Rainwater harvesting, an ancient solution, could counteract fluoride contamination, gender inequality, and a warming climate in the state of Rajasthan.
By Fraser Byers, Circle of Blue – July 24, 2024
JAIPUR, India – Since 2019, the Union Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has advanced an ambitious national program to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of rural Indians.
This flagship policy is called the Jal Jeevan Mission, and its goal is to connect every rural household to piped tap water. Across India, the initiative is supported by state governments, with an allocated budget of approximately $45 billion.
Such investments could be transformative for people who spend hours each week walking to distant wells to fetch water for cooking and bathing yet still must contend with contaminated water sources. In the last five years, some 117 million Indian households have gained piped water connections, according to official statistics.
But despite significant public investment, rural community leaders expressed concerns to Circle of Blue about the success and long-term viability of the Jal Jeevan Mission.
In Rajasthan, a semi-arid state in northwest India, the mission was intended to be completed by 2024, but progress has lagged behind other areas. Currently, just over half of the state’s households have been connected. Only West Bengal ranks lower. Even a connection does not mean water flows. Rural leaders in Rajasthan highlighted instances where taps remain dry despite the completion of new infrastructure. They also raised broader concerns about the project’s resilience to climate change.
In addition to the government’s capital-intensive, dam-and-pipeline approach, they suggest that some of the funding allocated to connecting rural areas would be better spent investing in a less flashy technology: household and community rainwater harvesting, which they believe offers a more sustainable and resilient solution compared to centralized mega-projects.
“The government’s solution is to pipe water from the Bisalpur Dam, rather than look to local decentralized water harvesting solutions,” said one local NGO leader. “Water scarcity is not new in Rajasthan, but if communities do not feel a connection and responsibility of their water supply, there will be overconsumption.”
These concerns are echoed in the administrative halls of Jaipur, the state capital. This month, senior officials from the Public Health and Engineering Department stated, in an interview with the Times of India, that water demand is likely to exceed the capacity of Bisalpur Dam within the next three years, leading to regular supply cuts. The Bisalpur Dam lies on the seasonal Banas River. The dam is the primary source of drinking water for over 4 million people, and provides surrounding farms with the ability to cultivate more than a single harvest over the course of the year. The storage capacity of the dam is particularly important during summer months when the Banas River dries up.
A prominent local leader who shares these worries is Om Prakesh Sharma. Sharma has dedicated over 30 years to finding socio-technical solutions to water issues in rural India. By training he is a civil and water resources engineer, yet he has developed an expertise in combining traditional methods of water harvesting with modern approaches and climate science.
Sharma emphasizes that improving safe water access through rainwater harvesting is a better solution amid changing rainfall patterns already evident in Rajasthan. From his perspective, “small-scale locally managed water harvesting in Rajasthan is climate adaptation.”
Gleaming with enthusiasm, Sharma recently opened a training session in a motel conference room by leading a powerful chant. Thirty rural community leaders in attendance repeated in unison:
“Now there is a crisis on the rivers, all the people are together, now there is a crisis on the Ganges, all the people are together!”
The focus of the session is rainwater harvesting in Rajasthan, which is plagued by groundwater contaminated with dangerous levels of dissolved fluoride, heavy metals, and salinity, and where the arduous task of fetching water from distant wells falls mainly on women and girls. Like in most of rural India, drinking water in the villages of Rajasthan generally comes from wells.
Even with a tap water connection through Jal Jeevan, these communities are vulnerable to water shortages when reservoir levels plunge. Earlier this summer, as temperatures soared above 40°C, communities in Jaipur relied on water tankers as reservoir levels reached crisis points, necessitating supply cuts. There is growing concern that rural households, lacking the funds to pay for emergency water deliveries, may be forced to rely on contaminated groundwater sources instead.
Rainwater Harvester Puri (left) stands in front of her house beside NGO leaders Om Prakash Sharma (Middle) and Shri Banshilal Bairwa (Right) Photo by Fraser Byers.
The day after the meeting with community leaders, Sharma traveled to a village in the Dudu Panchayat Samiti region, sixty-five kilometers west of Jaipur. New blue pipes from Jal Jeevan construction were clearly visible, weaving between houses, but residents were frustrated that no water flowed through them. Puri, a grandmother and an early local adopter of rooftop water harvesting, has formed a close bond with Sharma and the local social development organization, Prayas Kendra Sanstha.
Greeting Sharma, Puri points to a pipe running from her roof into a 15,000-liter concrete tank beneath her porch. She tells him that there is a small blockage reducing the water flow. He assures her it will be fixed.
Puri and her family, with the help of Prayas Kendra Sanstha, constructed the system over twelve years ago. It supports their household of seven with water for over nine months each year, replenishing with fresh water during the 28 days of average annual rainfall. Puri explains that before the system’s construction, she and her daughters walked four kilometers three times a day to fetch water from the community well. The clean rainwater has not only spared them these exhausting trips but also prevented the joint pain, sickness, and diarrhea caused by the previous water supply, which held high concentrations of dissolved fluoride and other contaminants.
With more time and better health, Puri started a small sewing business, and the appeal of the rainwater harvesting system helped her son find a wife looking for the same autonomy. Sharma agrees. He laughs and says earnestly that “every daughter-in-law now wants rooftop rainwater harvesting.”
Unlike the changing climate, the dangerous levels of dissolved fluoride, heavy metals, and salinity in Rajasthan’s groundwater are primarily the result of natural processes. Beneath the surface, rich fluoride-bearing mineral deposits have been steadily leaching into the water table. Moreover, water from Sambhar Salt Lake percolates into the subterranean reservoirs, compounding the crisis. The over-extraction of groundwater, a human-induced factor, has accelerated this natural deterioration, lowering the fresh water table and transforming fertile lands into what Prayas Kendra Sanstha describes as “land fast becoming wasteland.”
Sambhar Salt Lake – Rajasthan July 2024 Photo by Fraser Byers.
These contaminants are a health threat. People in the region who drink well water can suffer from skeletal fluorosis, a disease in which the bones are weakened by too much fluoride. It is a debilitating condition for which there is no treatment. Preventing excess fluoride in drinking water is the goal.
Since Puri’s rainwater harvesting system was built, 111 of the 148 families in the village have adopted the technology. Hers is only one of 106 villages looking to rainwater harvesting in the local region, with far more across the entire state of Rajasthan. Realizing the benefits, new homeowners now include these systems during construction, eliminating the need for assistance from Prayas Kendra Sanstha. Sharma speaks excitedly about their progress to build larger tanks, over 21,000 liters, that can retain enough water to last through drought years.
One recent project in a local government school is a point of pride in this region. In 2022, Prayas Kendra Sanstha built a water harvesting system and a connected water filtration system. Sitting in his office, the headmaster lauded the numerous health benefits it has provided the students. Before switching from pumped water to rainwater, many students suffered from chronic joint pain – a sign of skeletal fluorosis. Today, he says, these symptoms are all but gone.