Ecologically water is critical to Purulia in West Bengal, owing to rugged terrain and over 50% run-off loss. With the rising demand, irrigation water has become a scarce commodity in Para and Raghunathpur, two drought prone blocks of Purulia district.
The objectives of this intervention are as follows:
a. To ensure water security for marginal farmers practicing dry land farming through water budgeting and participatory water resource management
b. To encourage water harvesting and its wise-use through entrepreneurial water-stewardship in rural areas
c. To enunciate a right-based water-banking paradigm for climate adaptive conservation of resources and sustainable intensification of ecosystem services.
Water banking is a new practice of forgoing water deliveries during certain periods and banking either the right to use the forgone water in the future, or saving it for someone else to use in exchange for a fee or delivery in kind. Present intervention achieved water security for 700 farmers through right-based entrepreneurial water conservation that lease water resources between willing water-rights holders and willing-to-pay users and assured quality water supply in budgeted volume. This includes harvesting of rainwater and run-off collected in built water banks for sustainable and budgeted usage in dry land farming. 10 units of water-banks, with an average area of 0.5 hectare, are developed for sustaining climate adaptive farming practices in 100 hectare of medium of extreme drought prone area.