Global Exchange Kerala Reality Tour GX Tour Itinerary Page The Olavanna Village Drinking Water Cooperatives Today there is a growing consensus that large-scale piped water systems are not universally necessary to provide safe drinking water. Community-based, small-scale, and cost-effective alternative approaches offer a practical solution to the drinking water problem (Santhakumar 1998; Pushpangadan and Murugan 1995). Olavanna Panchayats innovative experiment in this direction provides an illustration. Olavanna Panchayat is located on hilly terrain near the city of Kozhikode (Calicut). Of the 10,098 households in the panchayat, 70% faced acute drinking water scarcity in the main dry season from December to May. Water is not available on the thirty hillocks that dot the panchayat, and water in the valleys is affected by saltwater intrusion in the dry season (Olavanna Grama Panchayat 1996). State-level schemes never materialized. Tired of petitioning and complaining, the people finally decided to finance their own small-scale water distribution schemes (Babu Parassery 1997). They dug wells in the most ideal locations on the slopes or in the valley and pumped the water into small overhead tanks from which groups of households could draw water through small-scale networks of pipes. Each network was financed and managed by the beneficiaries who formed themselves into a registered society and contributed towards the initial investment costs either as a lump sum or by monthly payments. The panchayat subsidized households below the poverty line. The first of the societies was constituted in 1990 with twenty-three participating households. By 1996 there were twenty-two societies, sixteen of which were beneficiary-financed and six established by the local block or village panchayats. The number of households ranged from ten to eighty-two. Most water societies were able to give each household 400500 liters of water per day. By 1996, of the 7,000 households that faced drinking water shortage, 1,500 had provided themselves with potable water through these self-financing projects. Excerpted from Thomas Isaac, T. M., and Richard W. Franke. 2002. Local Democracy and Development: The Kerala People's Campaign for Decentralized Development. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pages 3637. See the book's bibliography for the references cited in the text. |
Richard W. Franke: Kerala Vistors