Centre working for schemes for Dalit-majority villages facing drought: Uma Bharti

The government is mulling a scheme, named after B R Ambedkar, to help out Dalit-majority villages facing water crisis due to lack of availability or improper conservation infrastructure, Union minister Uma Bharti said here today.

The Water Resources Minister also said the Central Water Commission (CWC) has been asked to prepare a report on storage of water in various states and share it with state governments so as to enable them to fight water crisis.

Bharti said that as part of Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations, CWC has organised a seminar on ‘multi-purpose development of water resources and present challenges’ on April 19 to highlight his vision and discuss the way forward to realise it.

“His vision was to take water to every poor person in the country. This will be implemented by us. The meeting on 19th will also look into how Dalit-dominated villages, where there is less water or poor provision for storage, can be helped.

“A project will also be discussed and it will be named after Babasaheb,” she told reporters on the sidelines of the inaugural meet on the project on Centre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies.

She said the ministry has already selected two villages in each district as ‘Jal Gram’ under the ‘Jal Kranti Abhiyan’ aimed at consolidating water conservation and management in the country, and plans are afoot to pick a third village which will be dalit dominated and facing problems of water crisis.

She said this will be done on a pilot basis and after its success, it would be implemented throughout the country.

An integrated water security plan, water conservation, water management and allied activities are being planned for these villages by panchayat-level committee to ensure optimum and sustainable utilisation of water.

Total of 1,348 villages has to be identified in 674 districts, of which 1,001 have been selected as ‘Jal Grams’ so far.