The monsoon is almost here. The southwest monsoon has already touched the Andaman & Nicobar Islands — five days early — and is expected to make landfall in Kerala any day. For most of India, it can’t come soon enough. Delhi’s Yamuna is running low, water plants are at reduced capacity, and tanker queues have become a daily reality.
But while the headlines track the crisis, something quieter has been happening. Four very different people, in four corners of India, have spent the past year doing the same thing: making sure the rain, when it arrives, has somewhere to go.
After a Severe Water Crisis Hit Varanasi, This IAS Officer Brought Water Back to 39 Villages
Varanasi was running out of water. As CDO, IAS officer Himanshu Nagpal found 700 borewells being dug every year with nothing going back in. Companies were required to install rainwater harvesting systems but pleaded lack of space. His fix: let them fulfil the obligation on public buildings instead.
Over 1,000 schools, colleges and hospitals became recharge points. 393 ponds were built. 6,000 handpumps were redesigned to push water underground. A 30-km polluted river was revived. 39 villages got their water back. No new technology — just a shift in where the rain was asked to go.
The Remarkable Journey of One Farmer’s Decade-Long Battle To Revive the Purna River & Save 6 Villages
Since 2018, citrus farmer Amol Langote from Thugaon-Pimpri in Vidarbha has been building two to four check dams every year on the Purna River — with his own money, Rs 50,000–60,000 at a time. When a fungal disease slashed his income from Rs 35 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, he kept building.
“I decided not to spend on cultural celebrations and used that money for check dams instead,” he said. The dams slow the river, letting water seep into the aquifer below. Six villages around the site now have more stable water than they have had in years.
Inside the Revival of Karnataka’s 11th-Century Stepwell With Rare Naga Carvings
In Sudi, Gadag district, Karnataka, a flight of sandstone stairs now leads back into the 11th century. Nagakunda — built under the Kalyani Chalukyas — lay buried under roots and rubble for decades, its carved naga walls hidden, its groundwater-recharging logic dormant.
The Deccan Heritage Foundation, working under Karnataka’s Adopt a Monument scheme, cleared the debris, reset the stones and restored the percolation channels. When the monsoon arrives this year, Nagakunda will do what it was designed to do a thousand years ago: slow the rain down and send it underground.
Ujjain IAS Officer Restores Historical Pond With 125 Volunteers & No Govt Funds
The Yam Talaiya — a 4.2-acre pond tied to a temple, a deity and the farming life of a neighbourhood — had been silting up for years on the outskirts of Ujjain. IAS officer Anshul Gupta decided it would be Madhya Pradesh’s first Amrit Sarovar, but didn’t wait for government funds. He brought in the Environmentalist Foundation of India and 125 volunteers.
Eight months of desilting, bund-reinforcing and weed-clearing later, the pond’s water-holding capacity rose by nearly a third — an additional 22.8 million litres. Wildlife returned. The temple had its pond back. The farmers had their water.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
