Ekatvam Innovations

Challenge

In Indian villages, water scarcity stems from groundwater overuse and climate change, reducing per capita availability by 70% in 75 years. Gram panchayats, local governing bodies, are pivotal in water management, often aided by NGOs. However, NGO programs face challenges : limited data collection time leads to flawed water budgets, and one-time risk assessments overlook seasonal variations, resulting in unsustainable practices post-program. As a result, villages continue to refer to outdated, static water budgets after the program ends. In some cases, villages return to growing water intensive crops upon a perceived increase in water availability – creating a vicious cycle of groundwater depletion. Ultimately, villages lack independence and ownership over their ability to manage their water resources consistently once external parties leave.

Solution

Ekatvam Innovations has developed a water governance tool, MIDAS, that empowers villages with data-driven decision-making support for water management at a community level. The tool helps villages understand their local water balance on a monthly basis and provides recommendations on how best to optimize and conserve their water resources.

Key features include:

• Data triangulation: gathering of local primary data and integrating it with secondary data, satellite imagery and historical data.
• Risk analysis and insights: continuous tracking of key parameters including groundwater and surface water levels as well as domestic, industrial and agricultural water consumption.
• Advisory and simulation: recommended water supply and demand interventions via a water security plan report for gram panchayats. Villages are then able to use the water security plan to source for funding from flagship government programs (e.g. Atal Bhujal Yojna) to implement the recommended interventions, specifically those that require higher CAPEX. MIDAS ultimately equips villages with the tools to manage their water resources by providing continuous visibility into their water balance and data-driven recommendations to improve their decision-making around interventions needed.

Implementation and Impact

Ekatvam has worked with eight NGOs to implement MIDAS across 100+ villages in India. To date, Ekatvam has monitored 291 water wells and 742 water structures, with savings of up to 13.2M litres of water. Ekatvam has piloted with the Tata Trust-supported Coastal Salinity Prevention & Mitigation (CSPC) initiative, trialing the MIDAS tool in 10 villages across Gujarat. The project generated monthly water balances reflected on mobile dashboards, where users could view simulations of how different supply or demand side interventions would affect their water balance. Gram sabhas (village gatherings) were conducted with the CSPC team to prepare the water security plan. In addition, the analytics generated from MIDAS were used to raise awareness amongst the villages through videos and posters. The pilot saw an uptake of more than 110 farmers who downloaded the MIDAS tool and adopted more efficient irrigation practices such as drip, laser and sprinkler irrigation.