When urban areas of State have been struggling with rain water harvesting efforts, rural Jharkhand has started showing what small efforts could lead towards: this is what experts and those working in villages for water conservation have expressed on Sunday during a one-day Seminar on the topic in Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra by the Department of Remote Sensing of the Institute.
“Every single household of the State can be made financially self-dependent through small efforts of water conservation. Jharkhand has potential to move forward through water conservation and I can say this with my experience of last 10 years in the State,” said Chief Guest of the Seminar and Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (Technical) Mahendra Modi, a resident of Kodarma in Jharkhand.
Modi demonstrated small steps taken in rural areas of Jharkhand for rejuvenation of century old water reservoirs like wells and ponds which have brought drastic changes in water levels of those areas and have shown new light of hope in water conservation in a State which despite normal to sufficient rainfall has been suffering from drinking and irrigation water scarcity since some years due to one reason or the other.”Actually the reasons primarily run around non-cooperation of villagers. In most of the cases where these small steps demonstrated by Water Conservationist Modi have not worked wonders, we have come across issues of non-cooperation of united villagers.
And this is more or less issue with entire State that there are fractions of villages or societies which don’t want these steps to be proved effective, because in that case their entire established framework of making money from prevailing system which has started disallowing them as middlemen in recent times due to various Governmentplans for rural areas will start tumbling,” said MGNREGA Commissioner Siddharth Tripathi on the sidelines of the event. He also said that collective efforts were needed to see Governmentplans reflecting results on grounds.Deputy Development Commissioner Shashi Ranjan who played pivotal role in organising the Seminar said on the occasion that water conservation was one of the key challenges for livelihood in modern world. He also said that the Governmentwas committed to provide facilities to the rural Jharkhand and united villages could make best out of them. Civil and Environmental Engineering Head of the Department (BIT Mesra), BDOs of Ranchi, Mukhias and Panchayat representatives were present on the occasion to take maximum out of present of Modi in the event.