Conservation and revival of water bodies
While posted as CDO Aligarh district – which has 12 blocks – Sachan got an opportunity to work for the waterconservation drive.On watching the news of acute water crisis in Rajasthan, Maharashtra,Madhya Pradesh and other states during summers,especially before monsoon,he realised how serious water scarcity issue is.
He planned with his team of officers and started work on old ponds, water bodies,wells and checkdams. Additionally, created new fresh ponds. To make it a public mission, senior officers and people representatives were invited to inaugurate new works.
Sachan himself also along with many officers did earth work in ponds in early morning hours with a belief that result lies in increasing recharging capacity of water than its consumption. There was a drive to educate the people for conserving this underground water and using it very economically. People were told the analogy ofsaving bank account where if one draws more and saves less than, one day his or her account will be empty; similarly, one day ground water will be exhausted if we don’t work now.
Work on many new checkdams and many new ponds and also, the revival of old water bodies was done in mission mode. Early hours, officers went to field to participate and supervised the progress.Then in official time, did rest of the usual works.
Out of 12 blocks,six blocks saw good improvement in water table as per a survey report. Also, one dark block was converted to normal block (in terms of groundwater).
Expectation from the government is that water conservation is certainly a big task in which cooperation of people, government departments, technology and political will, everything would be needed together.
