Paani Foundation by Aamir Khan: Making Maharashtra drought-free

Paani Foundation

Paani Foundation was set up to make Maharashtra drought-free using the power of communication. Satyamev Jayate researched water and found that man, not nature, is mainly responsible for this drought crisis. While decentralized watershed management has proved to be the scientific solution to this problem, a social fracture has been the more significant problem to address. Paani Foundation believes in the power of unity and is convinced that only a people’s movement can eradicate drought. Efforts of Paani Foundation have been towards catalyzing this movement.

Through a holistic, experiential training program, Paani Foundation equips villagers with both technical know-how and leadership skills to tackle the issue of drought in their villages. Paani Foundation has created simple training films, an Android App, and training manuals for this purpose and has teams working across the state to impart this knowledge. Every year, to incentivize this program, it conducts a competition called the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup, in which villages compete to win prizes for the best watershed management work. In the past four years, what started as an experiment has become a movement. Paani Foundation is now merely a tiny part. The efforts of the villagers themselves have ensured that a water revolution is not far away

Roughly 150 of Maharashtra’s 358 talukas are in drought areas. In 2016, the Cup began small, testing the idea in three talukas, with around 116 villages. In 2017, they scaled up to 30 talukas and a little over 1,300 villages. This year, it’s 75 talukas and over 4,000 villages.

The team, around 25 people, expanded to about 450 during the competition. At ground level, taluka coordinators go from village to village, advising, helping, and encouraging. Each taluka has a technical trainer and a social trainer. Over them are district heads, reporting to zonal heads, who report into the head office.

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