For most of the last twenty years, the lake at the edge of Navagam was a cracked bowl of clay that filled for a few weeks after the monsoon and vanished by Diwali. Women walked three kilometres for drinking water. Young men left for the salt pans.
In 2022, the village council decided to try something old. With the help of a local water collective, residents mapped the catchment on foot, identified seven blocked inlet channels and spent two dry seasons removing 18,000 tractor loads of silt.
A rulebook written by the village
Restoring the lake was only half the work. The gram sabha agreed on rules that every household signed: no borewells within 500 metres of the shore, no pumping for irrigation after February, and a rotating committee to guard the inlets during the rains.
We did not build anything new. We only undid the damage and agreed to share.
The silt itself became an asset. Farmers spread it on their fields, and several report better yields of cumin and castor. This summer, the lake held water until the monsoon arrived for the first time in 19 years.
Neighbouring villages have started visiting with notebooks. The council has a simple answer for all of them: start with the map, not the machines.
