UNDP felicitates 40 Indian women as ‘water champions’

NEW DELHI: “Everything begins and ends with water for us,” said Aruna Das, a resident of Amtula village in the Lakhimpur district of Assam. Das is a 44-year-old Dalit farmer who learnt the importance of water and her rights over it the hard way. A flood in 2017, caused by a dam upstream Ranganadi river that passes through her village, destroyed everything in its wake – property, cattle, crops. It contaminated their drinking water and dumped sand in the fields leaving them uncultivable. “We still can’t cultivate crops properly,” said Das. Pushed to even more poverty than before, Das began to educate herself about water. How to conserve it, manage it and use it. She was trained by the People’s Action for Development, an NGO and a partner of Oxfam India.
Das got women of her village located in the Mahakali river basin to form a Water User Group. Together, they raised their voice against the problem of flooding. “We ensured that the river embankment was constructed and now people in our community are aware of the value of every single drop of water,” said Das. As part of the Water User Group, the women in the village met with local officials and initiated the process of getting proper water connections in the village. Five households have already got water supply and the rest will get soon. The Water User Group also educates women about various government schemes and entitlements they are eligible for. According to Oxfam India, from April to June 2020, 344 families from 12 project villages in the Mahakali basin, have engaged with local administration and leveraged resources worth Rs 11.6 lakh from five government schemes to absorb the shocks of Covid lockdown. In addition, more than 3,600 women have increased knowledge of their entitlements and have improved their skills and influence in water resource discussions in groups.
For her advocacy work, Das was felicitated as a ‘water champion’ by the United Nations Development Program in June.
Like Das, Ramandeep Kaur, 26, is another water champion. Her advocacy work in her village Palia Kalan in Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh educated the women on how to save water and deal with water contamination.
“The biggest change that has come about with awareness is that we now know water is not infinite. Earlier, we used to think we can use as much water as we want, but we can’t,” said Kaur who taught women in her village to use water judiciously. For example, not let the tap running while washing clothes and dishes, turning off the water pump at the right time to prevent overflow, and reusing wastewater for watering plants. Kaur, along with other women in the village, formed a Water Management Committee that looked into the problem was water contamination.
A nearby nullah was seeping industrial effluents into the groundwater that the village used for their needs. “As a result, people keep falling sick. Sometimes with skin problems or with gastric issues. Whatever villagers own goes into getting medical treatment,” said Kaur. All the women in her village took this matter to the district magistrate who intervened and now works is on to prevent the nullah from contaminating the groundwater.
The UNDP felicitated 40 women from all over India as water champions. Of these 40, Das, Kaur and Jugoda Das, another community worker in Lakhim district in Assam, have been trained by Oxfam India under its TROSA (Transboundary Rivers of South Asia) project. It works in the poorest of the riparian communities in Saralbhanga, lower Brahmaputra and Sharda river basins spread across India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal with the objective of reducing poverty by increasing the communities’ access and control over riverine water resources.
“We are working on three rivers in India – Sharda, Saral Bhanga and Brahmaputra -- and in 65 villages located along their banks,” said Shobhit Chepe, lead consultant, TROSA. These regions didn’t have access to water resources. “For example, in Palia Kalan in UP, women were never part of decision-making on the water even though they use it the most. Now, women are the primary responsibility holders there, taking calls on how, when and where to use their limited water resources,” Chepe added.