryana Kisan Welfare Club gives hands-on training on organic farming. Since most farmers cannot come to the district clubs, workshops are organised at village level. In February this year, a gathering of about 4,000 farmers was organised at Sonipat. Apart from farmers, experts, agricultural scientists and bureaucrats were invited. But Dagar concedes that motivating government machinery towards integrating organic farming is a big task. "Jo sarak sarak kar chale who sarkar (The government is something that crawls along slowly)," he remarks casually.

But Dagar is not waiting for government help. He has made organic farming his mission."I keep experimenting with various crops in my field. For instance, right now I am trying to grow a Chinese plant, which is 300 times sweeter than sugar but is cholesterol free. If I am successful in my venture, I will recommend it to others. Since the plant has medicinal value, it has a huge international market," he says. Way back in 1987, Dagar had introduced baby corn in Sonipat on a mere 0.40 ha plot. Today, almost 485 ha land in Sonipat is under baby corn cultivation.

Future challenges 
With success come new challenges. The cost of organic food is priced higher than food grown with the use of chemicals. Dagar has tried to turn this adversity to his advantage. He makes use of good marketing tactics to exploit the high premium on organic food. He has also tied up with voluntary organisations that market organic food. To be doubly sure, he himself conducts market research to ascertain the demand for various organic foods.

Another, problem for organic farmers like Dagar is that India lacks a streamlined procedure for certifying organic foods. Also one kind of certificate is not valid for all countries. "Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority is the nodal agency which addresses the issue of certification internationally. It has about 10 companies registered under it, of which only one is an Indian firm. A day's visit of a company official costs about Rs 15,000. Which Indian farmer has so much money?" asks Dagar.

The Haryana Kisan Welfare Club has taken up this issue with the government, but without success. Finally it approached a Gurgaon-based private company for certification. The company should start work within a month. The club is following group certification scheme where rich farmers will subsidise the certification process of the poor ones. But it is high time, the Indian government facilitates the procedure and supports farmers like Dagar.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/