Click to play videoSaurashtra, Gujarat: Seventy five-year-old Shamjibhai Antala has been fighting single-handedly to save water in drought-prone Saurashtra. Shamjibhai has revived hundreds of dead wells making the area self sufficient. Now the last thing that people living in the area are concerned about is the lack of rainfall.
Everytime it rains Shamjibai utters a silent prayer. He understands the value of water and what the lack of it does to people. In a land with severe water scarcity and a hostile climate, he has managed to do the unthinkable. Ensure water to farmers in the Saurashtra region even during dry spells.
He is neither an engineer nor a farmer. He is a 75-year-old driven by a simple idea - getting farmers to recharge open wells by diverting rain water into it.
"I saw the expressions on the faces of people without any water problems after four years. And I had thought what if nature can provide solution. I thought of the water into well, as we get half of it back and the next yield would be better," said Shamjibhai
Shamjibai realised that - there was a well after every five to six acres of farmland in the Saurashtra region. And it was here that farmers could not only
store rain water, but also recharge the water table.
Twenty-years-ago he started in this tiny room in a village called Dhoraji. He designed pamphlets and booklets to distribute to villagers. He was a circulation manger with a local paper- and it helped him travel and spread the message to the entire Saurashtra region.
He gave hand outs at mass weddings, he even tied up with local religious heads to convince devotees about the concept of open-well recharge. And when he ran out of printed material - he took to drawing his ideas on paper to convince village heads. He knew that to restore the groundwater, this had had to be a mass movement
"For many years there were water problems, farmers were worried. There was a solution, it was putting water into wells. There are 7.5 lakh wells, I thought make a model, design, poster, booklets and gave to farmers and they will know how beneficial this is," he explained.
Today three lakh wells have been re-charged through these cement pipes in Gujarat alone, thanks to Shamjibahi's efforts. But after five years of good rains , the showers this year have been scant.
In an already dry place, this is tense news. But farmers like Gunatbhai have water flowing through his fields and they have Shamjibhai to thank for it.
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