Once a helpless farmer in the list of the dry zones of Jharkhand, a resident of Rohchap Panchayat of Ramgarh district Rati Singh is busy at his cauliflower fields this winter. He is not alone in the village where fetching even drinking water easily was a far cry, leave alone cultivating vegetables.
Adorably looking at the ‘gaddha’ or pit Rati Singh explains Bhungroo that has come up only this April to his village. “I am very happy as we have got additional source of income generation. Vegetables can be grown now. It was not possible since most of the wells and tubewells in this belt remain dry in most of part of the year,” he says recalling ordeal they together had to live with.
The zone and most of others in this part of the world have typical geological formation making it difficult for rainwater to percolate deeper even during rainy seasons. “Topography of most part of Jharkhand like Rohchap is impermeable after 100-150 feet deep.
This prevents underground water table from recharging. We thought to replicate the model of Bhungroo here and we are happy that it has succeeded,” said Rathin Bhadra of the ‘Team Bhungroo’ in the State.
The innovation has been acknowledged by country’s apex plan making body NITI Ayog and gathered accolades at water scarce Kutcch region of Gujarat for its uniqueness to deal with the impermeability issue.
“It is a very simple structure where we dig a pit of 10X10 feet at the place where rain water generally gets accumulated in monsoon. The pit is filled up with gravels, sands and a deep bore is done beyond the hard rock. The site is selected after studying hydrological history where natural water aquifer was present in the past. The water collected in rains is passed from a filter at the top and reaches up to the dried aquifer to recharge it. Huge amount of water is stored underground like a pond does on the surface,” explains Bhadra.
Uniqueness of the innovation is converting rain water into a kind of bubble so that it does not spill over as it happens naturally. The structure is known as Bhungroo and one such Bhungroo claims to store 1.5 to 2 crore liters of water at a time. “You can imagine when a pond can store maximum 15 to 20 lakh liters of water. That means you are building 10 ponds in one go without needing much land,” Bhadra added.
The stored water can be pumped out for irrigation purposes besides having its considerable impact on overall water table of the area. Impressed by the innovation Jharkhand Innovation Forum run under the Planning and Development Department of the State Government had sanctioned the project to Team Bhungroo for the village in Ramgarh besides some in Ranchi city.
“Two days ago I inspected the project, which is fully complete and will be formally inaugurated soon. I also talked some of the villagers of Rohchap who said that ground water level of their dried bore wells and hand pumps has revived,” Vijay Kumar Beck, District Planning Officer of Ramgarh, told The Pioneer.
Moreover the idea is waiting to be adopted extensively elsewhere in Jharkhand’s urban and rural pockets living dangerously with depleting ground water.
“As many as 22 projects were approved by the DCs of Ramgarh, Godda and Gumla districts but the Department has not shown much interest to these this year,” says Bhadra.
Indifferent to all this is Rati Singh and several of his co-villagers at Rohchap, housing about 100-odd families, are not complaining as the sound of flowing water mixed with crops is coming into their ears like thousand ghungroos or small bells!