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Conceptual Framework





The last half- century has been marked by attempts to solve various problems of rural India without involving local communities in any meaningful way. The solutions have always been imposed from above through the medium of all pervasive and centralised bureaucracy. This has resulted in the dying of local traditions and institutions while the alternatives that have emerged have been, at their best, less than adequate. With the advent of the Panchayat- Raj amendment to the constitution there is a glimmer of hope. Panchayats, or the local village parliament, now have a limited say in the use of the development funds for the village; further Panchayats themselves are accountable to the village through the institution of Gram- Sabha or the village assembly. Both these institutions are in their infancy and are subject to all the imperfections of the current political and social climate; still they remain our best hope. They can be the first step on the road leading to Swaraj.

It is in this context that the Ajit Foundation started in 1994 a Scientific Resource Centre with the task of developing tools based on mathematical modelling and information technologies (IT) that can help Panchayats manage their own water resources. The problem of meeting the water needs of a rural community is a complex human problem. In solving this problem IT can potentially play a useful role, but how to harness this potentiality is a question that has not received the attention it deserves. Jal- Chitra, which is software for managing water resources of a village, is a continuing attempt on the part of The Ajit Foundation to answer this question. The first attempt of The Ajit Foundation towards the use of IT for?2 rural water management was the development of a mathematical model for determining the reliability of rainwater harvesting systems with covered tanks against recurrent draughts. In 1997 this model was converted into an easy to use free software Sim- Tanka. A serious risk in the use of IT for rural development is that it can become a case of a solution searching for a problem. In fact the development of Sim- Tanka suffered to an extent from this pit- fall. Sim- Tanka was developed with the intention of helping a rural community design a reliable rainwater harvesting system using the past rainfall data. In a technical sense the software is indeed very useful, but the fact remains that while Sim- Tanka was received positively by various research organisation and was also given a fair amount of publicity in the press, its actual use in the building of rainwater harvesting systems, at least in Rajasthan, has been insignificant.

The development of Jal- Chitra started with the recognition of this failure of Sim- Tanka. More specifically it was the reluctance of the Barefoot College, Tilonia, to use Sim- Tanka in their program of constructing rainwater harvesting systems that initiated the process of trying to understand what kind of information and analysis is truly useful to a rural community. A continuos debate and dialog between the developer of the software and its eventual user marked this process, which soon became a collaborative project between the Ajit Foundation and the Barefoot College, Tilonia. An equally useful dialog was established with some of the members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), who have been pioneers in the fight for the right to information. What was solicited most from this dialog with MKSS was how to ensure that the information provided by Jal- Chitra becomes accessible to the entire village.?3

The result of this dialog was recognition that there are three sets of information that can assist a Panchyat in managing its water sources:

• An estimate of monthly water budget of the village.
• A way of keeping track of the maintenance work required for the various water sources.
• A community based water resource map of the village providing information about the access to water

Further, to ensure transparency and accountability all this information has to be available to the entire village in Hindi.

The defining feature of Jal- Chitra is its ability to allow a user to draw a community based water resource map of the village. The map is interactive so by clicking on any of these sources user can enter information about amount of water available from that source, details of any maintenance activity in that month, and if available it also keeps record of the water quality test. The information so entered is then used to generate monthly water budget, and various maintenance and water quality reports. These reports are in Hindi and can be printed and shared with the village at large.


Figure 2 Conceptual Outline of Jal- Chitra
Jal- Chitra at a Glance

• Uses Hindi as the language for interacting with the user.
• Allows user to draw an interactive community based water resource map of the village.
• Allows the community to keep a monthly record of the amount of water available from each of the water sources.
• Facility for keeping record of water quality testing.
• Facility for keeping record of maintenance work required and the maintenance works that has been done.
• Estimates the water demand for domestic, livestock, and agriculture uses.
• The farm records also suggest the optimal water irrigation required depending on the crop planted and the amount of rainfall.
• Generates future monthly water budget based on the past records, as more monthly records are kept the corresponding estimates become more reliable.
• Informs community as to how much of its annual water need is being met from underground water. It also estimates the approximate amount of recharging that is taking place.
• Finds out the reliability of covered rainwater- harvesting systems.
• Estimates the amount of rainwater harvesting done by the village and compares it with total potentiality of rainwater harvesting in the given village.

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