De- silting as a scalable solution to drought - an amazing story

Drought has reached unprecedented levels in the last 2 years with devastating socio – economic consequences for our country.

Here I would like to share an amazing story (shared by someone I truly admire – Amit Chandra, head of private equity Bain Capital and one of the most active and inspiring philanthropists in india). It is an incredible story of how some individuals and ngos got together to tackle this issue through desilting.

What is desilting ?

There are thousands of primarily earth filled dams across India (about 1845 in Maharashtra). Most have accumulated significant amount of silt (soil or sediment in water bodies), leading to reduced water storage capacity. Desilting is the process of reducing the silt in water bodies for increasing the storage capacities.

Live case study – Jiv Rekha Dam (Jalna)

Facts of the case

•         1,15,000 tractor trolleys of silt excavated from the dam to increase capacity by 10%
•        silt transported by farmers and applied to 1500 acres of land

Benefits of Desilting

Water availability

• All 7 villages drawing water daily since may 2013 and not facing water issues
• Nearly 40 irrigation wells and 12 drinking water wells recharge

Farmer income

• Farmer income increased due to improvement in farm productivity due to silt application.
• Farmers input costs reduced due to lower fertiliser usage

Benefits to the government

• Decrease in government spending on fertilizer subsidy and drought mitigation measures (esp no loan waivers required
• Savings on water tankers which are extremely expensive to operate

The cost of desilting was 1.7 cr and the returns in year 1 itself were 6.4 cr !! This is what we call an extremely high social return on investment J

The team has replicated this successful model in 3 more dams in Beed this year and post monsoon will share the statistics on benefits. The team is also working on pitching this model to the government (PMO) so that the government can make this a national initiative that can be replicated in more villages!!

I know Amit himself has been camping in Latur and Beed for several days to personally supervise and make sure the work gets completed before monsoon.

Stories like these give me hope…… hope that smart and caring individuals can make a difference and may have the luck and ability ......to scale this nationwide…..to positively impact  the lives of millions of poor farmers who are the pride of our nation !!