Struggles for Water Security: Grassroots Movements in India

Water is fundamental to life, yet millions across India face severe water scarcity. While government policies and large infrastructure projects often dominate discussions about water management, the real transformation has come from grassroots movements. These community-led initiatives have demonstrated that water security is achievable when people take ownership of their resources. From Madhya Pradesh’s state-community partnerships to Maharashtra’s independent village campaigns and Rajendra Singh’s nationwide awareness tours, India’s water conservation movements offer powerful lessons in non-violent, community-driven activism.

State-civil society cooperation: the Jal Abhishek model
Village-level institutional frameworks
Converging financial resources
Independent community activism: the Pani Yatra
Practical conservation techniques
Rajendra Singh’s Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra
Revival of traditional water practices
Opposition to river privatization and interlinking
Empowering women in water governance
Key observations from the water struggles
The failure of top-down policy
Crisis stems from mismanagement, not inadequate supply
Traditional knowledge as resistance to globalization
The urgency of civil society involvement

State-civil society cooperation: the Jal Abhishek model

Madhya Pradesh has emerged as a pioneering state in water conservation through its Jal Abhishek Campaign-a remarkable example of how government facilitation and community initiative can work together. The campaign aims at reviving traditional water bodies and promoting rainwater harvesting while encouraging villagers to take ownership of local water resources.

The model operates on a simple but powerful principle: the community takes the lead while the government provides resources and institutional support. This approach has produced impressive results. Khandwa district alone constructed over 1.29 lakh water conservation structures, securing the top position in the Centre’s Jal Shakti Ministry rankings for groundwater conservation.

Village-level institutional frameworks

The success of Madhya Pradesh’s model lies in its focus on building village-level institutions. Over 1.5 lakh farmers organized 812 village-level gatherings called ‘Pani Chaupals’ where they discussed revival of traditional water bodies and conservation methods. These gatherings became spaces for sharing knowledge between generations, connecting ancient wisdom with modern techniques.

The campaign also focused on creating human resources for sustained action. Over 2.3 lakh youth volunteers were mobilised as ‘Jaldoots’ and ‘Amrit Mitras’-water warriors who continue to champion conservation in local communities. This investment in youth ensures that the movement will sustain beyond any single campaign period.

Converging financial resources

A key innovation of the Madhya Pradesh model is the convergence of multiple funding streams for water conservation. Work carried out under schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been integrated with water conservation goals. Over 2,000 stepwells were revived across the state, celebrated through festivals that restored community pride in traditional water heritage.

Independent community activism: the Pani Yatra

While Madhya Pradesh demonstrates state-community partnership, Maharashtra’s drought-stricken regions have witnessed equally powerful movements driven entirely by civil society. In Osmanabad district, a different model emerged-one where communities organized themselves with support from NGOs and academic institutions rather than waiting for government intervention.

The Pani Yatra (Water Journey) was launched by the district administration in partnership with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). This initiative traveled across approximately 40 villages, spreading awareness about water conservation without relying on state financial assistance. The movement promoted practical interventions that communities could implement themselves.

Practical conservation techniques

The Pani Yatra focused on techniques that villagers could adopt immediately: well desilting, rainwater harvesting, and compartment bounding. These methods required minimal external resources but delivered significant results. By linking these activities with the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), the movement also addressed rural unemployment-demonstrating that water conservation creates livelihoods, not just environmental benefits.

Similar community-driven initiatives in Maharashtra have set up water committees called ‘pani samitis’ to capture surface runoff water, helping farmers extend water availability from October-November until March. What began as crisis response has evolved into permanent institutional change at the village level.

Rajendra Singh’s Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra

No discussion of India’s water conservation movements is complete without acknowledging Rajendra Singh, known as the ‘Waterman of India’ or ‘Jal Purush.’ He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001 and the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015 for his pioneering work in community-based water harvesting and management.

Singh’s national campaign, the Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra (National Water Consciousness Journey), represented one of the most ambitious awareness movements in independent India. The Rashtriya Jal Biradari conducted a year-long campaign to create a mass movement regarding water conservation across the country, particularly in response to the National Water Policy declared in April 2002.

Revival of traditional water practices

Singh’s NGO, Tarun Bharat Sangh, has helped build over 8,600 johads and other water conservation structures, bringing water back to over 1,000 villages and reviving five rivers in Rajasthan including Arvari, Ruparel, Sarsa, and others. The johad-a traditional earthen check dam-became the symbol of his movement.

Johads encourage people to work together, building community while addressing essential needs. Rather than relying on engineering expertise or governmental action, villagers construct these structures themselves using traditional methods and community participation. This stands in deliberate contrast to large government-built dams, which have displaced millions across India.

Opposition to river privatization and interlinking

The Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra was not merely about building structures-it was a political movement advocating for people’s rights over water. Singh and his network have consistently opposed river privatization and the large-scale river interlinking project. Singh maintains it is far cheaper to help villages create and control their own water supplies than to build massive dams and ditches.

Opponents of river interlinking are concerned about environmental, ecological, and social displacement impacts as well as unknown risks associated with fundamentally altering natural water systems. The grassroots water movement argues that people need linking with rivers more than rivers need linking with each other-meaning communities must be reconnected with their local water sources rather than depending on distant mega-projects.

Empowering women in water governance

A distinctive feature of Singh’s approach has been promoting women’s role in water management. The Rashtriya Jal Biradari has a presence in several states including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh, working to train people in water conservation techniques and participatory management.

Key observations from the water struggles

These diverse movements-from Madhya Pradesh’s state-partnership model to Maharashtra’s independent activism and Singh’s national campaign-offer important lessons for understanding water security as a social and political issue, not merely a technical one.

The failure of top-down policy

The National Water Policy of 2002 has been criticized for failing to protect poor communities’ interests while opening doors to private sector involvement. Civil society organizations raised valid concerns about how interests of the poor would be protected and how private operators would be prevented from gaining undue control of water resources. The policy alienated local communities by treating water primarily as an economic commodity.

Critics argue that successive national water policies have lacked adequate focus on water administration and legal enforcement, having weak implementation despite good intentions on paper. This policy vacuum created space for grassroots movements to demonstrate alternative approaches.

Crisis stems from mismanagement, not inadequate supply

India receives about 4% of the world’s water resources while supporting 18% of global population-seemingly a scarcity problem. However, the grassroots movements demonstrate that the real crisis stems from mismanagement rather than inadequate supply. The advent of tube wells and electric pumps led to over-extraction, with underground water levels dropping so severely that wells began going dry and even rivers disappeared.

Traditional knowledge as resistance to globalization

Over the past 50 years, the decentralized johad model has generated remarkable results: over 15,800 structures built or restored, 23 rivers revitalized, and 1,500 villages reconnected to potable water. This revival of traditional water resources represents not just practical water management but resistance to a globalized model that treats water as commodity rather than commons.

Reviving traditional water harvesting systems like stepwells, tanks, and johads through community participation offers a path that combines sustainability with social capital enhancement. It demonstrates that communities possess the knowledge needed to manage their water-what they often lack is institutional support and recognition.

The urgency of civil society involvement

Tarun Bharat Sangh has built 11,800 ponds and structures over 10,600 square kilometers of land without any government assistance, harnessing the power of society alone. This achievement underscores both the capability of civil society and the urgency of protecting water as a community resource.

These movements remind us that water security is fundamentally about relationships-between communities and their local environment, between generations who share knowledge, and between citizens and the state. When these relationships are healthy, water flows. When they break down, drought follows regardless of rainfall.

What do you think? Can community-based water conservation models like johads offer scalable solutions to India’s water crisis, or do the challenges of urbanization and climate change require more centralized interventions?

References

PDF 📄

Struggles for Water Security: Grassroots Movements in India

Table of Contents

State-civil society cooperation: the Jal Abhishek model 🔗

Village-level institutional frameworks 🔗

Converging financial resources 🔗

Independent community activism: the Pani Yatra 🔗

Practical conservation techniques 🔗

Rajendra Singh’s Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra 🔗

Revival of traditional water practices 🔗

Opposition to river privatization and interlinking 🔗

Empowering women in water governance 🔗

Key observations from the water struggles 🔗

The failure of top-down policy 🔗

Crisis stems from mismanagement, not inadequate supply 🔗

Traditional knowledge as resistance to globalization 🔗

The urgency of civil society involvement 🔗