Thousands of villagers in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan do not have access to even a drop of safe drinking water during summer. But the people of Kisari village enjoy a rare luxury—they drink mineral water throughout the year.

The drastic difference between the village with a population exceeding 3,000, nearly 150 km from Jaipur, and its surrounding areas is the result of a unique community participation programme that has allowed the Kisari panchayat to set up and run its own mineral water plant in the middle of the desert.

‘‘The water plant is managed by the panchayat with a bit of financial assistance from the water-supply department of the state government,’’ says Jhunjhunu SDM Rakesh Kumar Yadav. The situation in Jhunjhunu and its adjoining Churu district is so grim that more than 75 per cent of its blocks have come under the dark zone. Compounding the problem is the high level of fluoride in the groundwater, responsible for several diseases among the villagers.

A few months ago, villagers of Kisari, with the help of local social workers, decided to permanently solve their drinking water problem by setting up a plant that would wash out the impurities in the ground water and produce 30,000 litre of mineral water (dissolved minerals less than 15 parts per million) every day.

‘‘The idea was inspired by President Abdul Kalam, who had asked the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to introduce a similar project for villages in Barmer. The Barmer projects failed to take off because of poor local support, but we decided to implement it in our village,’’ says Niranjan Singh, one of the members of the village board that runs the project.

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