Amid questions being raised over utility of nearly 3 lakh Dovas dug across the State in the name of water management, the Government has gone ahead conducting third party assessments of the structures, introduced for the first time on such a scale in Jharkhand.
Top officials of the Department of Rural Development said that Institute of Economic and Social Development (IESD) has been appointed for the purpose and its report would be crucial for continuation of the scheme in future.
“We have been receiving different opinions often questioning usability of Dovas constructed across the State. The Department has decided to hire IESD for conducting an independent study. Tomorrow itself we had a meeting with them and expecting a report by May end well ahead of the Monsoon,” said Siddharth Tripathi, MGNREGA Commissioner.
The Government had last year before the Monsoon had gone ahead digging about 2.75 lakh Dovas in different parts of the State. The idea was to accumulate and preserve rain water in the small farm ponds which can have multi-dimensional effect in terms of irrigation, water conservation, maintenance of ground water table and also fish culture. Nevertheless the issue of their usability has been raised inside and outside the Assembly when members cutting across the parties expressed doubts.
“We have had representations from the public representatives and social workers. An MP had recently met us and said that Dovas are useless! There may be irregularities, some Dovas may not have been constructed at the right place and so on but these are different issue altogether. On this basis, it cannot be said that the concept itself was wrong and the structures are useless,” added Tripathi.
Besides surveying the area getting irrigated, its impact on farmers’ lives and improved farm production would be judged during the course of study. The Department depending on past experiences of NGOs and individuals with small farm ponds is sure about positive outcome.
“We are getting success stories from different parts on the social media platforms but needed an official validation to continue in future. Dovas have surely impacted though its impact on ground water table is to be seen, especially in a drought year and in testing times,” said Principal Secretary with the Department NN Sinha.
Moreover, it is also learnt that the Department for the years to come would proceed with a course correction as far as local level water management is concerned. “We have realised that the large size water schemes are often riddled with corruption. The reason behind going for small Dovas was this only. Now we are going to democratize the scheme selection process even further,” said the MGNREGA Commissioner.
Under the new found approach, it is the Gram Sabhas functional at village level that would be given larger responsibility to select water management schemes best suited to the local scheme of things. The villagers together would be able to select Dova, well, bunds etc from this year instead of any scheme being imposed from the above.