Start Date: 2007-03-01

Completion Date: 2008-01-01

Technology Used:

Gram Vikas’ solution to bringing a 24 hr, piped water system to an un-electrified village such as Kerandiof is gravity flow water system. A simple and sustainable concept, Gram Vikas’ design of gravity flow water systems has successfully managed to provide continuous water supply to the village. In gravity flow, water from a spring or a well on a higher altitude than the village flows to the village overhead water tank, using the principles of gravity from where it is again distributed through pipes to all families round the clock. Gram Vikas is innovating the current gravity flow design to minimize costs.

Phases:

The project will be completed in one phase.

Community Organization:

A village comes to a consensus such that all families of the community will participate in the programme after a process of dialogue and negotiations between Gram Vikas and the community that may take a few months to a few years. Once the community has agreed to undertake MANTRA, they plan how to form the corpus fund of Rs.1000 per household where the better-off pay more and the poorer less. Once the corpus is collected, the community together with Gram Vikas plans the construction of the toilets and bathrooms and also creates a plan for operations and maintenance (O&M) by identifying common resources such as horticulture plantations, forests or ponds for pisciculture that can be developed to meet all or part of the O&M costs once the system is commissioned.The community drives the implementation of the programme. The community makes the bricks and collects all the local materials necessary for construction like sand and rubble for foundations. Villagers construct the toilets and bathrooms led by trained masons. From each village, youth, both men and women, are trained in masonry during the preparatory phase of the programme. The landless, typically the poorest of the poor, are given priority. The masons are assured work for at least one year and a survey conducted by Gram Vikas found that masons trained under Gram Vikas are able to command significantly higher wages as skilled workers than they could as unskilled labour and also work more days of the year. The community builds the overhead water tank and lays the network of pipes. One or two village youth are trained as pump operators and to make repairs to the system that may be needed. This general body elects a Village Executive Committee (VEC), with 50% of the positions reserved for women, which is registered under Societies Registration Act, 1860. The VEC takes over responsibility for the project incrementally. Once the system is commissioned, the VEC ensures O&M systems are functioning and hygiene behaviors are improved, e.g. the VEC administers a system of fines for open defecation anywhere near the village or unclean toilets.

Government Interaction:

Ancillary activities:

Other Issues:

Women and children are the greatest beneficiaries of this programme - women benefiting from being spared the drudgery of fetching water for household uses and children, escaping the clutches of water-borne diseases, which result in widespread morbidity and mortality.

Access to sanitation is not only a matter of hygiene, it is a statement in dignity - it restores to the rural folk, especially women, their self-respect. Moreover, it is well understood that given the widespread morbidity and mortality in rural areas due to water-borne diseases caused by faecal contamination of water, safe water can never be assured to a habitation in the absence of mechanisms for hygienic disposal of human waste – meaning proper sanitation