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ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣಾಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿ ಕ್ಷೇತ್ರದ ಸಾಧಕಿ 'ಜಲ ಮಾತೆ' ಎಂದು ಹೆಸರಾದ ಆಮ್ಲಾ ಅಶೋಕ್ ರುಯಾ ಅವರಿಗೆ ರಾಮೋಜಿ ಶ್ರೇಷ್ಠತಾ ಪ್ರಶಸ್ತಿ ಕೊಡಮಾಡಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಬನ್ನಿ, ನೀರಿನ ಮಹತ್ವ ಮತ್ತು ರಾಜಸ್ಥಾನದಲ್ಲಾದ ಬದಲಾವಣೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಅವರ ಮಾತುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ತಿಳಿದುಕೊಳ್ಳೋಣ.
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00:00Welcome to ETV Bharat. This is Kaspen Fernandes. We have here with us Amla Ashok Ruya.
00:06She is known as the Water Mother of India and her work has impacted 1270 villages, you know,
00:13in providing water access to them. And her trust called Aakar Charitable Trust has impacted the
00:19lives of lakhs and lakhs of people across India. So ma'am, congratulations on winning the award
00:24and what inspired you to work in the area of water conservation. Thank you so much. I am greatly,
00:33greatly honored to be here and to receive this award of excellence at the hands of your esteemed
00:39organization, the Ramojit Trust. Actually, it was a very small incident. The TV was showing the images
00:47of the famine stricken in Rajasthan. At that time, Rajasthan was reeling under the trios of a severe
00:55famine. Okay. And just looking at what misery my rural brothers and sisters have to go through,
01:03you know, it reached my heart like a bullet. And at that instant, I made up my mind that I cannot
01:13allow my rural brothers and sisters to live or to repeatedly go through this kind of misery.
01:20And this was in the 1990s. 1998. That year was a severe famine. Our family had already started
01:27sending lorries of food and tankards of water to the affected villages. But to my mind, this was not
01:34the solution that could cure the syndrome of droughts and famines, which repeatedly...
01:41This was just a band-aid. The providing relief is just a band-aid. Just a band-aid. What would they do
01:46after that? After that one week where they are given the food, what will happen to them? The problem
01:53was so immense. And I was a lone housewife. And I just didn't think about anything. I knew that if there
02:03is a problem, there is bound to be a solution. Right. And taking a cue from our own cultural heritage,
02:11heritage, which says,
02:12I just decided that I must go and in search of such kind of solutions. And I'm sure that I will find one.
02:35So you managed to educate yourself about water conservation. Before that, you had no experience
02:40in the field. I am not educated in social sciences or anything like that. It was the passion and it
02:47was the pain which I was feeling in my heart. And I was not willing to stop at anything. So I went from
02:55place to place in search of such. And somebody told me that there is one person who is doing this kind
03:01of work in Rajasthan, tried to reach out to him and then I visited some of his sites. And at last,
03:09I came upon certain water harvesting structures, which had the capacity to give a new lease of life
03:19to our brothers and sisters who were living in such abject poverty in the rural areas.
03:25You also mentioned somewhere that you went down a well with a group of women from Rajasthan. What was
03:32that experience about? As I was telling you, I was searching for some solutions. And that year,
03:39Pali district had not received a drop of rain. And I went over there to see what the situation was like.
03:46And I came upon this bunch of ladies who were going down a step well. You know, each one of them had two
03:56pitchers. And they were going down to fill the pitchers with water and carry that water back home.
04:03So as I went down, I saw that they had filled both the pitchers. And now the water had sunk really low.
04:11Yes. And they carried, they were carrying those pitchers up all those steps. And I said,
04:19let me try to hold this pitcher for at least a minute. So I asked one lady, can I hold it for
04:27you for one minute? So, but when she handed me that pitcher, I was not able to hold it for 15 seconds.
04:36Was it that heavy? It was so heavy. And I had always been sort of maintaining my health and fitness.
04:44So in that split second, you know, my delusion about my own fitness went off. And I said, my God,
04:53I cannot allow my sisters to repeatedly, you know, dedicate their whole life to bringing water
05:03to for their household needs. What would happen to their bodies? What would happen to their skeletal
05:09systems? And then what is the life of these ladies that they would go twice a day to fetch the water,
05:19carrying only that much as the picture would allow, as the picture would allow two pictures at a time,
05:26and then come back again in the evening with the same and hand over this drudgery to the next generation
05:34of women. So how could this, we have allowed our annadatas, the farmers, the people who are taking care of the farmland
05:47and producing grain for us, they are our annadatas. Yes. And we have allowed them to live like this.
05:56In those villages, people were not ready to give their daughters in marriage. Why is that? Because
06:04what would their life be? They would only be carrying these heavy pictures back and forth twice a day.
06:11Yeah. Oh my God. And then working at home also and raising children and cooking. And raising children
06:17and the female offspring, as soon as she was able to do a little bit of household chore,
06:24she was put in the kitchen because the mother was out there fetching the water.
06:29Is this any kind of life? The female child who should have been going to school
06:35these in these formative years were now restricted to the home and the kitchen.
06:40How did you actually begin the work? Because you started educating yourself, you met other people
06:46who were in the same line and there must have been many challenges also along the way.
06:52Yes. I remember, you know, the first tech dam which I built, that was in Mandavra village in Udaipur,
07:01Wati Tahsil, Jhunjunu district. I'll tell you about this first tech dam where I built it and how,
07:07you know, the whole face of that village got transformed. So, you will get an idea, you know,
07:14how this work impacts the lives of the people wherever we have put it up. And now, by now,
07:21we have already done 825 tech dams and 555 ponds. Wow. But let me first come to this first tech dam.
07:34The villages were completely denuded. All the able-bodied had already departed to urban areas
07:40in search of livelihood. Their fields were parched. Their ground was absolutely denuded and degraded.
07:49Their economies were down to the abject poverty. They were living in abject poverty. Their wells had no
07:56water and they had no dreams by which they could live. Aakar Charitable Trust had come over there
08:03and we were asking, what do you think can solve your problem? The women came together in a lot
08:12because Rajasthan knows the importance of water. And the women said,
08:17Aap hamare liye ek water harvesting structure bana dije. And we were just waiting to hear that from them.
08:25At that time, Aakar Charitable Trust was just a team of two. But we said, we will stand solidly behind
08:33you with all the money that you require and we'll shoot out all the problems that come in the way.
08:38Fund raising also must have been a hurdle. So, at that time, it was my own family's funds that I was going
08:44to use for the first check dam. And at that time, you know, this was in the year 2006. So, things were
08:51not that expensive also. I remember the very first day when the work started. The temperatures in that
09:00area had reached 45 degrees. The whole atmosphere was dust laden. But there was a ray of hope in the
09:09hearts of the people. My workforce consisted of all the women of the village with their children
09:17lending them a helping hand and a few aged and informed people that was still residing in the
09:23village, you know, because they had not gone in search of livelihood. It is so interesting that
09:29the ones left behind were the ones who built it up again, who built up the village again.
09:34Yes. So, you see, since the idea came from them, there were not that many hurdles except the
09:41practical hurdles and to convince them to provide one third of the expense of the check dam.
09:51Because that is how we work. That is our principle and policy because we want to make the work
09:59sustainable. Right. So, how do our field workers get them to contribute so much when their own purses
10:08are absolutely empty? Right. How did you manage that? So, first of all, the words that they speak,
10:15I will say those words. So, I mean, the sentiment that they expressed through the words, not that they
10:22sang poems to them. They had to convince them at the level of the heart. So, they say,
10:28I will bring them to heaven, stop, and let them sing. If the body of the earth came in the
10:49form, the impulse will come. So, let them sing. So, let them sing. In this world, they will bring the
10:50marudhara means desert
10:59marudhara and where is this poem from
11:01so this poem has not been written by me
11:05this poem belonged to those people whose work I had gone to see
11:09you know it's actually a folk poem
11:12this is not a folk poem
11:13it is a very literary piece of poem
11:16it is not a folk poem
11:18but I like these words and so I have adopted them
11:22but subsequently I have written 60 Jalke Geet
11:27wow
11:28because you know I was so touched to the quick to the bottom of my heart
11:33and I wanted to actually do labor work with them
11:38because I thought that if I really put my body through that kind of rigor
11:45then the kind of words which will come out will be reflecting the truth of their situation
11:52Jalke poems
11:54yes
11:55are you planning to publish a book on them as well
11:58yes very shortly within two months this book will be ready
12:00I have set it all to music and they are on very lively tunes
12:04I want our school children to dance on them
12:08because they have all the philosophy of water in those poems
12:13they can be performed as well
12:15so they can be performed instead of only performing to Bollywood
12:18they will have an option to take them a little higher in their thinking and in their ethics about water
12:25and your work has also gone beyond Rajasthan now
12:29it's gone to 12 states
12:31yes it has
12:32we are now operating in 11 states
12:35but let me complete the rest of this
12:37yes
12:38on that first day how the check dam got built you know
12:41so there was this workforce
12:43and they were working hectically
12:46every day so many problems would be shooted out by our karyakartas
12:52you know
12:53they would be at it
12:55at the end of two months of very hard labor
13:00we had provided all the cement or the stones were provided by the villagers
13:06at that time you know we had not started using heavy machinery
13:10so all the digging of the foundation and everything was done by the people over there
13:15it was all done manually
13:17manually it was done on that first check dam
13:19afterwards we started using JCP and now the work has become much simpler and easier for us to execute
13:26but in that first year then we also added one more component to our work
13:32we said that we are willing to do this work if you give up your tobacco, alcohol, dowry and Mrityubhoj
13:43why we added this component
13:45what is Mrityubhoj?
13:46you know there is a funeral feast
13:49this tradition has been going on specially in Rajasthan for a very long time
13:55and to execute this funeral feast they invite hundreds of villagers
14:03and they have to mortgage their lands and they never get out of that debt
14:08just for a feast they mortgage their lands
14:10funeral yeah because they do not have any money
14:13so what will the lender take as collateral
14:17so it is a counterproductive feast
14:19we tell them on any auspicious day you gather 3-4 villages
14:25and you tell them that we must give up this idea of funeral feast
14:31we should call only 4 brahmans and we should feed them
14:35there is no need for you to feed these 300-400 people like this
14:39so many villages accepted
14:42of course we cannot impose ourselves
14:45right
14:46but we have to suggest to them we want to do that work of water
14:50but we want to eradicate the social evil side by side
14:54so we are not very strict
14:56but appeal to them
14:58that unless you do this thing
15:00once you get the prosperity
15:02water comes
15:04water comes
15:05it will bring the crops
15:06yes
15:07you will have everything that you require for a prosperous household
15:11but if you haven't got out of your addictions
15:16then most of your prosperity will be sucked away by these evils
15:21so how honest are the villagers when it comes to following this
15:25what we have observed
15:27the younger generation gives it up because they are not so highly addicted to it
15:32but the elders may not want to give it up
15:35and so they are allowed to practice on the sly
15:40that's all
15:42that's all
15:43so you know the first day
15:45after two months the check dam got completed
15:48and that year
15:51Indra Dev
15:53you know he just poured his bounty over that piece of land
15:58amazing
15:59and the whole land was completely filled with water
16:03the whole ground where the check dam had been made
16:07yes
16:08and they had never even seen such abundance of water in their barren village
16:14so then you could feel the smile and the you know that the joy in their hearts come out in these kind of words
16:25I can just keep listening to you
16:41you know recite these poems more and more
16:44and then another miracle happened
16:49all the people that had gone left their villages and gone away in search of livelihood
16:56now returned back
16:58amazing
16:59you see the reverse exodus happened
17:02there they had been living
17:04and this happened over the years after you started working with them
17:07no no within the first few months
17:09within one year they were free of debt
17:12the first harvest that they did made them free of their debts
17:17so it's a complete transformation
17:19it's not just about water access
17:21yes that's what I told you
17:23that our work does not only impact the lives of people
17:28it transforms it
17:30and how is the village now after all these years
17:34so in the first year they earned 2 crores of rupees
17:38in the first year their net income was 2 crores
17:41from farming
17:42then they got lot of fodder
17:46so now they have 5 or 6 cattle head tied to each doorstep
17:51the income of which they get out of cattle rearing comes directly in the hands of the woman
17:58who makes the house shine and fulfills all her basic needs
18:05this is also women empowerment on another level
18:08women empowerment on another level
18:10they now no longer have to go in search of water
18:14carrying those heavy vessels
18:16their female offspring is going to school with her brothers
18:22education again in Rajasthan
18:24girl child education was also lacking severely in the past
18:28so this is another great move
18:30yes 2-3 reasons for that
18:32one thing is that they believe that the girl would get spoiled
18:35secondly she had to remain in the house to do the household chores
18:39yes
18:40so but
18:41and how did you convince them to send their daughters to school
18:44no it happened automatically
18:46it's all a byproduct of this
18:49yes
18:50so now they have animal husbandry as a side vocation
18:56but it sometimes supersedes the main vocation that is farming
19:03they earn more out of cattle rearing
19:05and that is unheard of in Rajasthan no
19:08in a place like Rajasthan you wouldn't think cattle rearing is so rampant
19:12they always knew all these professions
19:17they knew and it just needed to be revived by the water coming to them
19:22now they have
19:24doudh dahi ki nadiyan beh rahi hai hai
19:27pani ki nadiy behhti hai
19:28aur doudh dahi ki nadiyan behhti hai
19:30aur imagine ki
19:32unke dil mein kya guzra ho ga
19:35jab unno ne apne barren village mein se ek nadiy ko behhte dekha
19:42they have given birth to a river
19:45their barren village has given birth to a river
19:48now I'll tell you how this thing the check dam is
19:52it has all the advantages of a large check dam and none of its disadvantages
19:58because this water stays on that ground for say two to three months
20:05after in that much period all the wells in their vicinity get recharged
20:13ok
20:14our ancestors were very wise people
20:17they made hundreds of wells wherever they were doing farming
20:21all those wells get recharged
20:24now they have water in their fields because of their ancestral wisdom
20:31because they had so many wells
20:33now the water level has come up
20:36see these see the conditions are very favorable in Rajasthan
20:42for well recharge
20:45ok
20:46one thing is that the Rajasthan aquifers
20:50that means pockets of loose stone and rubble inside the earth surface
20:57yes
20:58they are towards the surface and they are small insides
21:02so what happens when it rains these aquifers get completely filled with water
21:09underground rivers start flowing in their area
21:13this stream which this village has given birth to because the water has got filled to the top
21:20yes
21:21and now it is overflowing from the waste ware
21:24this is something people don't talk about when they talk about Rajasthan's terrain
21:28yes
21:29now I have done nothing actually
21:31it is all the wisdom of our ancestors who had designed these kind of water harvesting structures
21:39what does it consist of it consists of a masonry wall which is called the head wall
21:46two masonry side walls
21:50this masonry wall acts as a spillware when on the leeward side water has got filled on the windward side water has got filled up to the top
22:04up to the top this allows the water to pass down and flow for at least 3-4 months
22:11underground
22:13no
22:14on top
22:15on the surface
22:16on top
22:17now what happens automatically by the capillary action of the soil the aquifers are getting filled with water
22:25and underground rivers are simultaneously running
22:28oh interesting
22:29and when a layer of impervious rock comes to the top springs happen in the path of the stream which has now started flowing this is the way perennial rivers run
22:44so from completely arid regions they have become they have had perennial rivers now
22:49we have given birth to 175 streamlets out of which some of course run for only 3-4 months some go on till 8 or 9 months and a few of them have become perennial
23:04and last 2 years we have had abundant rain that has also helped the rivers to become abundant
23:10amazing
23:11and your work has expanded beyond Rajasthan also you were talking about that earlier
23:14yes
23:15when did that expansion begin
23:17in the year say about 2012
23:21our first check dam was built in 2006
23:24and then subsequently we reached out to various other states because I know every state goes through these kind of drought situations
23:33yes
23:34so we did that
23:36even the states that flood also have regions which suffer from drought
23:39yes because if you do not harvest rain water if you do not put it in pockets then when there is no rain what will happen
23:49right
23:50from 2012 onwards you all have expanded to various other states
23:54yes
23:55so we have done a lot of work in Tikamgarh and Jhansi Tikamgarh in Madhya Pratesh and Jhansi which is in UP
24:04this is the Bundelkhand area which is highly highly water deficient so there also we have done a lot of work then we have done extensive work in Bhoj area we have done about 40-50 check dams and we have also done umpteen ponds or talap and I am happy to say that we have now added ponds to the scope of our work
24:30so the whole land of India is now our kshetra so to speak
24:37yes
24:38earlier we were only concentrating on check dams which could only be made in certain areas where the conditions were favorable
24:47but ponds can be executed anywhere and everywhere
24:51yes
24:52I am very happy to say that today akar charitable trust has done 825 check dams and 494 555 ponds
25:08wow
25:09because of which the farmers are earning a net income of 3425 crores year after year in total
25:21wow
25:22in some total
25:23like beyond these figures and numbers you know how do you measure impact of your work
25:28I will tell you earlier the villagers were not able to support one bullock and they need two for their hull chalane ke liye
25:42they couldn't support two to agar aaj mein apna hal chala raha hoon toh mein apne neighbor se maangonga
25:49aur kal usko karna
25:51now each one of the villages has at least four to five tractors each home has got at least two two wheelers all their children go to school including the female offsprings
26:09they are debt free they have started ancillary industries in the areas where they live the reverse exodus has happened all their wells have got water in them and if there is reasonable amount of rainfall for three or four years in any area that village becomes drought proof
26:37that means if for two years they do not receive any rainfall their wells will hold enough water for them to continue life at their own normal pace instead of those crops which require too much water they will take something like chana in english gram which can take only one watering
27:05and it grows and it grows because of that so they can still grow crops as well at the same time yes everything will continue amazing no and this solution is a solution for droughts as well as for floods
27:20because if you have enough pockets because if you have enough pockets on the surface of the earth the water will not spill it will be held in those pockets and there flooding so this takes care of drought as well as flooding
27:37and as the water mother of india and ramoji excellence awardee what message would you like to give regular people out there water is life and unless we look upon it as the most precious ingredient or element that we have we will not be able to you know sustain life the way we want to live it today
28:02so i would like to tell them
28:05so i would like to tell them
28:09amazing thank you so much ma'am this is really amazing
28:37so this is my message to all people you know who have really taken the trouble to find these people like us who are working very quietly into the interiors of india you know just dedicated to working for the betterment of rural life just to see the smiles on their faces and i am very very grateful
29:06i am very grateful that your esteemed organization has even taken the trouble to find people like us and to give us the award
29:13of course why not your work is so amazing and you are known as the water mother of india how can you be ignored your shining example of what people need to do
29:24i am a shining example of what a lowliest person can do because i have no qualifications and no other this thing except the passion which carries me through in whatever i undertake
29:37and i hope that passion continues for years and i hope that passion continues for years and decades and thank you for joining us with ETB Bharat
29:44thank you so much and i would like to say that today our target is to do 300 water bodies year after year and i don't think any other NGO has remotely reached this kind of a figure
29:59300 water body year after year to take care of the water situation or the scarcity situation and make india into a water surplus nation
30:14And on that note, we shall end the interview.
30:17Thank you, sir.
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