Harnessing community capacity to coordinate and integrate natural and behavioural science perspectives : a groundwater management case study from rural India

The use of groundwater in agriculture is important in India as it has enabled farmers to manage deficiencies in monsoonal rainfall to minimise crop failures and has allowed dry-season irrigation, thus contributing to poverty alleviation. For this reason, a range of on-ground works to recharge groundwater are being implemented at the village scale throughout India as a part of the Government of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) to enhance livelihood opportunities while developing a reliable and potentially sustainable ground water asset base. A significant part of the MNREGA investment programme is assigned to on-ground structures such as check dams, percolation tanks, surface spreading basins, pits and recharge shafts, enhancing long-term, local water security (MNREGA 2014). Despite historical efforts to improve the sustainability of groundwater in India, the failure of groundwater management to prevent severe aquifer depletion remains, particularly in Rajasthan and Gujarat. In this project, called Managed Aquifer Recharge through Village level Intervention (MARVI), research focussed on developing a suitable participatory approach and associated tools and methodology that will assist in improving both the supply and demand management of groundwater. Another important aspect of the project is the education of and engagement with village communities, local NGOs and government agencies to facilitate coordinated and cooperative endeavours to achieve sustainable groundwater management. In this chapter, we report on some insights on the capacity-building elements of the MARVI project conducted in five villages in Rajasthan and eleven villages in Gujarat with two main objectives: (i) to describe a set of activities and exercises undertaken by the team on increasing knowledge, skills and ability of the various stakeholders and (ii) to reveal how information and engagement activities can be used by village communities to discover, develop and assess their own viable options for groundwater management, including managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and measures to reduce water demand whilst sustaining livelihoods.