In the dry plains of Bundelkhand, one of India’s most water-scarce regions, a woman wakes up before sunrise. She does not go towards the well. She goes to a meeting. Jal Saheli – translated as “Jal Mitra” – she is part of a network of about 1,530 women from 321 villages who have spent the last decade digging check dams, reviving ancient ponds, repairing hand pumps and organizing councils on groundwater. They are mostly illiterate. They are completely unavoidable.This World Water Day, the United Nations has made its message clear: the global water crisis is, at its core, a gender crisis – and its solution runs through women. The 2026 campaign, themed “Water and Gender: Where Water Flows, Equity Grows,” calls for a transformative, rights-based approach where women have equal voice, leadership and opportunity in water decision-making. Across India, quietly and without much ceremony, that change is already underway.
Jal Saheli Movement
When there was no rain in Bundelkhand for the thirteenth time, Shirkunwar Rajput, the woman who headed the Pani Panchayat in Udguwan (Lalitpur), did not wait for the government. She gathered the women of her village and said something that was eventually carved into stone on a check dam: “In Bundelkhand, fetching water is entirely a woman’s or girl’s job. Therefore, women have the first right on water resources,” as quoted by Mongabay.Jal Saheli movement was established in 2005 from Madhogarh of Jalaun. Uttar PradeshGrown from that conviction. As of 2024, about 1,530 Jal Saheli were active in 321 villages in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Dressed in simple blue sarees, these women, aged between 18 and 70, have built over a hundred check dams, revived traditional ponds, installed new hand pumps and built soak pits that reduce waste water.Its impact has not only affected agriculture but also domestic life. Before Jal Saheli’s intervention, farmers in some of these villages could grow only one crop of wheat per year. Since then it has become possible to obtain two to three annual crops with assured irrigation. Groundwater recharge from check dams has brought back working wells in communities where children shared one pump among 1,200 people.Working with the NGO Parmarth Samaj Sevi Sansthan, Welthungerhilfe trained these women volunteers in water resource planning, water level monitoring and conservation techniques before sending them back to their villages as experts. The model has since attracted the attention of government departments in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, both of which have expressed interest in scaling it up to 5,000 villages.
Underground Governance: Atal Ground Water Scheme
India’s aquifers are in crisis. The Central Ground Water Board recently classified 256 districts as water-stressed by 2020, and the country’s average per capita water availability is projected to decline rapidly by 2050. Against this backdrop, the Government of India launched the Atal Ground Water Scheme (Atal Jal) in 2020 – Rs. The ₹6,000 crore ($756 million) scheme, co-financed by the World Bank, targets 8,562 gram panchayats in seven water-stressed states: Gujarat, HaryanaKarnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.What makes Atal Jal unique is not just its budget but its politics. Under the scheme, it is mandatory that at least 33 per cent of members in Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSC) should be women. In practice, representation has gone even further: women now hold on average 44 percent of the seats in the scheme’s gram panchayats. Importantly, 33 percent of women hold real decision-making positions within water user associations – presidents, vice-presidents, secretaries and treasurers.According to the scheme’s own data, the results are significant: 670,802 hectares of area has been covered under demand-side water efficiency activities, saving an estimated 1,716 million cubic meters of water through micro-irrigation, crop diversification and rainwater harvesting. 642 million cubic meters of groundwater has been recharged through the construction of 77,052 structures. Approximately Rs. per beneficiary. Nearly 30 million people have benefited at a cost of Rs. 2,627.In Haryana, the scheme has taken a distinctly feminine face through the character of Jal Saheli – a local resource person, usually a woman from a self-help group, who is trained to conduct water quality testing, transmit groundwater data to communities and advocate for efficient irrigation practices. In Rajasthan’s Phalodi district, Jal Saheli working under UNICEF and NGO Unnati revived a centuries-old village pond, earning Rs. 1.5 million in MNREGA allocation as well as community funds.
Bhubaneswar ‘Collar Club’
The water revolution in India is not happening only in fields and check dams. This is also happening through smartphones in urban slums.Between January 2023 and December 2024, the Center for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), supported by the Australian Government’s Water Fund for Women, piloted a landmark urban WASH initiative in 215 informal settlements in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. At its core was a “caller club”: trained community members who would register and escalate water, sanitation and hygiene-related complaints on behalf of residents through the Janhit-Vani Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).Community members made a total of 18,750 calls over a two-year period. Women led the effort, attending to 10,419 calls – and providing the majority of feedback, with 5,610 calls specifically on water-related issues. Of the 8,517 water-related complaints recorded, 4,550 (53.4 percent) were formally resolved, benefiting 8,696 people. Sanitation complaints fared even better: 4,783 (70.7 percent) of 6,767 issues reported were resolved, and the resolution rate for sanitation complaints was 98.4 percent.Urban local bodies, the Public Health Engineering Department and Watco responded positively to online complaints, working with communities to resolve issues and educate residents on infrastructure maintenance. The project also funded climate-resilient infrastructure upgrades in 126 settlements: elevated toilets to prevent monsoon flooding, stormwater drainage, and solar-powered water filtration plants – all designed with input from the women who use them.Lakshmipriya Lenka, president of the Slum Development Association in Bhubaneswar, was among the voices who put this feedback loop into action. Her leadership exemplifies what the UN Women 2026 World Water Day campaign demands: not just access to water, but agency over it.
proof of women leadership
The case for the centrality of women in water governance is not just moral – it is empirical. A landmark study on India’s panchayats cited by UN Women found that the number of drinking water projects in areas with local councils led by women was 62 percent higher than those led by men. Research on 44 water projects in Asia and Africa cited by the World Resources Institute found that when women helped shape water policies and institutions, communities used water more sustainably and equitably.Yet structural barriers remain significant. Less than 50 countries globally have laws or policies that specifically address women’s participation in water resources management. In India, the national water policies of 1987, 2002 and 2012 consistently sidelined women – the policies were largely drafted by men who did not traditionally carry water home. It is only because of schemes like Jal Jeevan Mission and Atal Groundwater Scheme and grassroots pressure from movements like Jal Saheli that this mistake has started to be rectified.
The economic case is equally compelling. In India alone, the productivity loss due to women’s water-harvesting duties is approximately Rs. is estimated to be equal to. 10 billion – or about $160 billion, about 4.7 percent of GDP. Every tap close to home, every check dam that holds monsoon water during March, translates into hours returned to women: for school, for work, for leisure, for leadership.Chandrakant Kumbhani, Chief Operating Officer, Community Development, Ambuja Foundation, underlines this change: “Water resources development is one of the most powerful drivers of women empowerment in rural India. But real change happens when women move from being beneficiaries to becoming decision-makers – involved in planning, managing and operating water systems at the village level. This participation builds confidence, visibility and leadership, enabling them to influence not only water-related decisions, but broader community priorities. As climate pressures increase, this role becomes even more important. “Women’s participation strengthens how communities plan and manage water resources, making systems more adaptive and sustainable.”
a movement in the stone
The check dams of Bundelkhand are full of inscriptions. In the local dialect, concretely, they read: “Women have the first right over water resources.” This is not poetry. A declaration that the women who suffer most from scarcity have earned the right to steward abundance.Jal Saheli leader Leela Khatoon described the work of reviving the village pond. “The pond is a lifeline for the villagers, especially during the heat, drought and low rainfall. We worked on cleaning the pond using both manual labor and excavation,” he told UNICEF proudly. “Some desilting work was done under MNREGA. We discussed with the village head and villagers to ensure sustainable water supply.“All across India – from the slums of Bhubaneswar to the gram panchayats of Rajasthan, from the over-exploited aquifers of Haryana to the drought-stricken plateaus of Madhya Pradesh – women like Devwati Sharma are doing the technical, political and physical labor of water governance. They are holding meetings, registering complaints, repairing infrastructure, and teaching water literacy to communities that the formal sector has not yet reached.The UN slogan this World Water Day is: “Where water flows, equality thrives.” In India, women who have kept their hands to the ground for years already know this to be true. The question now is whether the world’s governments, donors and institutions will incorporate it into their policies – with the same tenacity that a water friend chisels into stone.
