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By Nachiketa Desai With guidance from the NGO Utthan, women from traditional, feudal households in Saurashtra, Gujarat, are taking charge -- promoting water harvesting, ousting moneylenders and insisting that development projects provide employment to local villagers
Before India got independence in 1947, some 200-odd princes ruled over Saurashtra, the jaw-shaped land of Gujarat jutting into the Arabian Sea. Though all these princely states have long since merged with independent India, traditional and feudal attitudes continue in Saurashtra. In a male-dominated society, women have no say in ways to meet their basic needs of water, food, fuel and fodder. Women here fight a savage battle for survival, walking kilometres to fetch drinking water. The older women in the region have seen wells and ponds dry up, and drinking water turn salty, muddy. This has brought about serious health risks. Neither the women nor their men realised how they were depleting their natural resources by using more and more water to irrigate their lands. Or the follies of switching to cash crops such as cotton and groundnut which require more water, more chemical fertilisers and more pesticides. Groundwater levels fell and seawater began seeping into the wells and ponds. Both the land and water resources turned saline. As grasslands became scarce, the cattle began to starve. People started selling their cows, bullocks and buffaloes. Many milk cooperatives were forced to close down. The once verdant land in the coastal Bhavnagar and Amreli districts of Saurashtra began to seriously deteriorate. This was an area that once boasted rich mangroves and orchards! Emergence of a mass movement This was the scenario in the coastal region of Gujarat when Utthan, a non-governmental organisation, started organising the village community to find sustainable solutions to their basic livelihood problems. Founded in 1981 by four professional women, the Utthan Development Action Planning Team started their work in the Bhal region of Ahmedabad. Utthan began by educating and organising the women on livelihood issues. Several village-level institutions were set up in the region. Pani samitis (water committees), mahila samitis (women committees), yuvak samitis (youth committees), watershed committees and gram sabhas (village councils) were formed to address problems related to water, sanitation, health and employment. A powerful women's movement emerged and an institution called Mahiti was created. The movement put such pressure on the local/state-level bureaucracy that the Gujarat Water Supply and Sewerage Board (GWSSB) was compelled to support decentralised rainwater harvesting structures in the villages. Till then, the GWSSB was supplying drinking water through pipelines, a centralised system that not only bred corruption but also was one of the main causes of violent conflict. The social movement initiated by Utthan and Mahiti in Bhal focused on community-managed drinking water resource development. The success of this community organisational process inspired another noteworthy social protest by women. The protest was aimed at an exploitative indigenous money-lending system run by the Darbars, the most powerful caste in the area. The agitation not only brought an end to the entire system, it also gave the women an opportunity to organise themselves into vibrant community groups and undertake their own savings, credit and income-generating activities. Utthan withdrew from Bhal in 1994 after helping Mahiti build its organisational capability to continue their development efforts in the region. The movement spreads Armed with the rich experience gained in Bhal, the Utthan team decided to move on to 10 villages in the adjoining Bhavnagar and Amreli districts which also had a feudal legacy and similar geoclimatic conditions. As in Bhal, the Utthan team began organising various community groups around basic livelihood issues. Such community effort not only created an awareness among men and women about the causes of their sufferings, it also gave them a platform to express their views, discuss various options and arrive at a consensus in the village on ways to solve their problems. Discussions, film shows and visits to the Bhal villages -- where women were playing a key role in the creation and management of natural resources -- sent out the message of women's empowerment, participation in decision-making, planning and solving of basic livelihood issues to the people of the 10 villages in Bhavnagar and Amreli. Through Utthan's intervention, the women of Bhavnagar and Amreli districts have identified and implemented various sustainable drinking water schemes such as rainwater roof harvesting systems and the construction of check-dams which help in recharging wells to meet the needs of the entire village. Such measures have reduced the people's dependence on the government. They have made the villagers self-reliant and given them a sense of ownership. The measures have also attempted to reverse the process of corrosion and degeneration of water and land resources. A new awakening In Neswad village of Bhavnagar district women members of the pani samiti organised themselves despite the disapproval of their husbands, eventually winning the men over and including them in the community development process. The Gujarat Water Supply and Sewerage Board (GWSSB), a state government agency, and the Royal Netherlands Embassy, had decided to fund a drinking water supply project in Neswad village. A well was to be dug downstream of a check-dam, where potable drinking water, free of fluoride and salt, was to be made available. The water was to be brought to the village through a pipeline, stored in an overhead tank, and distributed through stand-posts. The project was to be executed by the gram panchayat (village council elected through popular votes for a five-year term). The sarpanch (head of the gram panchayat) favoured mechanised digging of the trench to lay the pipeline, arguing that this was not only a more economical but also more efficient way of completing the project in the shortest possible time. But the women of the village were against the mechanised digging. They wanted the digging to be done manually, with labour from the village. The sarpanch was against this, apparently because if he let the villagers do the digging and earn wages, he would lose out on the commission assured him by the supplier of the digging machine. Leading and articulating the women's demand for employing manual labour were members of the local pani samiti, Monghiben, wife of the sarpanch's younger brother, and Baluben, wife of the deputy sarpanch's elder brother. Baluben's husband forbade her from going out and socialising with other women members of the pani samiti. Baluben said she would not go out provided her husband also restricted himself to the home and did not mix with his friends. The embargo continued for a few months until the local Navratri festival when, being a balladeer and bard, Baluben's husband could no longer afford to abide by the agreement and went out to mix with his friends. The ban on Baluben's movement outside the home and meetings with other women had to be lifted. Meanwhile, Monghiben continued to rally support in the village. Ultimately, the sarpanch was put to shame when some villagers volunteered to dig the trench for free so that the more needy could be employed and receive wages. Unable to withstand the moral pressure from the rest of the village, the sarpanch gave in and agreed that the trench would be manually dug. The women, on their part, assured the sarpanch that the task would be completed much before deadline. And so it was. While work on the overhead tank and the stand-post for the water supply scheme continued, the women noticed that the contractor was mixing more sand in with the cement, at the cost of quality. They raised the alarm and the contractor was made to account for his actions. These are but a few examples of how women, when they are made aware of their rights and empowered to take active part in managing natural resources, can fight corruption and achieve sustainable, decentralised and eco-friendly development.
Of sensitised men Rabada is one of five villages in Amreli district where the Utthan team has been active since 1995. As in many other villages, the water in Rabada's wells too had become saline and the groundwater table had fallen. The villagers, in consultation with the Utthan team, constructed a check-dam on the nearby Ramtali river. This helped raise the groundwater table. More water is now available for irrigation. This has had a direct impact on the lives of the local farmers. Ramjibhai Gajera is one such farmer. He owns 50 vigha of land, of which he could earlier irrigate only 20 vighas. Now he is able to irrigate all his land. In the past, he grew groundnut, millet and grass on the land. Today, because of the extra water, the groundnut yield of his land has gone up from 300 kg to 350-400 kg. Ramjibhai could have decided to grow only groundnut on the entire land, thereby earning more. But he decided to retain the same ratio of groundnut, millet and grass. Because of the increased yield, he not only gets more groundnut but also 200 kg of millet and 10,000 kg of grass. "If I had grown groundnut on the entire land, I would have earned more cash. But then my wife would have had to walk miles to collect fodder for our cattle," says Ramjibhai. With the additional income, there has been a great improvement in the quality of life for the entire family. Because of the watershed development programme, under which check-dams have been constructed, wells recharged and alternative methods of harvesting rainwater put in place, people in the 10 villages of Amreli and Bhavnagar districts have been able to meet most of their drinking water, fodder and fuel requirements through locally-created sources. (Nachiketa Desai is a Gujarat-based journalist) InfoChange News & Features, November 2002
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