How Bundelkhand Women Are Trying To Revive Disappeared Water Bodies
NDTV
Jal Saheli ("Friends of Water") is a volunteer network of around 1,000 women working across Bundelkhand to rehabilitate and revive disappeared water sources.
As the monsoon storms bear down on India, a dedicated group of women hope that after years of backbreaking labour, water shortages will no longer leave their village high and dry.
India is struggling to meet the water needs of its 1.4 billion people -- a problem worsening as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable.
Few places have it tougher than Bundelkhand where scarce water supplies have pushed despairing farmers on the plains to give up their lands and take up precarious work in the cities.
"Our elders say that this stream used to run full throughout the year, but now there is not a single drop," said Babita Rajput while guiding AFP past a bone-dry fissure in the earth near her village.
