This paper summarises the work done over the last six years to improve the supply of water in rural areas of India through specially designed training for engineers
and scientists working in the rural water sector. The programme came into being as a result of the vision of senior staff of the Drinking Water Mission in the
Department of Rural Development of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1990. Since then the support of Mission staff has continued as the responsibility for the activities of the Mission passed first to the Ministry of Rural Development
and recently to the Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment. Financial support was provided for the external input
costs to this programme by the Overseas Development Administration of the United Kingdom Government and internal costs were borne by the Mission

Jim A. Baldwin (7218353)

Sudhir N. Bhatnagar (7222292)

English

Loughborough University Institutional Repository

A   MANAGEMENT: BALDWIN and BHATNAGAR2422nd WEDC Conference New Delhi, India, 1996Sustainability through trainingJim A. Baldwin and Sudhir N. Bhatnagar, UKREACHING THE UNREACHED: CHALLENGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURYTHIS PAPER SUMMARISES the work done over the last sixyears to improve the supply of water in rural areas ofIndia through specially designed training for engineersand scientists working in the rural water sector.The programme came into being as a result of the visionof senior staff of the Drinking Water Mission in theDepartment of Rural Development of the Ministry ofAgriculture in 1990. Since then the support of Missionstaff has continued as the responsibility for the activitiesof the Mission passed first to the Ministry of Rural Devel-opment and recently to the Ministry of Rural Areas andEmployment.Financial support was provided for the external inputcosts to this programme by the Overseas DevelopmentAdministration of the United Kingdom Government andinternal costs were borne by the Mission.Mission goalDuring initial discussions about the perceived trainingneeds in 1990 it was clear that the Mission was concernedthat although most of the 5,86,000 villages throughoutrural India had been provided with at least one safesource of drinking water during the Drinking WaterDecade, sustainability was proving elusive. Improve-ment of this situation was therefore of prime concern andthe training was to be designed with the goal ofsustainability.Field situationA field visit was carried out in September - October 1990to assess the drinking water supply situation in GujaratState, as an example. The Gujarat Jalseva Training Insti-tute (GJTI) was chosen as the nodal training centre thatwould be strengthened by the training programme andmore specifically by the training methodology.Drinking water in the majority of rural areas in India istaken from groundwater sources and Gujarat is noexception.Here the drinking water supply situation was beingseriously affected by deterioration in quality and by over-abstraction, particularly due to heavy irrigation in theMehsana District. The lowering of groundwater levels byfour metres each year in Mehsana highlighted the seri-ousness of the problem.In accordance with the wishes of the Mission the train-ing programme was formulated in two distinct modules;an India field study module where a particular problem-atic rural water supply location would be investigatedand a UK module where improved awareness of newtechniques and technology would be generated.Training modulesIndia moduleFor the first training course, the India module was plannedin Mehsana with the following elements:• Week 1: Field appraisal by village visit using a stand-ard format appraisal report. This covered watersources, quality, coverage, storage and distribution,sanitation, health, irrigation demand, geomorphology,well details and historical groundwater movement.• Week 2: Data collection from institutions, includingcensus, meteorological and hydrological data, topog-raphy, remote sensing, abstraction and recharge, irri-gation, cropping patterns and NGO activity.• Week 3: Problem Analysis, including identification ofall problems revealed during the rural appraisal anddata collection phases, weighting and prioritising ofproblems and summary of key problems associatedwith water supply.• Week 4: Solution Analysis including identification ofall possible solutions that in some way address thebasic problems, assessment of the effectiveness ofeach solution in answering the key problems andprioritisation of solutions using decision analysis. Pres-entation of the solutions as a team exercise to aninvited audience and expert committee.UK moduleThe UK training was planned as an eight week pro-gramme of lectures, seminars, workshops and site visits,based on discipline modules such as exploration, re-source management and conservation. New techniquesand technology were to be introduced to the trainees asawareness training aimed at taking the ‘blinkers off’.Development of a team approach to problem solving wasanother important aim of this phase. The following listindicates the areas of emphasis:• Advanced geophysical methods• Remote sensing and GIS• Advanced well drilling and development• Resource management and conservation• Legislation and control• Catchment management planning• Water and effluent treatmentA   MANAGEMENT: BALDWIN and BHATNAGAR25• Water quality and pollution control• Modern irrigation systemsLater it was agreed that a phased transfer of the trainingcourse to GJTI would be carried out by moving UKmodules to India over a three year period. A speciallydesigned training for trainers course was also developedfor a core group of senior trainers from GJTI to strengthentheir capability and sustain the course in the future.Results of the trainingSource of traineesTrainees were provided by the parent Ministry of theMission from the disciplines of well-drilling, hydrogeol-ogy, water supply, operation and maintenance and plan-ning taken from States across India.In addition Central Groundwater Board and StateGroundwater Boards provided trainees and specialistscame from Space Application Centre, National RemoteSensing Centre and National Geophysics Research Insti-tute. This multi-disciplinary mix was essential when in-vestigating complex problems at field level to ensure allsides were represented. Inputs to the field exercise werealso sought from local NGO’s and Administration De-partments, headed by the Collector or CEO. The visits tothe villages guaranteed that the villagers themselveswere able to provide their own input as key stakeholders.Locations for the trainingThe lecture part of any India-based training was carriedout at GJTI Headquarters in Gandhinagar. The field projectwork was planned in a variety of geomorphological andsocial settings where rural water supply was a problemfor local people, as follows:• 1991  Mehsana District, Gujarat• 1992  Kolar District, Karnataka• 1993  Dewas District, Madhya Pradesh• 1994  Udaipur District, Rajasthan• 1995  Sambalpur District, OrissaFindings of the fieldwork exercisesThe Mehsana study covered over 60 villages in fourtalukas of the district. It was found that the groundwaterlevels were being depleted at a rate of 4 metres each yeardue to uncontrolled abstraction for flood irrigation on alarge scale. Drinking water sources were being directlyaffected by this over abstraction and water quality wasdeteriorating, particularly due to increased fluoride lev-els. In the 1960’s drinking water was taken  from hand-dug wells. Now, after the construction of many thou-sands of tube wells the water table is too low for any of thehand-dug wells to be sustainable.In the Kolar District of Karnataka State the field studyconcentrated on a sub-basin of the River Palar. Poor use ofscientific source finding in the granitic rocks resulted inmany sources becoming unsustainable in summer. Poormaintenance of handpumps and lack of communityawareness and participation has resulted in communitiesreverting to traditional open sources that are frequentlypolluted by animals. Large numbers of surface tanksacross the area are being allowed to become silted due toerosion following deforestation. This results in reducedstorage, reduced recharge with enhanced evaporationlosses.In 1993 the field study was in the Dewas District ofMadhya Pradesh, which has a high proportion of sched-uled castes and tribes in the area. High run-off coupledwith uncontrolled over abstraction for flood irrigationresulted in the majority of the village water supplyhandpumps becoming dry in summer. Lack of clarityover responsibility for maintenance of the equipment wasfurther exacerbating the problem.The following year the field training was carried out inthe Udaipur District of Rajasthan where it was evidentthat scientific source finding methods were not beingutilised for siting of drinking water source points. As aresult many handpumps became dry in summer, forcingwomen to walk many kilometres to find water. The lackof legislation to control indiscriminate abstraction ofgroundwater was considered to be a major contributoryfactor to the unsustainability of the drinking water sources.In 1995 the field study of 74 villages in SambalpurDistrict of Orissa was carried out. A tribal, hilly area withmany small habitations relying only on rainfed agricul-ture was clearly suffering through lack of conservationand community participation. Low levels of literacy weremaking the task of creating awareness at village leveldifficult and a number of local NGO’s became involved inthe fieldwork to help identify methods of creating sus-tainable sources. Formation of village pani panchayats orwater committees was considered amongst a number ofother options for improvement.A common threadOver the five year period of training it was clear that theproposals produced by the trainees at the end of eachprogramme, which were designed to address the ruraldrinking water supply situation in each problem area,contained a common thread of solutions. The followinglist illustrates the points that repeatedly arose in theproposals:• Use recharge to increase resources• Improve management of resources• Implement legislation and controls• Improve knowledge of the resource• Involve communities in operation and maintenance• Use better scientific source finding• Reduce abstraction by changing irrigation practicesIn addition to the above it was also clear that in everylocation data were collected on the basis of administra-tive, and not physical, boundaries. This is particularlyimportant when attempting an integrated approach towater resource management.A   MANAGEMENT: BALDWIN and BHATNAGAR26The trainees identified the need to approach manage-ment of water resources on a catchment basis. This willinvolve a fundamental rethink of the current data collec-tion methodology and would call for a far more inte-grated approach from the concerned organisations.The next stepThe Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment, throughthe Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, hasinstigated a programme of formulation of model projectsin each of the five locations used for the training pro-gramme, that will incorporate the findings of the traineesand would be based on a representative catchment area.Each project will concentrate on a river catchment area of200-500 km2 including between 50 and 100 villages andincorporating the following important elements:• An integrated approach, using a multi-disciplinary team,is being recommended; which is unusual in India.Normally organisations work in isolation with lim-ited data sharing and no common approach. Thetraining programme has enabled the trainees to iden-tify the need for change and define the blue-print forsafe, sustainable drinking water.• Recharge and conservation will require both regionaland village level activity and the involvement of cen-tral and State Groundwater Boards and NGO’s forsuccessful implementation.• Awareness and participation will only improve with thefull co-operation between NGO’s, village level com-mittees and Public Health Engineering Departments.• Changes in irrigation methods require the involvementand co-operation of Irrigation Departments, farmersand farmer based NGO’s.• Improved scientific source finding approach needs as-sured inputs from many organisations; SAC; NGRI;NRSA; CGWB in India and possibly from many world-wide centres of excellence.• Management and control can only be effective with thehelp of legislation.  Responsibility will need to be givento one organisation for the management and control ofall water resources, with the Nationally stated priorityfor Drinking Water fully recognised. The ModelProjects in the 5 States will hopefully provide theguidelines for future safe, sustainable drinking waterin the rural areas of India.The lessons learntSuccessful training requires a clear understanding of theneeds and the capabilities of the trainees. In this case theneeds were clear in the minds of the Mission and werepicked up and acted upon by the trainers. It was also clearfrom the start that the trainees had sufficient capability tosolve their own problems. What they lacked was theenvironment to carry out careful, dispassionate assess-ments of the true situation in the field. Given that facilityand the tools to analyse the findings, the recommenda-tions were arrived at with few arguments. What is nowapparent to the trainees is that although they have con-vinced themselves of the correctness of the approach tosafe, sustainable drinking water, a far more daunting taskis the one of convincing everyone else.

Sustainability through training

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Sustainability through training

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