Women benefit as Vellore first to create water harvesting through MGNREGS

Generally, the scheme is used to dig trenches to deepen irrigation tanks to provide rural folk with jobs for 100 days. The brainchild of Vellore District Collector SA Raman, water harvesting structures called recharge wells, were dug in 22 of the 24 village panchayats in Kaniyambadi block in 2015-16 as a pilot project.

“A private voluntary agency provided village women with motivation and training based on which they constructed wells which were 20 feet deep and 2 feet wide filled with stones” said Vellore District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) project director P Periasamy. The total cost of the scheme here was Rs 3.52 crore.

Officials told this correspondent that recharge wells were dug in areas abutting water courses to ensure that they were recharged when it rained. Two village panchayats were not included in the scheme due to their inaccessibility.

Raman who had provided district rural development officials the motivation to undertake something different under the MGNREGS found that his intuition paid off when TWAD and PWD officials who were asked to undertake test to check water levels, reported that water levels in recharge wells in Kaniyambadi PU had increased by four feet to seven feet.

This provided the impetus to extend the scheme to nine more development blocks including the Anaicut, Madhanur, Gudiyattam, Pernambut, Alangayam, Natrampalli, Tirupattur, Kandli and Jolorpet blocks, officials added.

“An initial survey found that 4,828 recharge wells could be dug in the nine blocks. The administrative sanction was accorded for 3,768 wells of which 2,289 wells have been completed at a cost of Rs 20.60 crore,” Raman said. “While work is underway in 1,479 wells, the sanction is awaited for another 1,050 wells,” he added.

“To ensure that sudden water surge did not fill recharge wells with silt rendering them useless, Gabion Check dams (GCD) were built adjacent to recharge wells wherever necessary,” Periasamy said. The district spent Rs 3.45 crore to build 294 such structures, he said, and added that each GCD cost between Rs 64,000 and Rs 1.25 lakh based on their size.

“The biggest achievement was the empowerment of women who were paid Rs 229 per day with the money going directly to their accounts. Of the Rs 20.60 crore spent for recharge wells, half the amount went to the payment for workers with the rest being the cost of the material used. Ten women working for 10 days on a well create 210 mandays in addition to their earnings,” Raman said.