Gram Vikas

In February, a Jal Bandhu in Kalahandi noticed something. The water level in the village well was dropping faster than it should. Faster than it had in previous years at the same time.

She recorded it. She reported it.

The community put conservation measures in place before the source failed.

This is what the Jal Bandhu programme is designed to do - not to respond to a water crisis after it arrives, but to catch the signs before it does. Each Jal Bandhu is a young person from the village, trained to monitor water sources, read changes in levels, and report what they observe.

They are not external experts. They are not government appointments. They are people who already live in these villages and will continue to live there long after any programme ends.

Local knowledge. Local monitoring. Local action.

Communities maintain the systems they build themselves more durably than systems built for them.

The people who designed, negotiated, and decided how those systems function have a stake in keeping them running. They are the same people who must make it work the next season, and the one after that.

Over 45 years of working in remote, adivasi geographies in Odisha and Jharkhand, Gram Vikas observed this pattern consistently.

The Water Secure Gram Panchayats programme is built on that observation.

Under the programme, water security planning in each village starts with communities describing their issues and making mitigation decisions. Government schemes and resources support the work, but the community decision anchors it.

Across 73 gram panchayats in Odisha and Jharkhand, communities are mapping their own water sources, treating degraded land, and building structures to protect the natural water sources they have.

The process is community-rooted from the beginning. This is what makes it sustainable beyond any single programme cycle.

A farmer who acts on an upcoming weather forecast can protect a crop. A farmer without a forecast is left doing damage control after the weather has already hit.

In Ganjam district, unexpected heavy rain swept through several villages in June - July of 2025. Fields flooded and harvests were lost. One village nearby had received a weekly localised weather forecast. Farmers there harvested the crops before the rain arrived, and saved their produce.

Farmers in Kathpatani and Rudhapadar saw this and approached Gram Vikas. They wanted weather boards to be installed in their villages.

Gram Vikas installed weather boards in both gram panchayats. Every week, farmers receive localised weather updates along with crop advisories. Advisories cover irrigation timing, pest control, and harvesting decisions based on upcoming conditions.

In Kathpatani and Rudhapadar, the forecast has moved farming decisions from the aftermath of weather events to ahead of them.

It is with deep sorrow and profound grief that we inform you of the untimely demise of Shri Rakesh Kumar Padhan, Head Office Accountant, Finance and Accounts Section, who passed away on 3 May 2026.

Rakesh joined Gram Vikas on 9 August 2014, serving the organisation with dedication and sincerity for over 11 years. During this time, he worked across Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Gajapati, and Ganjam, taking on progressively greater responsibilities within the Finance and Accounts section. Most recently, he served as Coordinator- Bookkeeping and Statutory Compliances.

Shri Padhan was approximately 40 years of age. His diligence, professional integrity, and quiet commitment to his work made him a deeply valued member of the Gram Vikas family. Those who worked alongside him will remember the steadiness and sincerity he brought to everything he did.

His sudden departure has left a void that will be deeply felt by all who knew and worked with him.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family during this most difficult time. We pray for the eternal peace of his soul and seek strength for his loved ones to bear this profound loss.

Without accurate data about their own groundwater, communities have no reliable picture of how much is actually available. 

Decisions about farming and water use made in that condition risk over-use and mismanagement.

In Gajapati, Odisha, farmers made irrigation and cropping decisions based on what the previous season had felt like. There was no measured record of what the aquifer actually held.

That changed when communities began mapping their own groundwater before the monsoon and after it. Gram Vikas supports this work across Odisha and Jharkhand under the Water Secure Gram Panchayats programme.

Aquifer data collected at the village level is translated into Water Passbooks that communities can access and use directly. With that data, communities can ask precise questions about how much water natural sources have, how fast it is being used, and what can be done to protect it.

Across 93 villages in three gram panchayats in Gajapati, measured water data now informs cropping choices, conservation decisions, and seasonal planning

| Across Gram Vikas's Water Secure Gram Panchayat (WSGP) programme areas in Odisha, farms rely on two systems. Rain-fed soil moisture accounts for the majority of cultivation. Piped irrigation, drawn from natural springs, remains underdeveloped.

Both rely on rainfall. When rainfall falters and landscapes degrade, both fail.

Rainfall days in the region have dropped from around 120 to fewer than 90 annually, and rain now arrives in concentrated bursts. The farming calendar, built around predictable rainfall, begins to shift. In Odisha, between 2001 and 2019, the state lost over 1,655 square kilometres of forest cover. As forest cover thins, the land loses its capacity to absorb and hold water. Springs weaken and groundwater levels drop.

WSGP treats water as a productive asset, not only a domestic need. As communities restore landscapes and recharge improves, the effects show.

Between 2021 and 2025, communities across WSGP areas recharged an estimated 2 million cubic metres of water, alongside a 33% increase in winter farm incomes. Nearly 10,000 small and marginal farmers report more reliable cultivation.

When water holds, more crops hold. Households eat better, health and incomes improve, and fewer people leave the village in search of work elsewhere.

| The 73rd Constitutional Amendment devolved authority over 29 subjects to Gram Panchayats—water, land, health, agriculture, social forestry among them. Gram Panchayats are elected and constitutionally mandated. The gap is in practice: departments work in silos, and the GP’s role across them is rarely backed by finances, functionaries, or organised community voice.

In Odisha, 6,750 Gram Panchayats serve nearly 37 million rural people. This is the level where decisions on water, land, and livelihoods intersect.

Gram Vikas works at this intersection enabling communities to prepare Village Prosperity and Resilience Plans—using their own data on priorities, resource gaps, and entitlements. Convergence Melas bring line departments into the same room to respond to these demands, through the Panchayat, in a process repeated across GP after GP.

The Water Secure Gram Panchayat programme extends this to ecological governance. Villages prepare Water Security Plans to map and monitor sources, track groundwater, and plan how water is shared across drinking needs and livelihoods. These village plans anchor Gram Panchayat decisions on natural resource use and determine the support claimed from government.

By 2030, Gram Vikas aims to work with 1,000 Gram Panchayats to build water security through local governance. Across Gram Panchayats in Odisha, our work already shows what it takes for constitutional authority to translate into decisions made, resources claimed, and systems that respond.

This work is carried forward with partners including , , , , .foundation , and .

RuralIndia

| Infrastructure solves access. It does not solve the problem at source.

When households get reliable water through a piped system, use increases. So does dependence on the natural source. Without active recharge, the same system that improves daily life begins to strain the natural source.

In Odisha, Gram Vikas built source strengthening into the Water Secure Gram Panchayat Programme from the start. WSGP works with communities to treat catchments, construct trenches, restore vegetation, and protect springsheds. These measures slow runoff, improve percolation, and rebuild groundwater reserves.

Between 2021 and 2025, this work recharged an estimated 2 million cubic metres of water across programme areas, alongside a 15% increase in availability in critical sources.

Infrastructure and source strengthening are not sequential steps. A system built without tending to what feeds it will eventually work against itself.

| Water withdrawn must not exceed water replenished.

When that balance breaks, no amount of infrastructure compensates.

In Odisha, the balance is breaking.

Rainfall days have dropped from around 120 to fewer than 90 annually. Rain arrives in concentrated bursts, which the land struggles to absorb.

Between 2001 and 2019, the state lost over 1,655 square kilometres of forest cover, weakening the land's capacity to absorb water further. When recharge slows and extraction continues, the system thins out.

The Water Secure Gram Panchayat Programme works from this reality. Across 790 habitations in five districts of Odisha, WSGP builds locally rooted institutions that plan, monitor, and adapt at the level of the landscape, not just the tap.

Restoring balance cannot happen from outside. It requires the communities living within that landscape to govern it.

| What Does Cashew, Mango, and Jackfruit Have to Do with Climate Change?

In the villages of Odisha where Gram Vikas works, ecological restoration and livelihood security are not separate goals.

Communities are not asked to choose between protecting their land and earning from it. The design of the work insists that both happen from the same act.

In Gramadebati village, Ganjam twelve women from a Self-Help Group, with support from Gram Vikas and set up a nursery in 2024 and raised 10,000 saplings. Eight thousand of these were cashew, 1,000 mango, and 1,000 jackfruit.

The species were not chosen at random. These are trees the community already knows, sold in local markets, eaten through the summer, offered to guests. They also anchor soil, retain moisture, and support groundwater recharge. The women chose species that could do both things at once because that is what makes people want to plant, tend, and protect them over years, not just seasons.

That community-led choice is precisely why the work holds. Across the programme today, 2,419 hectares are under agroforestry plantations with fruit-bearing species. 81 percent of the farm and non-farm enterprises within this work are run by women.

When communities secure their resources and their livelihoods through the same tree, the intervention is grounded and built to last.