The rapid depletion of the ground water table in Delhi because of indiscriminate boring of tube wells by the late 90’s was a matter of grave concern to the Delhi Government. It propelled Delhi’s Chief Minister at the time, Ms Shiela Dikshit to initiate the Bhagidari Programme of Government-Citizen Partnership in 2002. This Scheme included encouraging Resident Welfare Associations to build Rain Water Harvesting Pits with funds provided by Delhi Govt. In 2002-03, Panchshila Park under the able leadership of Mr Krishan Saigal (President) and Ms Leila Kabir (Secretary), took up the initiative of constructing 16 Rain Water Harvesting Pits. These were dug in areas that were identified as trouble-spots, where there was persistent water logging when it rained. Besides collaborating with the Delhi Govt, we received enormous and very generous technical guidance from the Centre for Science and Environment. We were, in fact, awarded the Second Prize in 2002-03 as the Best Bhagidar Citizen Group from the Delhi Govt, with a Cash Prize of Rs 50,000.
When the present Managing Committee took office in October 2022, given the deteriorating Water Scarcity situation in Delhi, reactivating the Rain Water Harvesting Pits became a priority of the new team. We put out a request to residents to volunteer to be on a team that would take up the revival of our Rain Water Harvesting Pits and a Waste Management programme. The response was very encouraging with 25 residents volunteering to be part of the initiative. We visited other Resident Welfare Associations to learn from their experiences and formed groups of volunteers to look into rain water harvesting, waste management and Home composting.
Five Volunteers formed the Rain Water Harvesting team and took up the task of identifying the location of the Rain Water Harvesting Pits and assessing the work that needed to be done to activate them.Just before the rains hit us this year we completed the task of cleaning all 21 Rain Water Harvesting pits, putting in gravel and sand for enhanced percolation, replaced broken lids besides deepening 4 Pits. It was such a relief to see that after the devastating rains on the night of 28 June ‘24, which was the worst rainfall in Delhi in a single day in 88 years, all our parks cleared up in a few hours.
It has been 20 years since we dug the Rain Water Harvesting pits in Panchshila Park. With new constructions and with resurfacing of roads in and around our colony, the gradient of slopes has changed, as have the trouble spots where water logging is occurring. We have identified these spots this year and are planning to build more Rain Water Harvesting pits with hopefully some support from Delhi Govt/Delhi Jal Board and the MCD to address the issue.
