With projections on the fate of the climate only getting direr over time, I found myself impatient to do something that had a measurable impact. I had seen and participated in numerous awareness campaigns and helped with my fair share of climate fundraisers too, but I was yet to find something that truly empowered me to engage in actionable tasks that could go a long way to climate sustenance — until I chanced upon Paani Foundation.
Learning about the drastic drought conditions across Maharashtra and the growing challenges of farmers encouraged me to reach out and seek opportunities to volunteer with the organisation. I was intrigued by the message of a “people’s movement” and resolved to discover more. Now, having worked for months with the foundation on various projects such as the Planeteers Workshop — an immersive digital experience to introduce kids to the wonders of the planet — I’ve discovered the true power of collective action and immersed myself in concepts such as green economics.
I sat down with the foundation’s Head of Training, Mr Lancy Fernandes, who has been with the organisation from its inception, to gain a deeper understanding of Paani’s journey and provide a glimpse into a powerful movement that is more important to the human race now than ever before.
After the widely successful, groundbreaking Indian TV show Satyamev Jayate — hosted by Aamir Khan — which discussed and provided solutions to a multitude of social issues in India, the core creative team was inspired to pioneer something new. “We had witnessed the power of communication through television and how transformative it can be if authentic, and Satya wanted to see if it could be done on the ground in communities,” Mr Fernandes started off, referring to the director of Satyamev and Chief Executive Officer of Paani Foundation, Mr Satyajit Bhatkal.
With a vision to work towards water and climate conservation, the team began visiting villages and discussing what needed to be done to address the growing problem of drought.
“For the first time, someone was proposing to create a people’s movement to fight drought — they were trying to take the destiny of their lives into their own hands. There was no outside source; it was just standing on one’s own feet to solve something.” — Mr Fernandes
This was just an idea that he began with but is now Paani Foundation’s ground reality. It does sound too good to be true and he’s more aware of that than anybody else — laughing about how it was a “romantic notion” at the beginning of 2016. He told me about his initial scepticism.
Would people divided by caste, religion, gender and politics overcome society’s deep-rooted fractures to come together for a higher purpose?
Being prepared for failure was crucial to moving forward amidst these doubts: “Since we were prepared to fail, we put our best foot forward to do everything to succeed,” he said. While most such foundations begin with funding, Paani’s only promise to the villages around Maharashtra was training and helping them achieve a drought-free existence through proven solutions and technologies. Creating three and a half-day training programme to give these citizens the necessary skills for water conservation and preservation was highly challenging.
Mr Fernandes told me how the word ‘training’ is bandied around for any small thing when it is so much deeper than that:
“Can this training be transformative and have an actual impact? It isn’t just about knowledge. Unless this programme can help create inner transformation, and help those in villages to look at their situation differently and feel excited by the possibility to fix it, no amount of training can ever be enough.”
With a core team that had a broader humanitarian background and largely worked in communications and media, they spent months conducting ground research to write modules, partnered with experts, learned about watershed management themselves and trained a wider team. After all the effort of attempting to create a live experience for the villagers, they were left with only one big question — will this really work and inspire people to begin constructing water-shed to conserve water?
“The feedback we received after each of the training sessions over those three days gave us hope,” Mr Fernandes explained, talking about how inspirational the participants of the programme found it. In 2016, the organisation started with three talukas (blocks), expanded in the next year itself, and grew to reach 76 talukas in four years — an accelerated level of growth that would not have been possible without the involvement of the people themselves.
Hosting the ‘Satyamev Jayate Water Cup’ each year from 2016 to 2019, the 45-day competition involved thousands of villages over the state to compete for the best, most effective work in soil and water conservation. After participating in the residential training that Paani Foundation had designed, villages found a strong starting point for the work to begin. Shorter field training and an exhaustive bank of Marathi animated videos and books further propagated the science of watershed management.
Through their own passion, efforts and determination, villages developed several technical skills and created watershed structures. They also unleashed their entrepreneurial power to raise money for machine rentals, to create large structures which couldn’t be created by hand.
The core of the competition, and on a broader scale, of the entire foundation was the idea of ‘shramadaan’ or voluntary labour — thousands would contribute their time to create, repair and organise for the benefit of the planet and themselves. While many villages did not have any space, they used every little bit of free area to build watershed structures, achieving something governments have found difficult to carry out.
Beginning to express my delight and inspiration by the sheer scale of impact Paani has achieved, Mr Fernandes is quick to protest and remind me that the greatest achievement is not of Paani, but of the people and what they did for themselves by transforming their mindsets and villages.
“As I would visit these villages, I would always hear people talking about all the work that had been achieved—they would say Paani Foundation did this or that, but I would remind them, Paani is just the medium and the platform but it’s you who did this. You have to only yourselves to congratulate for the miracle of litres of water saved, and soil health restored.” — Mr Fernandes
In 2020, the foundation began the Samruddha Gaon Spardha, a competition that aimed to transform not only rural ecology but also the rural economy, while focusing on sustainable water usage and environmental restoration. While the Water Cup led to the creation of 550 billion litres of water storage capacity, climate change over the years exacerbated agricultural problems and drought.
With a broader focus, the Spardha went beyond water conservation. It focused on community-led work on sustainable water management and crop planning, boosting soil health, replenishing grasslands and increasing our green cover.
This time around, the organisation also has a more long-term goal to help create livelihoods and concentrate on increasing agricultural productivity. “Climate change affects agriculture the most. We might have a period of seasonal rain in the city but we’re ultimately okay. The effects in these villages and on the livelihoods of these farmers are much more extensive—they’re devastating,” Mr Fernandes tells me as we discuss Paani’s current focus on ‘Green Livelihoods.’
The focus is on increasing the income of these villages and farmers while also being aligned with nature; this entails moving away from intensive chemical farming and pesticides and learning how to create and work with things such as vermicompost (a nutrient-rich organic fertiliser). Heading training for this as he’s headed previous projects, Mr Fernandes describes “devising technical and social training modules to be able to create a system where people are encouraged to be economically and ecologically wise, all in the larger framework of climate change.”
This focus on green economics — an economic approach that looks to reduce environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment—transcends to the youth as well. With ‘Nisargachi Dhamaal Shala’ (Fun School For Nature), the foundation carried out workshops for students in rural schools across Maharashtra with the aim of sensitising students on environmental issues and helping them understand their relationship with nature.
“Many of them participated in the Water Cup, in fact, in some villages, the youth were the ones initially volunteering, which then inspired the adults,” said Mr Fernandes. Helping with outreach for their urban school program, Paani Foundation’s ‘Planeteers Workshop,’ and getting to attend the four-day sessions myself, I’ve witnessed the programme’s powerful ability to educate younger students in urban areas firsthand.
While the organisation hosted a digital farming school over the past months for villagers, specifically for soybean since it’s grown in such vast quantities in Maharashtra, the pandemic has affected plans.
“Covid-19’s another thing that’s affected the entire world and we can liken it to climate change in some ways—global warming doesn’t discriminate between countries either. We [Paani Foundation] have a lot of plans, it’s really all about what covid allows us to do. We want another three to a four-day programme to motivate people and create a vast movement for livelihoods and agricultural productivity, and help move towards a collective solution in alignment with nature—we hope we get to hit the ground running again soon.” — Mr Fernandes
He enlivened with the prospect of furthering this miraculous people’s movement that’s inspired thousands over Maharashtra, created the capacity to save billions of litres and redefined my outlook on change.
A big thank you to everyone at Paani Foundation for giving me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to volunteer and play a small role in something so transformative. Special thanks to Mr Lancy Fernandes for the lovely conversation and for dedicating so much of his time to my article. I’m truly grateful.
To learn more about Paani Foundation, and see how you can get involved, visit https://www.paanifoundation.in/.