Stagnant water is a health problem, a mobility problem and a women’s time problem before it is ever a budget line.
In Badhiyanpurwa, poor drainage and roads were not an abstract deficit. Mud and standing water shaped how people moved, where they could relieve themselves and what they caught, and women and children carried most of the consequence. Toilets, drinking water and ration distribution were failing alongside.
Aarti worked through Jwala Aajeevika Adhikar Sangathan to bring women together around the shared list. She is a community organiser who took training and then built awareness locally. She did not do it alone, and the story should not be told as if she had: the change came from women meeting, agreeing priorities, submitting collective demands and staying in contact with the Gram Panchayat and administration.
The road and drainage demand went through meetings and written representations. A cement-concrete road and drains were subsequently built.
On sanitation, the group discussed the health and safety consequences of open defecation and encouraged eligible households to engage with the Swachh Bharat Mission. Almost all households now have toilets. On water, they prioritised cleaning and repairing handpumps and pursued a new pipeline through the Panchayat and Jal Nigam.
They also challenged irregularities in the public distribution system, requesting an inquiry and joining the village-level vigilance that was supposed to be watching it already.
DEHAT’s contribution was capacity: understanding the schemes and institutions, planning collectively, drafting representations, meeting officials. The women decided what mattered and stayed with it. Public bodies built the road and ran the programmes.
That distinction is not modesty. The story is not that an organisation gave a village a road. It is that residents got better at using democratic and administrative channels, and the institutions responded - which is durable, because the knowledge and the relationships stay in the village.
It is also climate work. Waterlogging, unsafe water, poor sanitation and impassable roads are what turn a heavy monsoon into a health crisis. A village able to fix those together is more resilient, whatever the project is called.
The knowledge and the relationships stay in the village.
Resilience Looks Like a Drain
Training on schemes, help drafting representations, and the meetings that keep a women’s group turning up at the Panchayat. No infrastructure money changes hands. The infrastructure gets built.