3rd International Open Source GIS Conference, Velp, The Netherlands, June 25-28, 2012

Community Mapping and Empowerment:Case Study of Water Management in a South Indian Village

Nagesh Kolagani, Dr. Palaniappan Ramu and Dr. Koshy VargheseIndian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036 INDIA

AbstractMany villages in South India and elsewhere are facing problem of overexploitation of water resources. Solution is possible only when the villagers understand the need for it and participate in it voluntarily. Community mapping approach helps them to grasp impact of various solutions and empowers them to make better decisions by facilitating visualization and understanding of the complex issues involved. Such an approach is demonstrated through case study of water management in a south Indian village.

KeywordsVillages, Participatory Modelling, Community Mapping, GPS, GIS

1. Introduction:

Many villages in South India and elsewhere are facing an acute water crisis due to overexploitation. Given the lack of an effective law enforcement mechanism at the village level, a solution is possible only when the villagers understand the need for it and participate voluntarily. Such a participatory approach makes it possible for them 'to communicate better among themselves and learn together' (Ostrom and Walker, 1989; Cardenas and Ostrom, 2004; Campo et al., 2010; Gaddis et al., 2010), resulting in 'better implementation with less conflict and more success' (Voinov and Bousquet, 2010; Metcalf et al., 2010).

As the issues involved are complex, such a participatory approach needs to be integrated with a scientific modelling approach so that they reinforce each other and make it possible to integrate socio-economic data with scientific data for better decision making (Hirschemoller et al., 2001; Nidumolu, 2004). In such an integrated approach, villagers need to be involved from the beginning to help them grasp the impact of various solutions and make better decisions (Voinov and Bousquet, 2010). When involved in such a way, they will be better than the facilitators from outside making decisions more appropriate to local context (Chambers, 2007).

Community mapping approach helps the villagers to grasp impact of various solutions and empowers them to make better decisions by facilitating better visualization and easier understanding of the complex issues involved (Geertman, 2002; Vajjhala, 2005; Jankowski, 2009), focussing more on issues of participation and social accuracy rather than on map precision (Minang and McCall, 2006; Vajjhala, 2005). It is demonstrated in the following sections through case study of water management in a south Indian village.

2. Problem of Overexploitation of Water Resources:

E. Palaguttapalli village of Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh state, India was identified as case study village for demonstrating community mapping approach. This village has been experiencing severe water crisis since 2002. The extent of irrigated cultivation under the principal water reservoir of the village dropped from about 12 hectares to about 1 hectare (figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1: Irrigated cultivation up to year 2001 Fig. 2: Rain-fed cultivation since 2002

Out of the 198 wells that were working during the previous years, only 25 continued to work. Out of the 75 new tube wells sunk, only 34 were successful, mostly with low water yields. Even deep drinking water wells dried up and the Government had to transport and ration drinking water; this was something that was never needed during previous droughts. Part of the reason was that the irrigation reservoirs did not get any inflows during the previous year; they were partially full in 2000. However, it was common for the reservoirs not to get any inflows during two or more consecutive years, without causing such an acute water crisis. For example, during the 1990s, they got any inflows only three times: 1992, 1996 and 1998. While tube wells did get deeper progressively, from 75 metres in 1995 to 150 metres in 2000, they never failed in yielding water.

Hence, to understand the cause of this water crisis, a detailed water resource mapping and accounting was undertaken in the village. Mapping of all the wells, working as well as non-working, was carried out using a handheld GPS and information about each of them, such as when they were sunk, how much water they yielded over time, until when, etc. was gathered using questionnaires. GIS software was used to prepare maps from GPS and questionnaire data.

Up to the end of 1970’s, only a few shallow open wells (76 numbers) were present, mostly in the lower parts of the village in and around the irrigation reservoirs (fig. 3). Water used to be drawn from these wells using bullocks. During the 1980’s and the 1990’s, with advent of diesel and electric motors and deep tube well technology, number of wells increased drastically to 198 numbers (fig. 4).

Fig. 3: Open wells up to 1970’s Fig. 4: Tube wells during 1980’s and 1990’s

These wells used powerful motors that could pump about 3 times more water per hour than the bullocks. Being deep, tube wells could continue to function even during the summer months,

increasing number of hours of operation per year to about 1.5 times. As a result, the overall water consumption increased by 13 times (fig. 5). While up to the 1970’s amount of water being pumped out from underground per year was almost of the same order of magnitude (2/3rds) as the amount of rain water seeping into the underground aquifers, it increased substantially to almost an order of magnitude (8 times) more than recharge during 1980’s and 1990’s (fig. 6).

1970's 1980's & 1990's Post-20010

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Fig. 5: Water depletion during 1980’s and 1990’s Fig. 6: Discharge-to-recharge ratio over the years

This overexploitation of ground water continued during 1980s and 1990s for nearly 20 years, pushing the water table down from about 15 metres to more than 180 metres (fig. 7), resulting in drying up of most tube wells. While up to the year 2001 striking water at these depths was almost assured, even that failed towards the end of 2002, with only one out of 23 new tube wells becoming successful, that too with very low water yields. As against the 198 wells that were working in 2000, only 59 tube wells were working since 2002, mostly with very low yields (fig. 8).

Fig. 7: Water depth & other parameters over the years Fig. 8: Tube wells since 2002

The cultivated area had gone up from 18 hectares in the 1970’s to 60 hectares during 1980’s and 1990’s. This fell drastically to 16 ha, same as almost the old levels, by the year 2002. This has happened after about 15 million rupees of private capital has been locked up in the digging of short-lived tube wells. Also, the Government is having to provide subsidy of about Rs. 13,000 per motor per year in the form of free electricity to draw the same amount of water as before, now from 180 metres depth as opposed to 15 metres in the 1970's.

3. Efficient and Equitable Rain Water Harvesting as Solution:

Above facts have to be taken to the villagers so that they understand overexploitation as the cause of water crisis and the non-viability in the long run of diesel and electric motors and deep tube wells. They also need to understand that the solution lies in efficient and equitable rain water harvesting. Towards this goal, a village meeting was organized in the village watershed's catchment forest to discuss the water situation (fig. 9).

Fig. 9: Village meeting Fig. 10: Smaller hamlet-wise meetings

Smaller hamlet-wise meetings were held to discuss these issues in detail with the farmers using maps and to seek their suggestions on where and what rain water harvesting structures to erect (figs. 10 and 11).

Fig. 11: Rough sketch of proposed structures Fig. 12: Field visit to proposed locations

Field visits were undertaken with the farmers to map and analyze social and technical benefits of these proposed structures and consolidate these into a final plan (figs. 12, 13 and 14).

Fig. 13: Proposed structures & beneficiary farms Fig. 14: GIS map of final plan

Such a spatially-accurate plan was found useful in monitoring of the implementation both by the Government as well as by the villagers themselves. The community mapping based approach that was used facilitated people's participation, improving substantially the efficiency and equitable nature of the resulting structures (figs. 15 and 16).

Fig. 15: Beneficiaries constructing a structure Fig. 16: An efficient structure as a result

3. Conclusions:

The usefulness of community mapping approach was demonstrated through case study of water management in a south Indian village. Such an approach was to found to help villagers in grasping the impact of various solutions and make better decisions by facilitating visualization and understanding of the complex issues involved.

Acknowledgments:

Above work was catalyzed and supported by:• project no. SP/YO/011/2003, Science and Society Division and• project no. CO/FP/G74/2005, Science Communication Division

of Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi. We thank Smt. Shobana Baskaran, Sri Pamposh Kumar and Sri Anuj Sinha of Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi for their active support and scientific inputs.

We thank (Late) Sri G. Narendranath, Smt. (Dr.) Uma Shankari, Sri G. Krishnamurthy and Sri N. Chandra of E. Palaguttapalli village for their support in anchoring the field work.

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