_edited.png)
How the Purna Water Partnership Changed Water Management in Vidarbha
- thenewsdirt
- Jun 26
- 7 min read
In Vidarbha's drought-prone agricultural heartland, one community initiative has been quietly transforming water management practices for nearly three decades.
The Purna Area Water Partnership emerged in 1995 as farmers, village leaders, NGOs and government officials joined forces to address chronic water scarcity and groundwater salinity plaguing the Purna River basin.
What followed was a sustained effort to combat saline water contamination and crop failures through locally-driven solutions, yet the initiative's story reflects both the promise and limitations of grassroots water management in Vidarbha's challenging agricultural landscape.
Vidarbha Drought Crisis Sparks Community-Led Water Management Initiative in Purna Basin
The mid-1990s presented a dire situation for farming communities across the Purna River basin in the Vidarbha region.
Roughly one-quarter of the area's agricultural land suffered from salt-affected soil and groundwater contamination, leaving hundreds of villages unable to properly irrigate their crops.
Wells that once provided fresh water for irrigation had turned saline, and traditional cash crops like cotton and soybeans were failing with increasing frequency across the drought-prone landscape.
Against this backdrop of agricultural distress, the Purna Area Water Partnership was launched as a community-driven initiative for integrated watershed management.
The alliance brought together diverse stakeholders from across the region, creating what organisers described as a unified platform to tackle long-standing water scarcity issues. The partnership's charter called for practical interventions including improved borewell construction, rainwater harvesting systems, and the promotion of drought-resistant farming practices.
The initiative's formation marked a significant shift from relying solely on government irrigation schemes to pursuing locally-adapted water conservation solutions.
Farmers who had watched their fields turn barren found themselves working alongside agricultural activists and water management officials to develop strategies suited to their specific groundwater conditions.
The partnership explicitly aimed to improve both water quality and farm productivity by pooling traditional knowledge with modern water harvesting techniques.
Early efforts concentrated on addressing the most pressing concerns facing agricultural communities struggling with water stress. The group began promoting the drilling of deeper borewells that could tap into fresher aquifers, which often contained much cleaner water than the shallow, saline wells farmers had traditionally relied upon.
These deeper water sources provided access to groundwater reserves that had remained relatively protected from surface contamination and salt intrusion affecting shallow wells.
The partnership recognised that sustainable water management required community participation at every level.
Village water committees were established to oversee local projects, whilst farmer training programmes focused on water-efficient irrigation techniques and soil salinity management. This grassroots approach ensured that water conservation measures would be maintained and expanded by the communities themselves.
Vidarbha Farmers Implement Groundwater Conservation and Salt-Resistant Crop Solutions
Over the following decades, the Purna partnership developed and implemented numerous community-based water projects throughout the drought-affected regions of Vidarbha.
Beyond the strategic borewell initiatives, the group popularised rooftop rainwater harvesting as a practical solution for monsoon water storage.
Simple village storage tanks and farm ponds were constructed to capture seasonal rainfall and help recharge depleted groundwater supplies.
The alliance recognised that addressing groundwater quality required tackling salt-affected agricultural soils directly. According to an internal partnership report, the group's vision was explicitly to "overcome groundwater salinity issues by changing cropping patterns and promotion of salinity resistant crops."
This comprehensive approach meant encouraging farmers to experiment with drought-tolerant varieties of millets and pulses in fields where traditional water-intensive crops had been failing.
The partnership organised regular farmer field schools and agricultural workshops where participants could share their experiences with water-saving techniques and learn from successful crop trials.
Youth groups and women's self-help groups played crucial roles in spreading these sustainable farming methods throughout participating villages. These community gatherings served both educational and social functions, creating networks of agricultural knowledge-sharing that extended far beyond formal training programmes.
The initiative's influence gradually extended to agricultural policy levels as state water management authorities began recognising the partnership's innovative approaches.
The alliance successfully persuaded government officials to support cost-effective water conservation options, such as renovating existing village storage tanks for groundwater recharge rather than constructing expensive new irrigation reservoirs.
Government funding was secured for small check dams and farm ponds along the main Purna River, representing a policy shift toward locally-appropriate water-saving measures that better matched the basin's specific hydrological requirements.
The partnership's advocacy efforts proved particularly effective in securing government support for modest community-level projects that might otherwise have been overlooked by larger agricultural development schemes.
Subsidised farm pond construction and anti-salinity soil treatment measures became available to participating communities, providing practical alternatives to more capital-intensive irrigation infrastructure solutions.
Agricultural extension workers began incorporating the partnership's successful techniques into their standard recommendations for drought-prone areas. Water-efficient crop varieties that had been tested through partnership programmes were made available through government agricultural centres, helping to scale up successful innovations across the broader region.
Vidarbha Village Communities Report Improved Water Access Through Partnership Programs
By the late 2000s, many villages that had actively participated in the partnership's water management programmes reported substantial improvements in their irrigation capacity and agricultural productivity.
New borewells and renovated traditional wells brought cleaner water to hundreds of hectares of previously unusable agricultural land, transforming formerly fallow plots into productive cropland.
The installation of rainwater harvesting systems provided crucial backup water supplies during extended dry periods, particularly benefiting women and children who were typically responsible for household water collection tasks.
The partnership's impact extended beyond technical water infrastructure improvements to create lasting institutional changes within rural communities.
According to a Global Water Partnership case study summary, the alliance "enabled the stakeholders to unite under one forum for voicing their demands" to agricultural planners and government water management officials. For the first time, farmers and agricultural activists across Amravati and Akola districts had a recognised institutional platform through which they could present their water-related grievances and influence official agricultural policy decisions.
Local farmer leaders credited this unified advocacy approach with securing sustained government support for community-level water interventions that addressed specific regional agricultural needs. The forum provided an effective mechanism for translating ground-level observations about water scarcity into concrete policy recommendations, creating a vital bridge between grassroots farming experience and administrative agricultural planning processes.
Participating farmers reported significantly higher crop yields on previously problematic salt-affected fields as water quality improvements took effect across the programme areas.
The combination of improved irrigation water access and modified drought-resistant cropping patterns helped stabilise agricultural production in areas that had experienced repeated crop failures due to water stress.
Villages that had struggled with acute water shortages during summer months found themselves better prepared to cope with seasonal variations in rainfall and groundwater availability.
However, the broader Vidarbha region continued to face severe water stress and agricultural distress despite these localised improvements in participating communities. The systemic challenges affecting the drought-prone agricultural areas persisted, highlighting the inherent limits of even well-organised community water management initiatives.
A comprehensive 2018 government report documented that 7,423 villages across the region were experiencing acute water scarcity as the summer season began, including thousands of settlements located within the Purna sub-basin itself.
Vidarbha Water Partnership Shows Mixed Results Despite Ongoing Scarcity Challenges
Monsoon rainfall patterns remained highly unreliable throughout the region, with seasonal precipitation shortfalls leaving major irrigation reservoirs at critically low capacity levels.
One particularly challenging agricultural year saw a 23% shortfall in monsoon rains, resulting in major water storage reservoirs reaching only 30% of their designed capacity by March.
This dire situation caused agricultural wells to run completely dry across hundreds of farming villages, forcing many rural families to purchase expensive water from private tanker suppliers or implement strict household water rationing measures during peak summer months.
The experience of the Purna Water Partnership demonstrates both the significant potential and inherent constraints of community-based water management approaches in chronically drought-affected agricultural regions of Vidarbha.
Agricultural development critics note that many of the initiative's water conservation interventions remained relatively small in scale and heavily dependent on voluntary farmer participation, making systematic expansion across larger geographical areas extremely difficult to achieve sustainably.
Deep-rooted saline soil patches continue to significantly reduce crop productivity in many areas throughout the basin, and groundwater quality has not recovered uniformly across all participating village communities.
Critical infrastructure deficiencies persist throughout the broader region, with frequently leaking water distribution pipelines and inadequate irrigation canal networks preventing even well-designed water policies from reaching all farming communities effectively.
Press reports have documented numerous cases of major pipeline failures and water pumping system breakdowns across the broader drought-prone areas of Vidarbha, underlining the fundamental fragility of basic rural water distribution infrastructure systems. These recurring technical failures often negate the benefits of successful community water harvesting efforts.
The practical implementation of new drought-resistant cropping patterns has proved economically challenging for many smallholder farmers, requiring both significant time investments and willingness to accept financial risks associated with unfamiliar crop varieties.
While some early adopting farmers achieved notable success with salt-resistant crop varieties, widespread adoption has remained limited to a small fraction of affected agricultural fields. Many of the poorest farming villages still lack access to basic piped water supply systems, leaving them entirely dependent on unreliable seasonal water sources.
Partnership stakeholders acknowledge that their community-based model requires much stronger institutional support and government backing to sustain and significantly expand its demonstrated impact across larger areas. The voluntary nature of many water conservation initiatives, while allowing for flexible local implementation, has also severely limited the scope of systematic agricultural transformation across the entire basin.
Despite these significant operational limitations, the partnership's sustained work has helped establish integrated watershed management as a widely recognised and respected approach within Vidarbha's agricultural development sector.
The initiative successfully demonstrated that community-driven water conservation measures could effectively complement larger government infrastructure projects like major dams and extensive canal irrigation systems, rather than competing with them for limited resources.
Water management officials now working throughout the regional agricultural sector acknowledge several crucial lessons that emerged directly from the partnership's extensive field experience.
The proven value of community-organised rainwater harvesting has gained much wider official recognition. The critical need to address agricultural soil salinity through direct soil treatment intervention rather than indirect measures has become standard accepted practice in government agricultural programmes.
These hard-won insights continue to influence agricultural planning approaches and water policy development throughout drought-prone areas of Vidarbha, even where full systematic implementation remains challenging due to resource constraints.
The partnership's measurable influence can be observed in the numerous small but concrete water infrastructure improvements scattered across the region, individual farm pond installations, renovated traditional village storage tanks, and successful drought-resistant crop transitions that demonstrate the practical viability of locally-adapted agricultural solutions.
A complete transformation of the basin's chronic water scarcity situation has not been achieved. But these incremental but meaningful changes represent substantial progress for the rural communities directly involved in partnership programmes.
In areas where drought and soil salinity continue to pose existential challenges to agricultural livelihoods, the partnership's extensive work has conclusively shown that organised local knowledge and sustained community effort can produce concrete, measurable improvements in water access and farm productivity, even when broader systemic problems affecting rural development persist across larger geographical areas.
References
Global Water Partnership South Asia. (n.d.). Purna River improves quality of groundwater. Global Water Partnership. Retrieved June 26, 2025, from https://www.gwp.org/en/gwp-SAS/WE-ACT/change-and-impact/News-and-Activities/archive/News-Page/
Bhagwat, R. (2018, April 7). 7,423 villages in Vidarbha reeling under water scarcity. The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/7423-villages-in-vidarbha-reeling-under-water-scarcity/articleshow/63649446.cms
Global Water Partnership. (2006). Local action through Area Water Partnerships: Final report. https://www.gwp.org/globalassets/global/the-challenge/resource-material/awp_report.pdf
Comments