Water ways: Rajasthan women's conservation efforts reroute bandits to farming

Until about 15 years ago, Sampatti Devi and many women like her in Rajasthan's Karauli district lived in constant fear, dreading the day their husbands might not return home.

Repeated droughts, driven in part by declining rainfall linked to climate change, had turned their land barren. Water sources dried up, crippling agriculture and animal husbandry, the lifeblood of their livelihood. Karauli's average annual rainfall dropped from 722.1 mm (1951-2000) to 563.94 mm (2001-11), according to government data.

With no other way to survive, many men were forced into dacoity, hiding in jungles and risking their lives every day to evade the police. But in the 2010s, something remarkable happened. The women, weary of fear and despair, resolved to reclaim their lives. They convinced their husbands to come out of the jungle and give up arms.

Together, they began reviving old, dried-up ponds and constructing new pokhars (water bodies) with the help of Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an Alwar-based NGO dedicated to water conservation since 1975.

"I would have been dead by now. She convinced me to come back and start farming again," recalls Jagdish, Sampatti Devi's husband, now 58, who surrendered his weapons and chose peace.

Pooling every penny earned over the years by selling milk, they built a pokhar at the base of a hill near their village, Alampur, in 2015–16. When the rains came, the pokhar filled and for the first time in years, their family had water, enough to sustain them for a longer period.

"Now, we grow mustard, wheat, pearl millet and vegetables," says Sampatti Devi, sitting proudly on the pokhar's embankment. She even rents it out for water chestnut cultivation, earning about Rs 1 lakh each season.

Over the years, 16 such pokhars have been built in the surrounding forest, each capturing runoff from the slopes. Diesel pumps now lift water to irrigate fields.

A pokhar in Rajasthan (photo: PTI)

Karauli, once among Rajasthan's worst-hit dacoit areas, witnessed a transformation. "With water, stability is returning," says Karauli superintendent of police Brijesh Jyoti Upadhyay. Community-led water conservation has revived groundwater, sparked hope, and renewed farming opportunities.

Sumit Dookia, associate professor at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and a Rajasthan native, says the Chambal region's rocky terrain hastens rainwater runoff, limiting groundwater recharge. He says similar transformations have also occurred in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah, where former dacoits returned to farming.

In Karauli, this wave of conservation has transformed the Serni, once a seasonal river, into a perennial one. Just a decade ago, the river would run dry after Diwali, leaving people desperate for water. "Now, the river holds water even in the peak of summer. The groundwater level has risen to just five to 10 feet below the surface," says Ranveer Singh from TBS.

Forty years ago, he says, the river flowed all year round, but overuse and climate change had drained it dry. With no options left, some men migrated to cities in search of work, while others turned to mining or dacoity.

"Illegal mining exposed them to lethal silica dust, causing silicosis, a painful and incurable lung disease. Many did not live past 40," said Rajendra Singh, the Magsaysay Award and Stockholm Water Prize-winning water conservationist who leads TBS.

A 2013 study by the National Institute of Miners' Health (now part of ICMR-NIOH) found that 74 per cent of surveyed sandstone workers in Karauli suffered from silicosis.

Water scarcity even disrupted marriage decisions. Families of prospective brides avoided sending daughters to this parched land, while poverty forced many Karauli parents to marry off their daughters early.

In Bhoorkheda village, where many families were forced to marry off their daughters early under the weight of financial hardship, 55-year-old Prem, the wife of a former dacoit, gave up four bighas of her own land to build a pokhar on the village's edge.

Ranveer Singh, a grassroots worker with the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh (photo: PTI)

Though she speaks little of her husband's past, she proudly shares how the pond has brought water to grow wheat and pearl millet and fed the families in her village.

Lajja Ram, 60, also from Bhoorkheda, admits he turned to dacoity out of desperation.

"My father was a farmer. There was enough water in his time. But as I grew up, rainfall declined, wells dried up and farming became impossible. We were lucky to produce even two to four manns (80–160 kg) per bigha. Our cattle died, and we felt like we were next," says Lajja Ram, who once faced 40 criminal cases.

It was his sister who finally persuaded him to surrender and join water conservation efforts.

Now, they grow wheat, mustard, chickpea and pearl millet on their 10 bighas of land, own eight buffalos, several goats and have enough to eat. "'Ab aanad hai' (Now, there is happiness)," he says.

In Arora village, 70-year-old folk singer Siyaram remembers when rains failed, crops withered and children wept from hunger.

His 30 bighas of land lay parched and his sons migrated to cities. His wife, Prem Devi, who passed away two years ago, had inspired him to join water conservation.

Siyaram sings of that time: "'Paani ki dori hath nahi, tum chaho to barsat nahi. Paani ki ajab kahani hai. Ab bhai khuwari bin paani hai'.

(You cannot control rain; it won't come when you wish. Water's story is strange. Now, brother, the land is barren without water)."

Today, Siyaram sings another tune of hope.

"'Paani hi jeevan ka saathi, paani bin mar jaye haathi. Sun lo dada, bhai, naati... mil jayega dhan ratan, agar hum paani rokne ka karein jatan'. (Water is life's companion. Without it, even the elephant dies. Listen, elder, brother, nephew... We will find treasure if we work to conserve water.)"

On a scorching May afternoon, Karauli's ponds and pokhars shimmer with water. The Serni river flows gently, with children splashing and cattle grazing along its banks.

"A decade ago, no one would have imagined this. Our women made this possible!" says Ranveer.

Reporting by Gaurav Saini