: Once Parched, Maharashtra Village Becomes Drought-Free Earns Rs 72 Crores/Year #IndiaNEWS #Conservation Kadwanchi village, which is about an 80 km drive from Aurangabad in the parched Marathwada

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Once Parched, Maharashtra Village Becomes Drought-Free Earns Rs 72 Crores/Year #IndiaNEWS #Conservation
Kadwanchi village, which is about an 80 km drive from Aurangabad in the parched Marathwada region of Maharashtra, is an oasis. The village has 650 farm ponds, and the groundwater sources such as wells and borewells have adequate water all year round.
A 54-year-old Chandrakant Kshirsagar, ex-sarpanch and the village head, says the village has a record 1,500 acres of grape vineyards with several acres of pomegranate and other crops that enable the farmers to lead a comfortable life.
Though the village, with a population of over 1,000, is now living a prosperous life, the situation 35 years ago was quite different.
Chandrakant says, “The village land was barren. I could barely water 0. 75 acres of my vineyard in 5-acre farmland. The village’s river had dried up and the groundwater resources depleted due to overexploitation. Even as the streams started flowing during the monsoon, the surface water flowed away without percolating in the ground. �
Pandit Wasre speaking about watershed management to villagers.
However, since the mid-1990s, the villagers stepped up and took drastic efforts to transform their lives. They constructed farm ponds and carried watershed management work that reap benefits even after 20 years.
Thanks to the effort by Vijay Anna Borade of Marathwada Sheti Sahitya Mandal (MSSM), engineers from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra—an extended agricultural sector of the Central Government’s Indian Council of Agriculture Research—along with the villagers, the village is now drought-free.
In an earlier article by The Better India, we spoke of the dire state of the Kadwanchi village. Four years on, the villagers have prospered with droughts being a thing of the past.
A Life-Altering Transformation
Chandrakant says, “The Marathwada region is plagued with long spells of drought, leading to heavy crop loss and one of the reasons for farmer suicides. The case was no different with Kadwanchi in 1995. Women walked long distances in the scorching sun to fetch a pot of water and the villagers depended heavily on tankers and migrated to work as sugarcane labourers in other parts of the state. �
As the villagers braced for another drought year, he adds that one Vijay Anna Borade from Patoda and associated with MSSM visited the village and shared an example of watershed work in Jodgaon village of the neighbouring Beed district. “He suggested we carry out watershed management along with water conservation works to implement and improve the water scarcity of the village,� he says.
Tired of living in despair, Chandrakant adds that the villagers were willing to give it a try. “The residents agreed to contribute for the labour works and other requirements to build barrages, Continuous Contour Trenches (CCT) and other structures to arrest the rainwater and percolate it in the ground,� he adds.

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