Clean Drinking Water From The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation's Giving Back Initiative

The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation has provided Flood-Proof Raised Clean Water Tube-Wells for 27,500 Remote Villagers in Flood-Prone Madhubani District, Bihar, India

Why does the flooding happen and what can be done?

You will all be well aware of the widespread flooding that occurred during the late summer of 2008 in the State of Bihar, India. Such floods occur regularly, but not necessarily every year.

The flood water originates as run-off from monsoon rains in the Nepalese Himalayas which are just over the eastern border of Bihar State in India. The swollen rivers flowing through North-East Bihar during the annual monsoon period frequently burst their banks and flood hundreds of square kilometers of farmland leaving large rural subsistence populations, (sometimes millions of people), without clean water for drinking and washing.

Failure of river embankments: a problem difficult to solve

Extensive embankments have been built over past generations to contain monsoon water in the swollen rivers of Bihar. When the embankments are new, they function quite well, but the swollen rivers carry hundreds of thousands of tons of silt which is deposited annually on the river beds.

Each year, the river bed may rise about 10 cm owing to deposited silt and each year the monsoon-swollen river flows higher within the embankments. The deposited river bed silt would make a fertile soil for use on farmland, but at present there is no adequate and viable mechanized means available for dredging the river beds to restore the depth of the river and to utilize the valuable silt. After only a few years of silt deposition on the river beds resulting in a rise in river water levels, the embankments are weakened and no longer high enough to contain the fast moving river water. In consequence, embankments give way to the pressure of water and disastrous flooding spreads across the farmland and villages which are at a lower level than the embankments.

Easy to flood: not easy to drain

The flood water may continue to spill over the breached embankments for many days and the flood will spread over massive areas. The floodwater may be only up to about 1 metre deep in many places and it may be moving very slowly, but it is deep enough to cause havoc in the farmland and villages in its path.

Eventually the monsoon rains cease and the river levels subside, but the stagnant, shallow lakes formed by the floodwater cannot flow back into the rivers to drain the land because the embankments are too high to allow this.

What happens to the people and livestock?

When flooding happens, all normal water supplies, stored food, crops growing in the fields and seeds for the next year’s crops are heavily contaminated and rendered useless by flood water. The flood water contains detritus and raw sewage. Having fled from their flooded homes, the majority of people are unable rescue their livestock. The people cannot boil or sterilize the poor quality water that is available to them. This situation often leads to serious infections of the eyes and digestive system and to many other life-threatening water-borne diseases. Village children and the elderly and infirm are the most at risk.

What has The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation done to help?

The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation's remit is to look for viable methods to prevent or alleviate problems that result from repeated flooding and we entered into a partnership contract with OXFAM International to undertake a programme of well modification and construction of new flood-proof deep tube-wells in flood-prone remote villages and hamlets in the Madhubani district of Bihar.

The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation contributed £50,000 GB Pounds (Rupees 38 Lakhs) for this programme of work. By mid-2009, the project had provided more than 100 flood-proof clean water tube wells to the benefit of 27,500 people resident in some of the poorest remote villages and hamlets.

The tube wells were bored down to as far as 80 metres depth to reach constant supplies of pure water and constructed such that they are totally sealed at and below ground level to prevent ingress of contaminated flood water.

The well heads are raised on concrete platforms with steps to a point above maximum historic flood levels such that people are able to access the fresh water pumps at all times including times of flooding.

Enabling the people to understand the problems and help themselves

Traditionally, in the Madhubani District of Bihar, the village women are the ones responsible for fetching water. So following this tradition, an important part of our programme was to train the women to be the pump technicians whose responsibility is to repair and maintain the wells and pumps. The Village Women’s Committees are responsible for maintaining clean water supplies.

All necessary tools, spare parts and ongoing back-up services have been provided, together with extensive training of villagers and their children in health and hygiene matters and in the safe carriage and use of water without contamination. The children have been provided with screw-top water bottles to carry clean water with them for their days at school.

This initial well project was completed on time in 2009 with an under-spend of just over £3000 GB Pounds (Rupees 2.3 Lakhs). The foundation is examining options for further long-term aid to such villages after holding discussions with the villagers themselves. One possible option is to use river silt to raise the level of land so that whole villages can be relocated safely above the maximum flood level.

Positive health feed-back

It is gratifying to note that a health survey in the villages that are now benefitting from the above clean water programme indicated an immediate reduction in the incidence of eye and gut infections, which hitherto had been a major health problem, particularly among the children and the elderly.

Would you like to be a part of this worthwhile programme?

If you would like to help The Kanka-Gajendra Foundation in supporting this valuable targeted programme of flood protection and provision of safe water for vulnerable village communities, please use the link to donations on line via JustGiving. Thank you.