Watershed move: When a village shares a vital resource

A unique water conservation project based on sharing resources in a drought-prone region of eastern India has revived farms and wells, easing women’s workload and empowering them

Roli Srivastava

Farmer Pari Sahu shows a pumpkin on her farm that sources water from a neighbour’s well in Bhagatpur village, Odisha on March 1, 2025. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

BHAGATPUR, Odisha: The rising sun casts a golden glow on Pari Sahu’s farm in eastern India, lending a soft radiance to an oversized pumpkin on a vine. A batch of cabbages bigger than footballs bursts from the dark, wet soil, and a pair of green brinjals peeks out from behind the foliage. A water pump hums steadily in the background, feeding water from a neighbour’s well to Sahu’s farm.

The farm has drawn sustenance this way for years now in Bhagatpur’s unusual paradigm where water belongs to everyone even if it originates in a privately owned well. White and pale orange water pipes in the village snake through roads and alleys, connecting the water from its wells to farms and households in what analysts believe is an unusual sharing of water in a rapidly warming world. Equally pertinently, they say, this has given women like Sahu a rare freedom from the drudgery of fetching water and also a steady income from farm produce.

Farmer Pari Sahu poses with a water pump that draws water from her neighbour’s farm in Bhagatpur, Odisha on March 1, 2025. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

Bhagatpur, a small village of 135 families, is located in eastern India’s Odisha, one of the country’s most drought-prone states. Nearly half the men from this village have for years migrated in search of work to cities or the nearby Angul town dotted with coal mines and steel factories. The women always stayed back, spending hours every day to fetch water—until a water conservation project turned the tide on water scarcity in this village and 40 others. The villages are now a case study of sorts, drawing visitors from other villages keen on emulating this solution.

“It wasn’t like this when I got married and moved to Bhagatpur 20 years ago,” said Sahu, 42, pointing at her lush one-acre farm, a freshly plucked beetroot from it in her hand. “My parents had a well at home, but here in this village there was a water crisis. There was no farm or well in my husband’s house.”

Sahu said she would draw water from the community well for cooking and bathing. “I had to stand in long queues,” she said. “Everyone would crowd around the well, and fights often broke out. I have seen difficult times.”

Water pipes snake through the village roads in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, March 1, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

In a heartening turnaround, the village, which earlier had just two community wells, now has 70. Additionally, villagers have dug water harvesting pits to capture rain water and allow it to seep into the ground, thus recharging the ground water level, a source for many lakes.

The villagers’ pragmatism in sharing water even from private wells is partly an offshoot of a traditional way of community living, but mainly rooted in the availability of water in wells and farm ponds that followed the water conservation project which brought together the State, a nonprofit and people. “It is all solved now,” said Sahu, adding that she had to just turn on a switch for the pump to draw water from the well.

OF WOMEN, MIGRATION & WATER SHARING

Farmer Saudamini Pradhan trekked to the well multiple times to fetch water but now just puts on the switch that pumps water from the well to her house in Bhagatpur village, Odisha on February 28, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

India, the world’s most populous country, is also one of the most water-stressed.  Agricultural production in the country is mainly dependent on the monsoon, which has become increasingly unpredictable, denting yields or even destroying entire crops. The climate impact on agriculture, the biggest employer in the country, has fuelled farm distress, with farmers citing water scarcity as a common reason for them to migrate to cities.

Water is women’s business in most parts of the country. They trek miles every day to fetch water, carrying heavy containers and pots on their way back. In cities, brawls break out every year in heat-stressed cities as taps run dry.

In Bhagatpur, the two community wells where local women spent hours to draw their share, would almost dry out every year from March until June or July, said villagers. Campaigners of the nonprofit Foundation for Ecological Society (FES) recalled that when they visited the village for the first time in 2008, “trees and shrubs were sprouting from dry wells”. The FES had come with a mission: to implement the watershed project in this water-starved region for India’s apex development bank NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development).

“There was little income here,” recalled Madan Pradhan, a Bhagatpur resident. “The farm produce was scarce and we were not getting the right price for our harvest. I had to take up work as a coal truck driver, as I could not meet the household expenses with only farming.” The men of the village thus worked in mines in neighbouring Angul town or sought daily wage work in distant cities such as Mumbai. Some even became cooks in restaurants, said local villagers.

Former truck driver Madan Pradhan poses for a picture in front of his house in Bhagatpur village, Odisha on February 27, 2025. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

Women took care of their households, a crucial part of which was fetching water. “I spent four hours a day getting at least 40 buckets,” said Saudamini Pradhan, Madan’s wife, standing in front of her house where two water pipes lay, connecting wells to different houses. “I would get tired; sometimes I even had a fever in the summer months. But I had no choice. The family needed water.”

Saudamini would wake up at 5 am to finish all the household chores like cooking and cleaning utensils before setting out to fetch water. “I had to go to the well every time we needed water, which was through the day,” she said. “It’s only in the past seven years that things have improved.”

While the community wells weren’t too far for the women of this village, the water level would plummet as temperatures soared from March to June, stretching their time at the wells. Rising heat in the state, which dries up water bodies, has also increased the distance that women have to trek for water and added to their waiting time at tubewells by up to half an hour, according to a 2020 research project that mapped three districts of Odisha.

Enlisting women was thus critical for the project’s implementation, said FES campaigners—not only because they were the primary users of water but because they “had the most experience of farming and the hardship involved in fetching water”, which would help take forward the idea of sharing water as a common resource.

A well connected with a pump and pipes to supply water to the village in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, February 27, 2025. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

“Water is gold for the rural community. The more water you have, the better your chances of making more money,” said Swapna Sarangi, head of Gender, Diversity and Inclusion (GDI) at FES, who is posted in Angul and was the team leader when the watershed project was being implemented. “Men weigh everything in terms of profit and loss,” she continued. “For women, water is water. They share.”

However, getting women involved, although key to the project’s  implementation, also turned out to be the biggest challenge since they rarely ever took on lead roles in the village. “But their experience with the drudgery involved in repeatedly venturing out to fetch water helped them invest in our proposed solution,” said Sarangi.

FES’s campaigners made multiple visits to Bhagatpur and persistently held sessions over nearly two years on what the project could potentially do for the village and how the water should be used collectively. To temper expectations of miraculously quick results, villagers were told early on that they should not expect immediate returns on their labour but that benefits would emerge in the long run. “We told villagers that this was the way forward for long-term water security,” said Ashutosh Roy, district development manager with NABARD.

THE PROJECT

A farm pond which was constructed as part of the watershed project in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, March 1, 2025. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

Watershed projects have demonstrated “effectiveness in responding to global challenges of water supply, land restoration, climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and fighting hunger”, according to the United Nations’ review of about a dozen projects it supported in different parts of the world, including Ecuador, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkey. The Indian government too has for decades implemented watershed projects for water and soil conservation.

But experts note that the projects often suffer from lack of community participation. “Active community involvement, which is there during the construction stage, doesn’t extend to the maintenance part,” said T Vijaykumar, a senior government official who leads Andhra Pradesh state’s natural farming project.

Vijaykumar also sounded a warning note: after the project was complete, if farmers continued using the synthetic fertilisers and pesticides that were part of their traditional farming practices, the envisaged aim of protecting soil nutrition and the water level would not succeed.

In the case of Bhagatpur and the 40 other villages where the project was implemented, NABARD funded 84% of the total project cost while the villagers invested their labour, which amounted to 16% of the cost. They dug trenches and  percolation tanks, built bunds to arrest water flow, created new farm ponds and repaired existing ones. Asking villagers to contribute to the project in the form of labour was critical to nurture a sense of “community ownership” of the project, said officials. 

A water pipe laid across the road to connect wells and farms in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, March 1, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

Most of the wells and ponds were located on private land but constructed by the community, which gave all the villagers a right to the water. “Besides, how long will a private well last if the groundwater depletes in the village in the absence of the water conservation structures that the community is  building together?” pointed out Sarangi.

It helped that Bhagatpur locals, like other villagers, had traditionally held common ownership of the pastureland and the orchard, celebrated village festivals together and worshipped the same deity. Campaigners said they added water to this list of commons.

Once the requisite structures were constructed, a watershed governance committee was set up in each of the 40 villages that had implemented the project in Angul district. To oversee and maintain them, each committee was given around 500,000 rupees by NABARD, in the form of a fixed deposit in a bank, to fund repairs and for regular maintenance. The community too was mobilised to add funds to this kitty.

Bhagatpur’s villagers went a step ahead, continuing to leverage their learning to excavate more ponds and dig more wells even after the completion of the watershed project. In the last four years, they have added 15 farm ponds and percolation tanks, taking the total number of ponds and tanks to 30. The village has also drawn up rules on water use to prevent excessive extraction.

The wait for results ended about five years ago.

Harvested paddy piled in front of a house in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, February 27, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

“Our farm yields have improved in the past three to four years and we are able to sell whatever we grow. And there is no water crisis now. This is not my well, but I draw water from it,” said Pari Sahu, pointing at the neighbouring farm’s well that has kept her farm flush with vegetables.

Similar projects are still being implemented in other villages, with Bhagatpur being held as one of the “earliest successful models”, NABARD’s Roy said. 

Last year, representatives from five villages visited some of these areas to learn how communities as water-starved as them could recharge their wells and turn around their farm yields.

Officials of Back to Village, the nonprofit that arranged one such visit, said the representatives learned about the structures constructed to arrest rainwater and to improve its percolation into the ground. “We wanted to show how things could be done by the community itself, and make villagers understand that no one would come from far-off places to resolve these problems,” said Shikha Singh, the nonprofit’s general manager.

However, many villages not too far from Bhagatpur have not yet adopted this solution, with water distress continuing to be a perennial problem. This, campaigners said, was because watershed projects were not yet viewed as a community-led solution but one that needed State or nonprofit support.

“Since the visibility of the impact takes a long time, communities are not always interested,” said NABARD’s Roy, adding that if the community did not show interest, the lending bank would step away, as even after the project’s implementation, the villagers would not maintain it. “We cannot thrust a project on them,” he said, adding that some watershed projects that were undertaken have now gone defunct, as they were not properly maintained owing to poor management and restoration.

PROTECTING WATER

Electric wires connected to pumps run through Bhagatpur village, Odisha, February 27, 2025. 

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story 

What worked for Bhagatpur was not just the excavation and digging of wells, but the recharging of aquifers. 

Aggressive pumping of groundwater has led to its depletion in several regions across India. But community management of aquifers, the way Bhagatpur is doing, protects the groundwater level, said water expert Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator at the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an informal network of organisations and people working on water issues.

The water conservation structures that villagers have built are recharging the sub-surface water, thereby increasing the water column in wells, the level rising by 14 to 20 cm between 2009 and  2015, according to FES and NABARD data collected from the villages.

“Groundwater is India’s water lifeline. If it is used the way this community is doing, then it can be used equitably and in a sustainable way across the country,” said environmental activist and water expert Thakkar. “We don’t need river linking and big dam projects, which decrease the groundwater level. What this community is doing is rejuvenating structures. That’s the way forward for water security.”

‘MONEY AND COURAGE’

Farm fresh vegetables stored in a refrigerated container in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, March 1, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

The flourishing farms of Bhagatpur attract traders from the state capital of Bhubaneswar every week, with trucks lining up at the village farm gate every month for fresh produce. A rectangular cold storage box now sits in the village where farmers stock their excess yields of cabbage, tomatoes and brinjal until the traders come in.

With the old dirt road now replaced by a smooth concrete one connecting the village to the highway, Bhubaneswar is only a four-hour drive away, which has further aided farm sales. “The new road has brought in traders from big cities. Farmers are getting vendors directly and being paid a good price for their vegetables,” said Debasis Mitra, senior scientist and Angul head of the state-run Krishi Vigyan Kendras, centres in every district of the country that connect farmers with agricultural research.

Pari Sahu, like other villagers with small farms, makes 5,000 rupees a month from the sale of farm-fresh vegetables, a sum that supplements the household income primarily dependent on her migrant husband’s earnings. Besides, hers and other farmers’ monthly expenditure on buying vegetables has dropped, with their own farms yielding enough to take care of their families for months. 

Villagers said their potato yield lasted them for six to eight months. Houses in the village are undergoing expansion, and parents, none of whom have studied beyond the ninth grade, are investing in their children’s education. The village recorded its first crop of graduates in the past decade, with at least 10 children who had gone up to college. 

Healthier farms and improved incomes haven’t brought migrants back to farming but nurtured aspirations among the youth to pursue new skills, degrees and careers. Parents work on the farms but children with an education or a skill work outside is an accepted reality in the village, said locals as they gathered in front of a community hall on a warm, sleepy February afternoon, some dozing off on the hall’s verandah.

“Earlier, I had neither the money nor the courage to educate my children. But now we are spending money on their education,” said former truck driver Pradhan, whose son studied up to Grade 12 and works as a supervisor in a steel factory in Angul. But Pradhan wants his college-going daughter, who lives in a city hostel, to have an even brighter career.

“My wife and I do farming. If my daughter is a graduate, why would she work on a farm?” he said, adding that he would be careful while finding a match for his daughter and ensure that there was water in the household she married into.

Villagers gather around a revived well in Bhagatpur village, Odisha, February 27, 2025.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story  

Meanwhile, Pari Sahu is reinventing her career. While her farm has not seen a bad season in recent years, with some vegetables like brinjal—a kitchen staple in this region—selling by the truckload in Bhagatpur, she is now also part of a State-run initiative to make agriculture sustainable by eliminating the use of toxic pesticides and fertilisers and advocating the use of organic farm products. She is in charge of four villages and makes 6,000 rupees a month for the sessions she holds.

Even then, Sahu wants her three children to study and build careers while she takes care of the farm to fund their dreams. Her big victory, she said, was not the financial independence she has experienced in recent years following the water revolution or turning into a poster girl of sorts in the region for spearheading sustainable farming practices. 

“My biggest achievement is my farm,” she said. “I have food in the kitchen at all times. My children are eating healthy. And my income is helping their education.”

Edited by Radha Rajadhyaksha