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Aundhewadi Drinking Water Project
Some newspapers have said that “Shahrukh Khan’s Swadesh has been replayed in Aundhewadi village”, while some have said that Ganga has emerged from the mountains of Aundhewadi village. But we say that its just pure service to humanity, people realizing about their three basic needs of life i.e Water, Food and Shelter and making a positive effort in achieving those. It has indeed been a magical month where the villagers have strived together in making people believe that 1+1 is not 2 but 11. And it has happened in one of the most remote adivasi village in India, which is Aundhewadi located west of Sinnar (Nashik) in the midst of mountains. It all started as follows:
Aundhewadi is a small adivasi village with Hindu Mahadeo Koli samaj people residing in the form of 80 families. When we had visited this village somewhere in the month of Nov 2009 with YUVA MITRA, we could see a normal site which is their in most of the villages i.e women of this village walking miles to fetch water for their livelihood, for feeding their animals. YUVA MITRA is an NGO which is working very closely with this village and helping these villagers in achieving their basic needs and also for the overall development of young villagers and the village as a whole. Mr Sunil Pote is the person who is running this orgainsation. When we had visited this village, Sunil Pote had spelled the idea of helping these villagers in getting 24 hour drinking water supply. Its quite ironical that inspite of heavy rainfall, this village has no water secondly this village has an artificial lake but the water doesn’t stay in that throughout the year. Women walk miles in fetching water as a result they have to leave their routine agriculture job for 6 months and concentrate only in getting water. Government under the “JAL SWARAJ YOJGANA” for making village “Tanker Mukt” had spent 30 lac rupees but not a single drop of water came in the village as the project for left unfinished. We along with Sunil pote the inspired souls thought of doing something and then the magical month action started. Sunil pote along with other technicians some infact from irrigation dept like Mr Avinash Lokhande and Mr Sanjay Belsare unofficially decided to work together and look for some source from mountains as per the information provided by villagers. Their was one “Dholya Nala” as it is commonly called in aundhewadi village, was one perennial water flow in the mountains which was located at the height of 120 meter. It was called so as when the water used to fall it used to sound like Dhol. But it was very difficult to source water from this place because of the distance and rough terrain. But that was the only hope. So we had meetings with the villagers. The villagers looked positive as they wanted to meet their basic need of water, and we wanted this positive attitude of the villagers to complete the project as the finance is secondary. So once the villagers and YUVA MITRA got a green signal about finances the work started and it has really been more than a “SWADES MOMENT” where the villagers came together in batches of 20-22 people also women and children and started the efforts in realising their dream of getting water. Within one month the entire project was completed along with the construction activity on the mountains, laying pipes and the day arrived which was 22nd December when the trial run happened and water in the form of ganga emerged in aundhewadi.
Now the scenario is within 7 seconds , 15-20 litres of water pot gets filled up and within 24 hours 1,50,000 litres of water supply is made available. The village requirement is only 32000 litres( as there are 800 villagers * 40 litres everyday). A knob is fitted wherein after the village is through with their water requirements, the knob can be closed and the water is available for irrigating 50-60 acres of land and feeding 100 animals.
Bravo to all those who have made a difference the aundhewadi villagers, YUVA MITRA, Avinash Lokhande, Sanjay Belsare(Irrigation Dept) , Judy Rodrigues, Shreya Salvi, Vilas shetty, Gopal Krishnan, Rajam Panicker, Neelima Divekar, Indira Bhalchandran, Sweety Shrivastava, Vinayak Deshpande, Anil Pardesi, Harish Shanbag (HDFC Ltd.), Neelam Sharma (TIBCO).
