Water is a primary necessity for life, and effective management of water resources is critical to sustainable development. Often, farmers take loans to drill bore wells, and their rate of use is far greater than the rate of replenishment, leaving them high and dry after a couple of years. We have begun a bore-well recharge project with Sankalpa Rural Development Society, wherein we have completed the recharge of 7 borewells in multiple villages of Dharur Taluk in Beed District. As part of this pilot project, we plan on recharging 5 to 10 more borewells in other regions of India.

We will be evaluating the impact via various Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as flow of water from the borewells, amount of time water is available after monsoon is over and number of crops farmers are able to cultivate in a given year. We hope to see positive results in the next 6 months, after which we plan on scaling this project to 200 borewells in various parts of India.

Here is how this technique works:

The recharge system consists of 2 parts : borewell pit on the left and storage water tank on the right. The water tank gets filled on rainy days and sends water to the borewell pit. The borewell pit filters that water through stones, pebbles and dirt.  This water goes through the cement ring  around the borewell and through a filter  down into the ground. This can then be pumped out by the farmer as per his/her farming needs.

Our goal for 2017 is to help at least 200 needy, marginal farmers in drought affected areas, adopt rainwater harvesting techniques so they have a sustainable means of irrigation water available to them for their farming needs. To that effect, we have partnered with Sankalpa rural development society, which offers a unique technique to harvest rain water and feed it to the water table for safe keeping via existing borewells that farmers have already dug. This technique is called direct borewell recharge.

Based on a pilot we conducted last year in Dharur taluka of Beed district, Maharashtra, we were able to conserve over 15 million liters of water, which was sufficient for these 10 poor farmers to harvest a second crop even in drought like situations.  In order to scale the success of our pilot, we plan to work with over 200 farmers in different regions of India and help them with their Borewell recharge.

The typical cost to recharge a borewell is around Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000. Out of total money needed, typically, the farmer spends 50% and our organization provides the remaining. We do make exception to this rule for Farmers, who have high debt and/or are distressed (as per our intervention and in person conversation with the farmer)

The total estimated cost of recharging 200 borewells is $60000. SIF has raised around $39000 so far, with various fundraisers that we conducted. We need $21000 still to make this happen and we look forward to your support for our initiative, so that we can give a better life to 200 farmers.