Managed Aquifer Recharge through Village-level Intervention (MARVI)

Background:
The overall aim of this project is to improve the security of irrigation water supplies and enhance livelihood opportunities for rural communities. Specifically, the project focuses on assessing the effectiveness of current rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge structures and demand management strategies at village scale. The project aims to develop or adapt suitable best practice guidelines and modelling and assessment tools that can be applied with relatively easily available local information. This study was conducted in Sabarkantha  district in Gujarat and Udaipur district in Rajasthan. Both districts are in hard rock aquifer areas and provide a diversity of transdisciplinary research issues in groundwater recharge and management.

MARVI was successfully scaled out in 11 villages (5 in Rajasthan and 6 in Gujarat), and in response to the Government of India and World Bank’s request for assistance, AWP is supporting WSU to implement MARVI on a wider scale through the ATAL JAL Program. The Program was launched on 29 December 2019 and took effect on 1 April  2020,  and is being rolled out across 8,500 village councils (20,000 villages).

Sunmmaries are given in the marvi-brochure (opens in a new window) (Oct 2016) or the MARVI web site (opens in a new window). The MARVI Declaration (opens in a new window) arising from the Ahmedabad Workshop 30-31 May 2017 summarises workshop outcomes concerning implementation of the concepts, methods and tools developed during the MARVI project.

Researchers:
Professor Basant Maheshwari
Adjunct Professor Roger Packham
Associate Professor Maria Estela Varua
Dr. Dharma Hagare

Research Partners:
CSIRO Land & Water
International Water Management Institute (IWMI) | India
M.P. University of Agriculture and Technology | India
Vidhya Bhawan Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Development Support Centre (DSC) | India

Publications:
Assisting community management of groundwater: irrigator attitudes in two watersheds in Rajasthan and Gujarat, India (opens in a new window)
ME Varua, J Ward, B Maheshwari, S Oza, R Purohit, P Chinnasamy
Journal of Hydrology 537, 171-186

Groundwater management and gender inequalities: The case of two watersheds in rural India (opens in a new window)
ME Varua, J Ward, B Maheshwari, S Dave, R Kookana
Groundwater for Sustainable Development 6, 93-100

Exploring the relationship between subjective wellbeing and groundwater attitudes and practices of farmers in rural India (opens in a new window)
J Ward, ME Varua, B Maheshwari, S Oza, R Purohit, S Dave
Journal of Hydrology 540, 1-16

The role of transdisciplinary approach and community participation in village scale groundwater management: insights from Gujarat and Rajasthan, India (opens in a new window)
B Maheshwari, M Varua, J Ward, R Packham, P Chinnasamy, Y Dashora,
Water 6 (11), 3386-3408

Managing aquifer recharge and sustaining groundwater use: developing a capacity building program for creating local groundwater champions (opens in a new window)
Y Jadeja, B Maheshwari, R Packham, H Bohra, R Purohit, B Thaker
Sustainable Water Resources Management 4, 317-329

Groundwater scarcity impact on inclusiveness and women empowerment: Insights from school absenteeism of female students in two watersheds in India (opens in a new window)
RS Kookana, B Maheshwari, P Dillon, SH Dave, P Soni, H Bohra
International Journal of Inclusive Education 20 (11), 1155-1171