Keya Acharya

This case study is about Samerth's efforts to achieve drinking water security, in participation with local village communities in Rapar, Kachchh (Gujarat). Arghyam has been collaborating with Samerth on this effort since 2007.

The Vand Women of Kachchh: Guest post by Keya Acharya

She gazes unflinchingly with direct eyes into the camera with a feminine mystique and physique that could, be gracing the front cover of a beauty magazine. Her red, mirror-worked blouse, in the traditional Kachchhi style worn by tribal women, is strapped at the back in stringed bows, greatly practical in the dry, wilting heat of that arid expanse of land in hinterland Gujarat called Kachchh. Her skirt is a colourful hue of printed green, and her ‘dupatta’ is a blazing red piece of cloth swept forward from her waist, partially covering her back, brought over her head and tucked back demurely into her waist again. Her name is Ammi.

This case study is about Samerth's efforts to achieve drinking water security, in participation with local village communities in Rapar, Kachchh (Gujarat). Arghyam has been collaborating with Samerth on this effort since 2007.

The Best Part of the Story: Guest post by Keya Acharya

The landscape is barren in parts with just high heat and sun-bleached sand, the hallmarks of wastelands; in other parts there is some semblance of agriculture, with jowar, bajra and sometimes castor growing in small patches of mild green, without the lushness that good watering provides.

And in the middle of this landscape there appears, like an oasis without the accompanying palms, the ‘Tinnavahd talab’, a drinking water pond constructed by the community at Rabarkar vand, near Lakhagarh village in Rapar taluk of Kutch district. Inside the pond there is a dugwell, constructed on the pond bed.

"Some simple trenches", is a case study by Keya Acharya written in July 2007, about two areca farmers of Sirsi in northern Karnataka, Ganapathy Dattatreya Hegde and his brother-in-law Ananda Subbray Pratakahal, who have become community leaders, workhorses and heroes, all in one, by turning a situation of water-scarcity and soil-deg