What problem did the villagers in …

The main problem which the people of the Hardas village faced was storage of water. The hand pump water has gone well below the point up to which the ground has been drilled. We hardly get any water in the taps. Women have to go to the Sum river which is 3 k.m. away to get water. One of the members suggests piping water from the Suru and making an overhead tank in the village to increase the supply. But the others think that this will be expensive. It's better, they feel, to deepen the handpumps and clean the wells for this season. Tijia says, "This is not enough. We need to do something more permanent as groundwater levels seem to be going down every year. We're using more water than is seeping into the ground." Another member, Anwar then tells everyone that he has seen ways of conserving water and recharging (refilling) it in a village in Maharashtra where he'd once gone to visit his brother. It was called watershed development and he had heard that the government gave money for this work. In this brother's village people had planted trees, constructed check- dams and tanks. Everyone thought this was an interesting idea and the Gram Panchayat was asked to find out about it in detail.