Social organisations do their bit to fight drought

The organisation also aims to provide cattle feed to support farmers who have suffered financial losses owing to drought. The volunteers will provide meals at schools and exam centres to help the drought-affected families.

“Currently,we are working in 23 villages but we hope to expand our programme to 100 villages over the next three months. Many of these villages don’t get much rain and the water table is also reducing resulting in drying up of wells,” said Anant Kulkarni,secretary,Jankalyan Samiti.

“As of now,it is important to provide them with water and build water storage tanks. We also plan to move to other long-term projects such as building canals,wells and earthen dams,” he added.

The Rashtriya Banjara Parishad is contributing towards water conservation by requesting its community members to refrain from playing Holi with water. Holi is one of the most important festivals for the Banjara community and is celebrated for five days. However,this year,the head of the organisation Krishnarao Rathod has requested the members to play only with colours.

“Even though this is a very important festival for us,we understand the need to save water. I’m not against celebrating the festival but people waste at least a month’s water supply in just one day while playing Holi,” he said.