OVBI’s The Grand Karnataka Project — Eliminating Water Poverty in Karnataka in 2 years
Many of us might have heard the recent news of villagers of Udupi, Karnataka marrying two frogs to appease the rain gods. Or the news of the man in Bengaluru, who decided to set up a camp outside the city's local civic body till he gets water in his home. There are countless stories like these, and as much as they amuse us, it also points to the desperation of the villagers with respect to water scarcity in the country. We will refrain from sharing the not-so-amusing stories of poverty as a result of the acute water crisis in Karnataka, the largest state in South India and the seventh-largest in India.
Karnataka, a state ironically surrounded by water, is also home to one of the biggest water mismanagement in the world. There are droughts every year, forcing people to come to the streets, schools to shut down and worse farmers to commit suicides. There’s also the dispute of sharing of water of Kaveri River between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which further adds to the woes, as both states are in urgent need of managing their water crisis. You can read about our work in Tamil Nadu here.
Last year as many as 1,900 villages in about 30 districts in Karnataka were facing drought-like conditions. About 2,600 water tankers were dispatched to ease the crisis. The Karnataka state government declared 3,122 regions to be severely affected by drinking water scarcity. According to the data from the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, 138 of the 176 taluks in the state have very low groundwater levels. The state has 13 major reservoirs, and as per Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, the water level at all the reservoirs has hit a record low.
And that’s where the ‘Overseas Volunteer for a Better India’ (OVBI) Water team comes in and The Grand Karnataka Project story begins. OVBI’s mission is to transform rural India from a state of water poverty to water plenty by the year 2030, and solving the water crisis in Karnataka is an extremely critical step towards completing our target. Our partners in this project are the team at IAHV, under the technical leadership of Dr. Lingaraju Yale. He and his team of 5 former ISRO geoscientists have developed technical action plans for several thousand villages in Karnataka. The implementation of this plan is carried on the ground by, the hero of this story, Mr. Nagraj Gangoli, a youth leadership trainer from The Art of Living Foundation (our execution partner). A former wristwatch assembler for HMT Watches, Nagraj, is one of our key water warriors in India driving our campaign to Eliminate Water Poverty in 5000 Villages by 2023.
Nagraj Gangoli is from a region in Karnataka which was afflicted by extreme drought. Over 50% of the population in the region had migrated to cities for seeking employment, and those who stayed behind had no source of livelihood. The central govt. had allocated millions of rupees to provide guaranteed employment for such farmers, but most villagers were unaware of these programs, and the funds never reached the beneficiaries. Nagraj decided to do something about it and came up with a brilliant plan that would not only provide immediate employment to villagers but also solve the root cause of the drought.
By 2019 his team had completed interventions in over 500 villages around the Vedavathi and Kumudhvati river basins in Karnataka providing employment to several thousand villagers in the process. Farmers in these villages now have plenty of water in their wells are now able to cultivate 2–3 crops per year and their incomes have more than doubled. Nagraj was invited by Prime Minister Modi to present at the Doubling Farmer Incomes conclave and sent out official circulars to all state governments encouraging them to replicate this model in their regions.
OVBI is now partnering with Nagraj Gangoli to scale this model to all villages in Karnataka via The Grand Karnataka Project. The project aims to cover the entire rural Karnataka and is to be completed in 2 years. In collaboration with the Govt. of Karnataka and the Art of Living’s River Rejuvenation Project team, the OVBI Water team has created a project proposal and plan to leverage the state’s COVID-19 stimulus to initiate the Grand Karnataka Project. OVBI has pledged to raise $3 million towards this project and will be seeking CSR grants, partner leveraged funds, and direct donations to raise the funds. Over and above the grant, OVBI is acting as an accelerator by providing technology and partnership leverage to this program. A team of GIS scientists is providing assessment, planning, and monitoring support to augment the work on the ground.
To ensure the success of this project, 48000 youth leaders will be trained to work on watershed management and other interventions to oversee the work with the teams. Over the next two to three years, 500k microstructures which will include bolder check dams, check dams and groundwater recharge wells will be created with the project cost estimated to be $650 million. More than 90% of that cost will be towards the employment of the farmers and the daily wage migrant workers who have returned back from the cities earlier this due to COVID-19.
The Grand Karnataka Project was started in May 2020, and even during Covid times when the productivity of in-person activities has gone down, our on-ground team in Karnataka is working on a war-footing to achieve a state of water plenty for the entire state. Working and training in very small batches, they have rolled out work in 9 districts. In less than 6 months the team has accomplished the following:
-> 894 micro-structures completed = 26 villages equivalent completed,
-> 32,515 Structures — Work Initiated
-> 9 districts kickstarted
-> 32 Trainings conducted
-> 815 Gram Panchayat Coordinators trained
-> 4 Trainers trained who are continuing to on-board more future youth leaders.
The Grand Karnataka River Rejunevation Project is currently led by Pooja Gupta and Satyadeep Purushan, Director Technology, Merchandise Planning & Inventory Management at Levi Strauss & Co. We spoke to Satyadeep to know his thoughts about this project. He says, “ It’s a unique opportunity to increase groundwater capacity across the state on a scale that has never been attempted before. It will not only bring economic prosperity to rural Karnataka but also enable nature to regain back its ecological balance right from the westerns ghats to the arid plateau. “
We also spoke to the President of OVBI, Mr. Satej Chaudhary who’s a Rocket Scientist by training and a Data Scientist by profession. He says,” The unique point about this project is that it actively engages the Government, the Geoscientists, the NGOs and the villagers to:
1. Ensure that taxpayer money is wisely spent to solve the water crisis
2. A proven scientific approach is used to address the water crisis
3. Daily wage workers benefit through job creation
He adds, “ The impact will be long-lasting and sustainable as the recharge structures are expected to recharge groundwater for decades and village leaders take ownership of maintaining the recharge structures so that we have a sustainable impact.” He finishes by saying,” It will serve as a model for scaling across to other states of India.”
The Grand Karnataka Project is our most ambitious project to date and we are seeking more volunteers to come forward to support the project. If you’d like to donate to The Grand Karnataka Project or volunteer with us, please visit: eliminatewaterpoverty.org
