Shin Shiva Charitable Trust
Micro Irrigation project for Village Sirasu
Uttarakhand, India
Introduction:
Village Sirasu: Sirasu is situated in the foothills of Himalayas (with a population of approx. 1500 people). There are only two ways to reach this isolated village, either five minutes boat ride and then 500 mtrs uphill walk or 3kms long trek (during monsoon, there are no boat services and 3kms trekking is the only way to reach this village).
Pioneer Village
This is a prototype of first self dependent village of this region. We (Shin Shiva Charitable Trust, www.ssctindia.org) are in process of developing a place, where local villagers don’t have to migrate to bigger cities for their income sources. We are and we will be working on some simple but productive and nature friendly projects, activities and pilot projects to develop a ways of income for local people. Some of our present activities and project includes: Diary Farms, Herbal farming, Rural Tourism and organic farming, fruit orchids.
Herbal and organic farming: Local farmers were growing same old crops for last many decades and almost 90 percent of their agricultural output depends on rainfall. As a result, due to low quality of their cereal crops and non availability of storage facilities, they are not getting good return after working very hard for whole season.
Herbal and organic farming gives them the opportunities to increase their income level. But making them understand is the most difficult part, that’s why Bhairava Nagar has initiated with cultivation of herbal and organic crops.
Irrigation – a problem:
Village Sirasu is getting its overall water supply from nearby natural spring. But its supply is irregular and for last five years spring water is decreasing due to limited rainfall and global warming and its impact on Himalayas. Hard work of each and every worker and villager of this place is wasted.
Our trees, our crops, our cattle and our villagers are suffering and not able to live happily because of scarcity of water. Water is and will be the basis of any civilization of the world so without building strong infrsastructure none of our projects will be successful. Just 500 mtrs above holy river Ganga, Bhairava Nagar is suffering from scarcity of water for irrigation.
Irrigation Project – key to success for villagers:
To resolve the problem of scarcity of water of this area, we have planned an irrigation project. Under this irrigation project we are planning to pump River Ganga water and store it inside huge water storage tank. This pumped water will further be distributed to other smaller tanks constructed after every interval. We have already taken permission from state govt. to pump river water for this area.
Brief Project description: Village Sirasu is located right next to river Ganga, Holy River Ganga is worship as goddess Ganga because of various reasons. It irrigates thousands of hectares of land of India and work as a backbone for millions of farmers producing agricultural output for India.
Unfortunately, there is no water for irrigation for this village. So close, but still so far, Villagers are dependent on yearly monsoon for irrigating their farmland.
Our project is to pump water from man-made well (built next to River Ganga) to main tank located on the top corner of this area and further distributes it to:
- nearby farmland for Irrigation
- and houses for sanitation.
Step taken under this project:
- Construction of 50 feet deep well next to River Ganga
- Laying pipeline and electric connection from well till main water tank (length required: 500 feet), also includes labour cost
- Building main elevated water tank on 50000 litres capacity (minimum size)
- Building 4-5 smaller elevated water (approx.. 30000 litres) tanks for further distribution of this water and connecting them with pipeline.
- There was unnecessary increase in expenses due to last year floods (2010).
- At present, we have completed Step 1 and Step 2.
- We have started procuring raw material for step 3, but due to upcoming monsoon in this region, we have to start construction only after monsoon season (around mid-September)
If you are interested in helping us. Please email us at [email protected]