'Piped Water And Vegetables For An Entire Village'

Devitala, Jamwa Ramgarh, Rajasthan

• Water and food which we tend to take for granted are not easily available to people in rural areas. The situation at Devitala village in Rajasthan is a representation of what happens in many such villages. Listen to two women: "Since my house is on a hill, it is very difficult to fetch water, half my day is spent on getting water,” said one while the other added: "We eat vegetables only when we have money." That's when, under the Reliance Foundation-BIJ programme, the Village Farmers Association (VFA) was formed.
• The Village Farmers Association (VFA) took up Reliance Nutrition Gardens (RNG) as its first activity to provide quality nutrition from individual kitchen gardens. But then, two elderly women expressed their difficulty in fetching water to fill the RNG tanks. The VFA members identified a water tank constructed by the government outside the village. It had a capacity of two lakh litres and a continuous water source in the form of a bore well. With official permission, the VFA decided to lay water pipelines to all houses.
• The government didn’t have budgets so VFA members raised Rs 100,000 from the panchayat, the community pitched in with Rs.70, 000 and RF-BIJ put up Rs 160,000. For a house to get piped water, it was mandatory to set up a RNG. About 60 of the 100 households have water connections and work is on to cover all. Each of the 60 households has a functional RNG in their backyard and they have not gone to market to buy vegetables in the last 5-6 months.