Jaipur village to use highway drains for water conservation

Officials of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) have received an unusual request from a Pragpura village located on outskirts of Jaipur district. The village panchayat of Pragpura, Paota, located on the Delhi-Jaipur Highway has sought permission to connect the drains along the highway with a local water conservation system.

“The village representatives have approached us with the request. We are looking for a solution as the present norms do not have provision for such purpose,” says NN Giri, project director NHAI.

The villagers though are resolved to have the task accomplished. They have revived a traditional water body in the village and laid a pipeline to connect it with water accumulation point near the highway. The task involved a cost of nearly Rs 8 lakh that was crowd sourced by the locals. This initiative for water conservation is being led by female sarpanch of the village.

“It was during the last monsoon that we noticed water overflowing from drains along the highway. As the issue was discussed with other residents a resolution was reached for its conservation,” says Allen Swami, the village sarpanch.

Even as the resolution for the water conservation project was passed by the panchayat, the villagers were not willing to wait for a government aid. “Government financial support can take some time to clear the administrative processes and we wanted the project to be completed before this monsoon. Thus, we sourced the finance ourselves,” adds the deputy sarpanch. According to the panchayat officials, the system is estimated to help conservation of nearly 60 million litres of water each year.