Yogesh Chavan, an HR professional in Pune, took up water conservation efforts in his native Dahigaon village to recharge groundwater table and make village water tanker-free
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In six years between 2008 and 2014, Dattatray Kharade dug eight borewells in his 2.5-acre farmland out of which seven dried up. But, for the past two years, all of the borewells have surplus water in them.
Dattatray, a 50-year-old farmer from Dahigaon village in Satara district of Maharashtra, says that he had “never witnessed plentiful groundwater in the village borewells his entire life”.
What changed in the past couple of years for the 3,500 residents of the village were the efforts taken to harvest and conserve rainwater and recharge groundwater.
Dahigaon, along with surrounding villages in a 100-km radius, has perennially suffered from water issues. Falling in the rain shadow region, the farmers in the villages could not experiment with a wide variety of crops and depended entirely on the…