It is expected that the unprecedented nature and scale of the epidemic will have a long term and wide spread impact on livelihoods and natural resources like water. Thus, it is important to create a reliable channel of communication that allows collection, collation and analysis of factual data and information to flow that will augment the government and civil society’s efforts for targeted intervention in a proactive manner, even as the crisis unfolds across the country. This information will be critical to first understand the change on the ground and then realign the policies of government as well as strategy of funding and implementing organisations.

In this context, the consortium of 20 civil society organizations having a collective outreach of over 1.2 million families has reached out to the donor community including Arghyam for financial support as well as leveraging resources that can strengthen the consortium to be more effective in its work.

The consortium has come up with three-pronged response strategy as below:

1. Direct Action – support to vulnerable communities, including migrant workers, through an existing cadre of 10,000 CRPs for raising awareness, support GPs, extend reach of government programmes, organize relief (food & medicines), support health workers with PPE/ quarantine facilities etc.
2. Action Research – to generate usable knowledge for better understanding of the public health as well as the economic crisis both in the short and long term in rural areas. This would entail building contextual understanding in multiple geographies as well as various vulnerable communities, for designing and implementing effective coping strategies.
3. Support to Elected Representatives and Policy Advocacy – to complement the efforts of the democratically elected representatives from the local self-government (GPs), MLAs/ MPs as well as Niti Aayog. This is for making relief and rebuilding efforts more community based, targeted and humane. The collective advocacy is aimed to inform policy of both national and state governments as well as for funding organisations.

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Currently diverse players are doing groundwater monitoring across the country from many government bodies, NGOs, academics, and citizens. This results in large amounts of data on groundwater, which is available in various formats, styles and languages.  Further, this data can be collected using differing methodologies. Given the lack of standardisation that exists today, it is difficult to ascertain how much data exits, where it lies, how useful it is and if it can be accessed .Also, without proper baseline data with which to compare, it is difficult to benchmark the progress that the government is making with their own data collection and aquifer mapping programs. By creating a repository, Arghyam is encouraging players to share data, evaluate what is good, and then ground truth government programs by providing data grounded in standardised data collection whose quality has been proven by civil society.

A  primary audience is the Participatory Groundwater Management (PGWM) coalition ,as these organisations are already a part of Arghyam’s network and are invested in community driven management of groundwater resources, that includes sound data management. This group can be leveraged to use their data to give feedback to government aquifer mapping initiatives. Apart from coalition members, NGOs that do watershed development, groundwater management, and general monitoring of an area, will also be invested in this repository.

Apart from NGOs, practitioners, academics, government agencies, the public will also find this data to be useful. Tools can be developed that allow interested people to choose a location and get an accurate picture of their groundwater situation and ways to participate in maintaining their resources.

By creating a place for aggregating and evaluating data as well as  a system that allows putting in data and then filtering out information based on parameters will be a benefit to all who work in the sector.

Outputs

The data repository that will be created, will allow filtering of data by various parameters, evaluate quality of data and standardise data methodology.

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To improve access to water (for domestic, drinking and irrigation purposes), individuals in Andhra Pradesh, like the rest of the country, are making heavy investments in  bore wells and extracting groundwater resources.This is leading to unsustainable water resource management and pushing the farmers towards crisis.

Considering this, it is proposed that a resource centre be established for south India, which attempts to integrate groundwater-related concerns within watershed development projects. The goal will be to deepen the capacities, knowledge systems and practices in participatory groundwater management (planning, using, monitoring, and regulating water resources) in rural areas. In this project, water resource plans with a clear focus on groundwater will be developed. There is also a need to facilitate this process by creating a pool of resource persons, who could provide technical support. Necessary communications and resource materials will be developed, and support systems for conceptualisng and designing new programs and policies with a clear focus on groundwater will be evolved in South India.

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