AQUA GUARD
SUBHASH KADAM 34 WATER ACTIVIST, JAIGAON, MAHARASHTRA
Till some two years ago, Jaigaon, a village of 1,300 people in the Satara district of Maharashtra, would regularly witness fights over water. The villagers depended on tankers for their drinking water needs. If relatives came visiting, the hosts would worry if they’d have enough drinking water rserves to last their stay. The only crop they could grow was jowar, and that too if enough water was available. The rainfall this year has been only 20 per cent, but Jaigaon is not worried. They have water reserves to last them for almost an year. And for this, they have Subhash Kadam to thank, for taking the lead in carrying out water conservation efforts.
A wrestler in his college days who represented the district at the state level, Natha (as Kadam is fondly called) gave up any ambitions of playing at the national level because of financial constraints. Later, he moved to Mumbai in search of a livelihood, working as a driver for a logistics company that operated out of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.
It was after attending a programme by the Art of Living Foundation that Kadam became a man with a mission and returned to his roots. After helping out people—the elderly, the dis-
abled and women—with all kinds of documentation, he went on to fight the village panchayat elections and become the sarpanch. In that capacity, he got some 77 toilets buit under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
It was in 2016 that he decided to focus his attention on water conservation. As part of the Art of Living’s River Rejuvenation Project, he started the ‘Stop the Water, Save the Water’ campaign where villagers were made to attend awareness workshops and taught techniques such as lift irrigation.
Jaigaon’s main problem was that it was situated in the rain shadow of a mountain. To turn its disadvantage into an advantage, Kadam motivated and mobilised the villagers of Jaigaon to build stone continuous contour trench dams, besides wells and new dams. The villagers participated readily, contributing money, time as well as shramdaan. As each raindrop got stored, the villagers were able to create a water stock on a massive 400 hectares of land and rid Jaigaon forever of water scarcity.
Impressed by his efforts, Jaigaon won the state-level second prize in water conservation works in 2017. This year, it stood first among the top 10 villages which showed consistency in watershed works. With ample water being available now, the villagers have diversified their crop, growing custard apple and sugarcane apart from the traditional jowar.
“Our income has almost doubled in the past two years,” says Kadam. He has bought a few Indian cows and is advising the villagers to start dairy farming to earn additional income.
Inspired by his story, other youth from the village who had migrated to Mumbai in search of a living, are returning home. Kadam, meanwhile, has set his sights on his next target: educating the residents of nearby villages on water conservation. He has already launched an awareness campaign.
“Till two years ago, we were struggling for even drinking water. Now, we are growing more than one crop” Sandeep Salunkhe, 38, farmer “Under Subhash Kadam, Jaigaon has showed the way to others on how water scarcity can be overcome with public participation” Citation by the Maharashtra government