​Blue saree brigade: Women at the heart of India’s water systems

In the parched flatlands of Bundelkhand, 1 of India’s astir water-stressed regions, a pistillate wakes earlier sunrise. She does not caput to a well. She heads to a meeting. As a Jal Saheli — a “Friend of Water” — she is portion of a web of astir 1,530 women crossed 321 villages who person spent the past decennary digging cheque dams, reviving past ponds, repairing handpumps, and holding councils connected groundwater.

They are mostly illiterate. They are wholly indispensable.On this World Water Day, the United Nations has made its connection unambiguous: the planetary h2o situation is, astatine its core, a sex situation — and the solution runs done women. The 2026 campaign, themed “Water and Gender: Where Water Flows, Equality Grows,” calls for a transformative, rights-based attack wherever women person adjacent voice, leadership, and accidental successful h2o decision-making.

Across India, softly and without ceremony, that translation is already underway.

The Jal Saheli Movement

When the rains failed for the thirteenth clip successful Bundelkhand, Shirkunwar Rajput - pistillate who led the Paani Panchayat successful Udguwan (Lalitpur)- did not hold for the government. She gathered the women of her colony and said thing that would yet beryllium carved successful chromatic connected a cheque dam: “In Bundelkhand, fetching h2o is wholly a pistillate oregon girl’s job.

Hence, women person the archetypal close connected h2o resources,” arsenic quoted by Mongabay.The Jal Saheli movement, founded successful 2005 from Madhogarh successful Jalaun, Uttar Pradesh, grew from that conviction. By 2024, astir 1,530 Jal Sahelis were progressive crossed 321 villages successful the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These women — aged betwixt 18 and 70, clad successful elemental bluish sarees person built implicit 1 100 cheque dams, revived accepted ponds, installed caller handpumps and created soak pits that trim run-off waste.The interaction has been cultivation arsenic good arsenic domestic. Before the Jal Sahelis intervened, farmers successful immoderate of these villages could turn lone a azygous harvest of wheat per year. Assured irrigation has since enabled 2 to 3 yearly harvests. Groundwater recharge from the cheque dams has brought functioning wells backmost to communities wherever children utilized to stock a azygous pump among 1,200 people.Welthungerhilfe, moving alongside the NGO Parmarth Samaj Sevi Sansthan, trained these women volunteers successful h2o assets planning, h2o array monitoring, and conservation techniques earlier sending them backmost to their villages arsenic experts.

The exemplary has since drawn the attraction of authorities departments successful Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, some of which person expressed involvement successful scaling it to 5,000 villages.

Governing the underground: Atal Bhujal Yojana

India’s aquifers are successful crisis. The Central Ground Water Board classified 256 districts arsenic water-stressed arsenic precocious arsenic 2020, and the country’s mean per-capita h2o availability is projected to diminution sharply by 2050. Against this backdrop, the Government of India launched the Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal) successful 2020 — a Rs. 6,000 crore ($756 million) strategy co-funded by the World Bank, targeting 8,562 gram panchayats crossed 7 water-stressed states: Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.What makes Atal Jal distinctive is not conscionable its fund but its politics. The strategy mandates that astatine slightest 33 percent of members of Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSCs) indispensable beryllium women. In practice, the practice has gone further: women present clasp an mean of 44 percent of seats crossed the scheme’s gram panchayats. Crucially, 33 percent of women are occupying existent decision-making positions — President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer — wrong Water User Associations.By the scheme’s ain figures, the results are material: an country of 670,802 hectares has been covered nether demand-side h2o ratio activities, redeeming an estimated 1,716 cardinal cubic metres of h2o done micro-irrigation, harvest diversification, and rainwater harvesting. A further 642 cardinal cubic metres of groundwater has been recharged done the operation of 77,052 structures. Around 30 cardinal radical person benefited, astatine a per-beneficiary outgo of astir Rs.

2,627.In Haryana, the strategy has taken connected a distinctly feminine look done the fig of the Jal Saheli — a section assets person, usually a pistillate from a self-help group, trained to behaviour h2o prime tests, pass groundwater information to communities, and advocator for businesslike irrigation practices. In Rajasthan’s Phalodi district, Jal Sahelis moving nether UNICEF and the NGO Unnati revived a centuries-old colony pond, raising Rs.

1.5 cardinal successful assemblage funds alongside MGNREGA allocations.

Bhubaneswar ‘caller club’

The h2o gyration successful India is not lone happening successful fields and cheque dams. It is besides happening done smartphones successful municipality slums.Between January 2023 and December 2024, the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), supported by the Australian Government’s Water for Women Fund, ran a landmark municipality WASH inaugural crossed 215 informal settlements successful Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

At its bosom was a “Caller Club”: trained assemblage members who called connected behalf of residents to log and escalate water, sanitation, and hygiene grievances done the Janhit-Vaani Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).Community members made a full of 18,750 calls implicit the two-year period. Women led the effort, accounting for 10,419 calls — and providing the bulk of feedback, with 5,610 calls connected water-related issues specifically.

Of the 8,517 water-related grievances recorded, 4,550 (53.4 percent) were formally addressed, benefiting 8,696 people. Sanitation grievances fared adjacent better: 4,783 of 6,767 reported issues (70.7 percent) were resolved, and hygiene-related complaints saw a 98.4 percent solution rate.The municipality section body, the Public Health Engineering Department, and Watco responded positively to online grievances, moving with communities to some resoluteness issues and amended residents connected infrastructure maintenance.

The task besides funded climate-resilient infrastructure upgrades crossed 126 settlements: elevated toilets to forestall monsoon flooding, stormwater drains, and solar-powered h2o filtration plants — each designed with input from the women who usage them.Laxmipriya Lenka, President of the Slum Development Association successful Bhubaneswar, was among the voices that made this feedback loop work. Her enactment exemplifies what the UN Women’s 2026 World Water Day run calls for: not conscionable entree to water, but bureau implicit it.

Evidence for women’s leadership

The lawsuit for women’s centrality successful h2o governance is not simply motivation — it is empirical. A landmark survey connected India’s panchayats, cited by UN Women, recovered that the fig of drinking h2o projects successful areas with women-led section councils was 62 percent higher than successful those led by men. Research crossed 44 h2o projects successful Asia and Africa, cited by the World Resources Institute, recovered that erstwhile women helped signifier h2o policies and institutions, communities utilized h2o much sustainably and equitably.Yet the structural barriers stay significant. Fewer than 50 countries globally person laws oregon policies that specifically notation women’s information successful h2o resources management. In India, the nationalist h2o policies of 1987, 2002, and 2012 consistently sidelined women — policies drafted, largely, by men who did not traditionally transportation h2o home. It is lone with schemes similar Jal Jeevan Mission and Atal Bhujal Yojana, and the grassroots unit of movements similar the Jal Sahelis, that this omission is opening to beryllium corrected.

The economical lawsuit is arsenic compelling. In India alone, productivity losses attributable to women’s water-collection duties are estimated to beryllium equivalent to astir Rs. 10 cardinal — oregon astir $160 billion, astir 4.7 percent of GDP. Every pat person to home, each cheque dam that holds monsoon h2o done March, translates into hours returned to women: for school, for work, for rest, for leadership.Chandrakant Kumbhani, main operating officer, Community Development, Ambuja Foundation, underscores this transformation: "Water assets improvement is 1 of the astir almighty drivers of women's empowerment successful agrarian India.

But the existent displacement happens erstwhile women determination beyond being beneficiaries to becoming decision-makers — progressive successful planning, managing, and governing h2o systems astatine the colony level.

This information builds confidence, visibility, and leadership, enabling them to power not conscionable water-related decisions, but broader assemblage priorities. As clime pressures intensify, this relation becomes adjacent much critical.

Women's engagement strengthens however communities program for and negociate h2o resources, making systems much adaptive and sustainable."

A question successful stone

The cheque dams of Bundelkhand transportation inscriptions. In the section dialect, chiselled into concrete, they read: “Women person the archetypal close connected h2o resources.” This is not poetry. A declaration that the women who endure astir from scarcity are the ones who person earned the authorization to negociate abundance.Leela Khatun, Leader of the Jal Sahelis, described the enactment of reviving a colony pond. "The pond is simply a lifeline for the villagers, peculiarly during the summer, drought, and periods of scanty rainfall. We undertook the task of cleaning the pond, utilizing some manual labour and excavators," she told UNICEF proudly. "Some of the desilting enactment was carried retired nether MGNREGA. We held discussions with the colony caput and the villagers to guarantee a sustainable h2o supply.

"Across India — from the slum settlements of Bhubaneswar to the gram panchayats of Rajasthan, from the overexploited aquifers of Haryana to the drought-scarred plateaus of Madhya Pradesh — women similar Devwati Sharma are doing the technical, political, and carnal labour of h2o governance. They are holding meetings, filing grievances, repairing infrastructure, and teaching h2o literacy to communities that the ceremonial assemblage has yet to reach.On this World Water Day, the United Nations has a slogan: “Where Water Flows, Equality Grows.” In India, the women who person spent years with their hands successful the world already cognize it to beryllium true. The question present is whether the world’s governments, donors, and institutions volition carve it into their ain policies — with the aforesaid permanence that a Jal Saheli chisels it into stone.