I am a little girl residing in Pemana village, I have a story to tell -

We are currently doing a project in three districts of Rajasthan  for providing drinking water solutions in Rajasthan. In the course of the project, I just realised, how scarcity of drinking water is so closely related to the condition of women, particularly, Girls. Let me take an example - 

We went to 'Bhilo ki Basti' a village Hamlet in Pamana village in Jalore district. We found that there is no drinking water source which is closer than five kilometers from their home. Its a total of about five hours job, two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, that women do to fetch water per day. Generally, the job of fetching water is that of teen-aged girls, who go this far, in extreme climatic conditions so that they can fetch drinking water for the family. A sight like this is very common in the villages of Rajasthan. 

At 'Bhilon ki Basti', all these women told us that young girls are never sent to school, because they have bigger responsibilities at home. During the younger years they have to babysit siblings, and do house hold chores, when mother is out of the house, as soon as they are a little older they have to go and fetch water so that mother can be relieved and can do other things. None of these women in this picture are literate, and they have no plans to send any of these young kid-girls to send to school, either.

Compared to that ,all these boys at the back,in the picture go to school, come back home and play in the locality. They end up as school dropouts generally, and when they grow bigger, they go and work in fields. When I asked these boys, what would they become when they glow older, most of them had no idea, one odd answer came as 'police'. They seemed playful, cheerful and much healthier than the girls.  This vllage has a female sarpanch, that too belonging to the SC community. 

This lady with a little child in her lap, is the sarpanch. When I asked her to sit on the 'khat' with me, she refused and preferred to sit on the ground. The reason was explained to me later - one she belonged to the SC community, Other the men from the village who were with us , including her husband, who is called 'sarpanch pati' were supposed to sit on the 'khats'. Her 'POSITION' even if she is a sarpanch, is secondary. Will education help these women? I do not know.

If a 'tanka' ( a tank, with a catchment area for rain water harvesting) like this can be constructed near 'Bhilon ki Basti', probably the girls and other females in the locality do not have to go far to fetch water,they can have an easier life and the girls can probably go to school. We earmarked a place in the basti for the tanka to be constructed on a piece of land which belonged to Sita Devi, the lady in blue, towards the right side, in the picture above, who is a defense widow, estranged by her children, yet a strong and progressive women. Sita Devi agreed to access her land to the panchayat so that 'tanka' can be constructed. The work of accession of land will have to be completed with in the next twenty days, so that 'tanka' at 'Bhilon ki Basti' can be included in IWRM plan.


As part of IWRM project, we go to the village, for a VWHSC(Village Water and Sanitation committee), a 25 member committee, and train these 25 people so that they become empowered to generate drinking water solutions in their village, and to look after the existing resources. We take an account of the existing resources and mark them on a rough map, we estimate their water demand (drinking water - humans and animals and total agricultural demand) in the next fifteen years, based on projections, then we assess their existing resources and plan for the future resources, a lot of raw data is collected regarding populaion, SC and ST sections, number of people having no access to drinking water, literacy, school, health and hygiene etc.

All this data would be refined and be added to a state MIS system, as part of the project. We go for a transit walk around the village to have a look the existing resources, we do water quality tests, take measurements, assess capacity, take GPS readings, make a note about the recharge or the repairs required at these existing resources. Then we take proposals from the villagers for the construction of new resources like the one at 'Bhilon ki Basti' and include them in IWRM plan for the village. This plan is them given to the district administration for approval. We also suggest the ways in which the funds can be generated for these plans from different state government schemes. In the implementation phase we will get the funds transferred to the Village Panchayats, do some hand-holding when the construction work begins, give them technical assistance and then transfer the project to the village people. We have finished this work in 98 Gram Panchayats in Bhinmal and Sanchore blocks to Jalore district, in the first phase, in the next phase we have started our work in Ladnu, Didwana and Pali districts. The total project cost is about 3 crores and the project is funded by EU (Europeon Union).

My little ladies - we do all this for you.

A video  - of our work at Pamana village in Sanchore block of Jalore district.