When the British colonized India, they imposed their own system of water management, which included the building of large-scale dams, sewers, and irrigation channels. This high-tech approach continues today, as the World Bank is urging India to build enormous dam projects to fight drought and depleted aquifers. The Indian government has followed its advice. Its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called dams the “Temples of modern India”. Since then, India has built over 5,000 dams and large reservoirs. [1]

However, before the British arrived, people on the subcontinent used traditional low-cost, low-tech engineering to collect rainwater for thousands of years. This involved the placement of thousands of small structures throughout rural areas which, in one way or another, catch excess rainwater from the monsoon months and allow it to slowly percolate into the groundwater during the dry season. To maintain and manage these structures, community-based management schemes were necessary. However, these were actively discouraged during British rule and following independence. As a result, in the 20th century many of these small reservoirs fell into disrepair.

In the 1980s, the Alwar district in the North-Western state of Rajasthan was one of the driest in all of India, even though older villagers remembered that its rivers used to flow in the past. Many farmers were migrating to the cities, as there was no longer any means of subsistence from the land. In 1985, Rajendra Singh—now known as the ‘Water Man of Rajasthan’—arrived in the area and started encouraging villagers to rebuild their old water reservoirs, or water johads. When the villagers had constructed 375 johads, the river began to flow after having been dry for several decades. [2]

By 2003, Singh, through the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh, had helped with the construction of over 5,000 johads and the rejuvenation of 2,500 old reservoirs, providing irrigation water to 140,000 ha. and 700,000 people. [3, 5] In 2015, 8,600 johads had been built, bringing water back to 1,000 villages. [4] The johads are incredibly cheap and productive—at 100 rupees per capita, they can raise economic production by as much as 400 rupees per year. Compare this to nearby Sardar Sarovar Dam project, which cost 300 billion rupees, and cost 100 times more per person supplied with water, and 340 times more per hectare irrigated. [3]

The design of water johads. Source: Anupma Sharma, National Institute of Hydrology

And yet water johads are extremely simple and low-cost structures that require no large equipment or expensive materials to build—simply a village of able hands and local elements. After digging a pit, the villagers shape the excavated earth into a semicircular mud barrier. A stone drain is sometimes set up, allowing excess water to seep into the ground, or connecting it with johads nearby. Essentially the johad will capture runoff from monsoon floods and allow it to slowly percolate into the water table during the dry months. When many johads are built in one area, they have a cumulative effect, resulting in the replenishment of whole aquifers. [5] In addition, it has been shown that the water stored in the aquifers does not draw away water from communities downstream. [6]

It’s important to note that water johads are place-specific technologies and cannot necessarily be replicated to other geographical locations or climates. They require steady sloping land—where each johad can feed water into another downstream—and a rainy season, where floods can fill up the reservoirs during the dry months.

In addition, constructing and maintaining thousands of water reservoirs also required new forms of resource management. Since the government refused to participate with the johad construction efforts, or recognize that they were effective—its policies remain tied to the development narrative. Villagers decided to take matters in their own hands and organize their own water management councils, which have now expanded to managing forests and parks through participatory and democratic methods. The result is what some have claimed a miracle: bringing water back to a water-scarce and impoverished area.

Building Community

An engineer might look at a johad and claim that it is far too simple a technology—there is no innovation here, let alone a miracle. This is true: similar technologies exist all over the world. In Mediterranean countries, for example, rain water catchments were built over a thousand years ago and continue to provide water to farmers during dry seasons.

Rajendra Singh attributes the success of the johads to the fact that the technology encourages people to work together, building community while addressing essential needs. This is in strong opposition to the large government-built dams, which have displaced millions of people in India and, on average, have increased poverty. [5]

So, perhaps the key innovation with the johads is that rather than relying on engineering expertise or governmental action, villagers have constructed the johads themselves through traditional methods and community participation. The result is the revival of a low-tech tradition that is far more cost-effective than high-tech dams could ever be.

Aaron Vansintjan

Sources:

[1] International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD). http://icold-cigb.net/GB/World_register/general_synthesis.asp?IDA=206

[2] The Water Man of Rajasthan. Frontline. Sebastian, Sunny, 2001.

[3] Water-harvesting in India transforms lives. Alternet. McCully, Patrick. 2003

[4] An ancient technology is helping India’s “water man” save thousands of parched villages. Ghoshal, Devjyot. 2015.

[5]. Water Harvesting: Alwar, Rajasthran. National Institute of Hydrology (Roorkee, India). Sharma, Anupma.

[6]. Traditional Water Harvesting Structure: Community behind ‘Community’. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 41, No. 7, pp. 596-598. Kashwan, Prakash, 2006.

[7]. “Dams,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, MIT Press, vol. 122(2), pages 601-646, 05. Esther Duflo & Rohini Pande, 2007.

Related: Madakas.

The architects consider their work to be a toolbox, a starting point for thinking outside the conventional norms and recepies. They argue that decentralized services are more flexible, provide more autonomy, and are more efficient in space, energy and materials.

Antoni and Blasco present, in their own words, an equivalent to Neufert’s “Architect’s data“, the book for architects that records standardized dimensions for centralized systems. “Micromachins” is written in French but the visuals dominate.

“Micromachins”, Damien Antoni and Lydia Blasco, 2011 [download the page to get the high resolution PDF-document]. Thanks to Yann Philippe Tastevin. Update: the architects have added a new link with colour pictures and English translation.

“This manual is intended to provide comprehensive support to those involved with maintaining, assessing, strengthening, or rehabilitating covered bridges, especially heavy timber truss bridges. At one time, the United States reportedly had 14,000 of these unique bridges dotting the countryside over a surprisingly large area. Now, fewer than 900 of the historic structures survive.

Timber bridges initially were built without coverings and failed in just a few years because of rot and deterioration, because chemical wood preservatives were not available or used. Builders familiar with the construction of houses, barns, and large community structures naturally added siding and roofs to help protect the bridge. They understood that the covering would soon pay for itself.

They believed that regular maintenance and occasional replacement of the light covering was far easier and cheaper than building an entirely new bridge. North American covered bridges still serve after nearly 200 years, due in part to the continued soundness of the trusses, which was possible only with these protective coverings.”

“Covered Bridge Manual“, 327 pages, US Department of Transportation, 2005. Via Arquitectura y madera. Previously: wooden bridges / wooden pipelines. Picture by Rainer Ebert.

“Engineering for the ecological age: lessons from history” (video) by John Ochsendorf. Skip the extremely irritating introduction to the speaker and start at 10:50. Via Ecodemica. Related: Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault & Timbrel vaulting in South Africa. Photo: Michael Ramage.

Click on the illustration below to see the plan in high resolution. Source: “Mémoires et compte rendu des traveaux de la société des ingénieurs civils, Vol.12, 1859“.

This wooden bridge (length 32 metres, width 12 metres, height 16 metres) was inaugurated on April 15th in Sneek, the Netherlands. The “Krúsrak” is the first wooden bridge in the world that can support the heaviest load class of 60 tons. Its life expectancy is 80 years.

Thanks to a chemical treatment of the softwood, the bridge can withstand insects, fungi and the harsh weather conditions in the most northern province of the Netherlands (Friesland). Wooden bridges require much less energy to construct than steel or concrete bridges.

Only the road-surface of the “Krúsrak” is made of steel – originally it was planned to be of wood, too, but then it should have been 2 metres thick. More information here (in English) and here (in Dutch).

Related: Covered bridges – how to build and rebuild them. Also: wooden pipelines.