Monday, June 11, 2001		Article

JUST think of the potential of software that allows users to create an interactive water-map of the village. This means, villagers would be better equipped to cope with drought. Thanks to IT (information technology).

Called Jal-Chitra, this software has been developed by Jaipur-based Ajit Foundation, in collaboration with the Barefoot College of Tilonia. Says Ajit Foundation’s Vikram Vyas: "The advent of personal computer together with the development and expansion of the Internet has provided us with a unique opportunity to bring the tools of scientific modelling and computation to rural development."

The idea for this software came to Vyas when he found that Sim-Tanka, software developed earlier by him, was not being used. While talking with a friend, Vyas started drawing a map of a village on the ground with a stick — indicating where the different water sources were located. "From various such discussions and realising that a village does not use water source piece-wise but looks at all sources together led to the idea of Jal-Chitra," he says.

One "immediate area" where such tools can make a tangible contribution, he argues, is in the process of drought-proofing the villages lying in the arid and semi-arid regions of the developing world.

How is this done? An estimate of the monthly water demand and the monthly water availability from various sources is the starting point. Then comes the question of allocation of available water.

Likewise, a water-budget can be created. Solutions can range from water conservation, to the development of new water sources or water storage systems, where possible or even getting water from external sources. Villagers need to balance between underground water and rainwater harvesting systems.

Once done, Jal-Chitra software aims at helping villagers to take advantage of information and communication technologies to exercise their right to manage their own water sources.

Jal-Chitra basically creates an interactive water-map of the village, enables the community to keep records of the amount of water available from each water source, can record water quality testing, lists maintenance work done and required, estimates water demand, generates future monthly water budgets (based on past records), and shows the amount of community need met through rainwater harvesting systems.

"The response from the organisations that are familiar with ICT (information and communication technologies) has been very positive. Particular heartening was the number of inquires and messages of encouragement that I have received from the voluntary organisations working in Pakistan," Vyas says and adds that efforts are on to have a Hindi version of the software based on Susha fonts.

Jal-Chitra will be implemented initially in a number of villages where Barefoot College is working in North India. The process of translating the users’ manual in Hindi is on, though it is facing some bottlenecks.

The software can show the amount of the community’s need that is being met through rainwater harvesting systems. How it compares with total potentiality of rainwater harvesting in the given village can also be depicted.

The software incorporates a tool Sim-Tanka to determine the reliability of rainwater harvesting systems with covered storage tank.

Visa would ‘love’ to port Jal-Chitra to Linux. "The difficulty for a non-professional programmer is writing some thing as complex as Jal-Chitra in X-window environment is, well, non-trivial. Also the GIS support for Jal-Chitra comes through an active-X component, Map-objects, Map-objects is only available for Windows. I am sure there must be an open source GIS that can be used. I am not aware of it. In any case my dream is to have a full suite of software like Jal-Chitra, SimTanka available on Linux. I would be great if open software movement in India can help me with this," he says.

Villages that are in the arid or semi-arid region of developing world can benefit the most. The greatest potential of the software would be that it would enable local democratic institutions, like panchayats (local village councils in India), to make more informed decisions regarding their own water sources.