Groundwater Stories: Villagers Share Their Voices

This book, Groundwater Stories — Villagers Share Their Voices, emerged from an ACIAR-funded research project titled Managing aquifer recharge and sustaining groundwater use through village-level intervention (AMRVI). The project was implemented in the Meghraj watershed in Aravalli district of Gujarat and the Dharta watershed in Udaipur district of Rajasthan, in India. The technique used to develop the stories in this book is called PhotoVoice. This powerful technique enables ordinary people—usually with limited power due to poverty, low literacy levels, ethnicity, gender, culture or other circumstances to capture and share aspects of their environment, worldviews and experiences through photography. Farmers, school children and others in the study villages of the MARVI project shared their photos, through this book, to bring the realities of everyday water issues and challenges to the attention of the community and policy makers. The photographs captured what surface and ground waters meant to the villagers, in the present and future, what they valued most about water, and how they saw their own responsibilities for village water security. The book is an example of how grassroots activities, such as storytelling, can be used to develop engagement, ownership and vision for local problems and solutions in rural development projects. The process of producing this book has indirectly helped villagers in the MARVI project to explore the problem and identify possible solutions for their groundwater situation.