A systemic approach to manage India's largest groundwater program

Arghyam has been  a long-term knowledge partner of the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation to strengthen the Atal Bhujal Yojana - scheme launched by the prime minister Narendra Modi in April 2020 to improve ground water management that includes community sensitization and followed by systematic supply side and demand side interventions. 

With a large footprint covering 8562 Gram Panchayats over seven states, the scheme aims to empower communities and institutions to engage in efforts to plan and manage groundwater resources to  arrest the rate of decline of groundwater levels.

While the approach itself has been embraced by states and demonstrates a significant shift in the way the Center and States can engage in better groundwater management that results in better life and livelihood outcomes for participating communities, our engagement of the work done on the ground has raised the possibility of strengthening the operating model, governance, and verification of outcomes, while ensuring that the process also strengthens the ability of community level actors to contribute, engage and sustain efforts. 

One key actor in the scheme is the Community Resource Person, at every Gram Panchayat, assisting the Direct Implementation Partner (DIP) in making groundwater management a community-owned exercise. The CRP belongs to the community and needs to be empowered with the science and social aspects of groundwater management, so that they are able to support the community with decisions about water management. 

We partnered with Arid Communities and Technologies (ACT), our long term PGWM partner & a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) selected as District Implementation partner (DIP), and Socion - our technology and strategy partner to digitally re-imagine a program design for Atal Bhujal Yojana, in Nakhatrana Block in Gujarat. The objective of the partnership was to demonstrate a scalable model for creating participatory water security plans across 70 plus Gram Panchayats of Nakhatrana. 

Through this partnership we  are exploring  models that would engage local actors, the Bhujal Jankars (or the community resource persons) and community institutions are adequately capacitated and have sustained access to content, tools and data to actively partake in the decisions that affect local outcomes. .  The model aspires to provide them with clarity on their roles, build their capabilities on a continuous basis, help them prepare water security plans with community participation, and provide financial incentives for the work they perform. The partnership will also explore the use of digital technology to empower the CRPs, the community institutions, and the program stakeholders.

As a result of this exercise, the partners 

• Design a step-by-step process that provided clarity to all the stakeholders participating
• Leverage digital technology to generate transparency, visibility and used data to strengthen quality of outcomes
• Empower and motivate the CRPs and the program owners to enable more engagement, accountability and ownership at all levels

Since this scheme is a Program-for-Results (PforR) model of the World Bank, it incentivises or disburses funds every time a milestone is achieved by a gram panchayat in the scheme’s seven states. According to the Disbursement Linked Indicator 1 and 2, the pilot will mapp the task/session/function to generate the data on a runtime basis by leveraging the capabilities of the Participatory Digital Attestation (PDA) Platform (offered by SOCION , a partner organization who has developed PDA Platform) which will enable program team & DIP to generate data, enable data driven governance and strengthen program implementation 

Watch how a female Bhujaljankar is mobilising the women of Kutch to manage their water resources sustainably.