Jharkhand’s waterman, Simon Oraon, will now be enlightening people of Jharkhand about the importance of water harvesting and would be motivating farmers to toil hard to preserve rain water to sustain agricultural activities. The waterman as he is known among people was appointed as the ‘Brand Ambassador’ on Saturday for watershed programme.
The waterman who has been bestowed with Padma Shri has been appointed ‘Brand Ambassador’ by Minister Rural Development, Neelkanth Singh Munda at a workshop on irrigation at SIRD, Ranchi.
“This is a very big responsibility for me however I am elated,” said Oraon, adding “the Minister said that I speak well on these issues hence I should be invited to meetings and conferences to talk about water-harvesting”.
Nonetheless, the humble septuagenarian stressed on a complete change of mindset of the officials who more close to hinterland and expressed that the officials, including circle officers and block development officers must be apprised about the effectiveness of water-harvesting. He suggested a few measures to improve the availability of water for agriculture.
Oraon maintained that the State Government needs to focus equally on promoting “dry agriculture” by distributing goats, pigs, cows as he also said
“Government can’t do anything about dried wells however it can deepen ponds and water pits wherever those exist. I always believed in ‘ann hai to jaan hai paani hai to dhaan hai’”.
The department would be reaping rich practical experiences of the hard working man from Bero to motivate watershed mission employees, committee members and farmers to increase success of watershed programmes that helps in sustaining farming activities by ensuring supply of water.
“He will motivate chairman and secretaries of watershed committees and we will tell farmers how they can transform their lives by using his (Oraon’s) techniques that he used in field,” said Principal Secretary of Rural Development, NN Sinha.
Oraon's family owned around eight acres of fallow land, he grew up seeing his relatives grow monocrop paddy due to insufficient water. Oraon with the help of fellow villagers had constructed the first dam of earth near Gaighat in Bero in 1961 which sadly caved in next monsoon. Undeterred, Oraon reconstructed the dam but it failed to withstand the strong current of water.
However, he got a helping hand from the state water resource department, which intervened and increased its height and width and the 73-year-old farmer made third attempt to create a pool of water for agriculture.
Even as the Rural Development department roped in Oraon to educate people about benefits of water harvesting, Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation Department, Chandra Prakash Chaudhary, emphasised on coordination among all the stake holders to facilitate irrigation of land and to provide drinking water to the people of Jharkhand.