Jal Jeevan Hai campaign in Rajasthan

To create awareness among rural communities regarding water conservation and water efficient technologies, as agriculture sector is the largest consumer of water, Jal Jeevan Hai campaign was launched by NABARD from 22nd March, 2017 in collaboration with CEE in 21 states across the country through a cascading model to reach out to 1,00,000 villages. CEE acted as a knowledge partner for the campaign. CEE developed educational awareness material, master trainers training manual, module of 'A day in a village campaign' for the Krishi Jal Doots (KJD) and provided training to the master trainers identified by NABARD. CEE conducted training of about 200 master trainers, who in-turn trained 8000 KJDs. The campaign reached to about 1,00,000 villages spread across 21 states of the country with the help of KJD.

In Rajasthan, the campaign extended to about 6550 villages. As part of the campaign, 2 Krishi Jaldoot (KJD) per 25 villages were trained to facilitate 'a day in village' during the awareness drive. CEE Jaipur team facilitated district level Krishi Jaldoot (KJD) training programmes in May and provided handholding support to the master trainers (MT) in the sessions. CEE took a session on use of mobile application for monitoring of the activities at village level, organisation of Jal samvaad, and orientation about the IEC material to be used by the Krishi Jaldoots in the villages. In June, CEE supported sessions on resource mapping and jal samvaad with the local community during A Day in a Village programme in villages of Nagaur and Bharatpur. An enthusiastic participation of people was reported during activities in the villages, despite of acute temperature. A proactive participation of women was seen in the activities, especially in Shramdan for revival and construction of water bodies.

This campaign not just created awareness but the KJDs also worked with village communities to prepare participatory water resource map of the village and also list action points to further augment the village water resources through various means such as use of innovative, water efficient technologies and practices in farming, renovation of existing water harvesting structure, enhancing potential of storage bodies, or even creating new structures. Thus at the end of the campaign, there is a rich data base of water resource maps of around 6550 villages across 27 districts of Rajasthan and some action agendas emerging from this. As the KJDs have been the implementers of the campaign at ground, to capture the experiences of KJDs and rich insights that they have developed through their one to one interaction during the campaign, one day debriefing sessions were organised in 27 districts in July and the findings were documented.

Each of these session brought together KJDs, MTs from the district along with representative from various line departments of the state government and key institutions (developmental institutes and research centers) working in the sector. Key stakeholders involved were District Administration, Water Resource Department, Department of Forest, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Department of Animal Husbandry, Department of Agriculture, Department of Horticulture, District Industry Centre, Rajasthan Marudhara Gramin Bank, Baroda Rajasthan Kshetriya Gramin Bank, District Cooperative Bank, District Lead Bank and other commercial banks. Opportunities and challenge for taking the initiative further were listed down. During the session, KJDs appreciated resource material prepared by CEE and shared that it was very useful to share innovative techniques, since it had pictorial graphics and allied information about it, especially the flip chart. Resource material helped them to organise sessions and improve awareness and understanding about need and technology for conservation and effective management of water. KJD shared that they have received a request on calls from those villages, which were not involved in the campaign. Inhabitants of these villages came to know about the campaign from newspaper and through their relatives. During the debriefing sessions, KJD shared that realizing the importance of conservation of water, Shramdan was done by villagers in almost all the villages during the campaign for variety of task like revival of traditional water bodies and community water storage tanks. An enthusiastic participation of women was also seen in all the activities during 'A day in Village' and also in sharmdan. MGNREGA team also provided their support in these tasks during the campaign. Repair of leakages of tanks and anicuts were also done. Action at individual level were also taken during the campaign like adoption of drip irrigation, construction of farm ponds, farm bunding (medbandhi) at farms, construction of rain water harvesting system.

Thus the concept of Jal Jeevan Hai campaign was highly appreciated due to its bottom to top approach leading to ownership among the villagers. Initiatives under the campaign were well covered in print and electronic media and were appreciated by district administration