The Hindu : Villagers' efforts washed away

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003

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Villagers' efforts washed away

By Sunny Sebastian

LAVA KA BAAS (ALWAR) JULY 15. The Ruparel river flows here no more. It has gone with the dam that the villagers of the area built two years ago on the Udainathji Ka Nala, one of its rainwater drains, with the support of the Magsaysay Award winner, Rajendra Singh.

The cormorants and the egrets which used to fish in the dam's waters have vanished. The buffaloes which climbed down to the lower end of the reservoir to sip water are not visible. The banjara settlements on the banks of the dam have turned to the hand-pumps for their water needs.

The Rajasthan Irrigation Department could prove a point. The dam was not safe. It was washed away in the third year for it was built with Rs.10 lakhs without any technical assistance and was an earthen dam. However, no explanation is given on how the dam at Samra Sagar, built by the Department a few kilometres down in Pratapgarh tehsil and which cost at least seven times more, was breached during the first rains in June.

What the Department is not talking about is that the ruptures caused to seven dams — Khari Johad, Banna Ka Johad and Khadiwala Baba Ka Johad in Todi Nijara village, Balai Ki Johad and Sankada Ka bandh in Mundiawas, Ghanka dam in Ghanka and Phuta bandh in Bhangdoli — upstream the Lava Ka Baas structure, which in fact was responsible for its collapse.

The earthen Lava Ka Baas dam built in 2001 could not survive the torrential rain in the State's north-eastern parts in the last one week. The devastation came as a blow to the efforts of the villagers who had their initial lessons of village self-reliance in the endeavour. Built on a shoestring budget, collected from an industrialist donor and with contributions from the residents of seven villages, it had provided them crops worth many times that amount. Till last week, 15 pump-sets were taking out water simultaneously from the dam to distances up to 5 km.

Giving away decades of barren existence to their landscape and to their lives, the villagers had built a dam to make the drain come to life once again. The main Ruparel river is 23 km away but the area had water for irrigation even during the severe summers of 2002 and 2003 thanks to the storage in the dam.

The Irrigation Department always wanted to pull it down as the Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), the NGO which built it, did not have the required technical clearance. In fact, it would have been demolished in 2001 but for the resistance of the villagers and the announcement of the Magsaysay Award to Mr. Singh by then.

The devastation came even as the attempts of the Johad Bachao Sangarsh Samiti (Save the check-dam agitation committee) to reinforce the dam were frustrated by the tehsil authorities on a complaint from the Irrigation Department.

"We started de-silting and reinforcing the base of the dam on June 1 this year. By June 4 the Irrigation authorities from both Alwar and Bharatpur districts came to stop us," said Giriraj Prasad, secretary of the Sangarsh Samiti. The villagers, who would not give up easily, started operating at night deploying five tractors to bring the earth. However, when caught again they gave up finally.

When contacted, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate at Thana Gazi, K.L.Agarwal, said he had stopped the work when it was pointed by the Irrigation Department that a writ was pending against the dam in the Rajasthan High Court. "We had to ensure the status quo of the structure," he noted even while conceding that the TBS had done a good job in villages, constructing water-harvesting structures.

There is a sense of despondency among the villagers at the loss of the dam. They had shown it proudly dignitaries such as agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan, the late Anil Agarwal and many others at the height of the controversy that also involved a water-sharing dispute between the districts of Alwar and Bharatpur. The team of scientists led by G.D.Agarwal then had certified the dam as technically sound.

The beneficiaries of the Lava Ka Baas dam — whose number is between 20,000 and 25,000 in six villages and the tehsil town of Thana Gazi — are now clueless about the future of the dam and their livelihood.

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