One of the residents, Khalik, says that in the last 20 years he had to migrate 10 times to various parts of the country, leaving behind several members of his family, especially the young children and his wife. But today, following a grant from the US government World Vision, the village has water harvesting systems to store water for the summers and drought months. And Khalik will not migrate again.

The harvesting systems came into place during the latter half of 2000 during the second phase of the `Jaisalmer/Barmer Relief Operation Programme'n (JROP) run by the NGO. During the first phase between June and September 2000, the JROP programme built water tanks in several village adopting a `cash for work' approach.

Last week, the Japanese government gave World Vision a grant of $ 1 lakh (Rs 44,20,200) to continuing building water harvesting and storage systems in villages of Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh. The new project, Nirmal Jal, will benefit 30 villages in Jaisalmer district, 20 villages in Udaipur district and 65 Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh.

The project is looking at constructing concrete tanks in low lying areas in Jaisalmer to collect and store rain water while in Udaipur 20 tube wells will be sunk and water pipelines for drinking water will be laid in Mehboobnagar where a community well has already been dug.

According to Mr Balhan Sagar, manager operations, World Vision, developing water harvesting infrastructure addresses the long term problems with respect to water storage capacity in the drought-prone areas of Rajasthan.

This project used a `food for work' approach, different from the first phase where `cash for work' was given. The `food for work' approach also takes care of the food insecurity and income needs that have become acute as a result of the drought. During the first phase cash was preferred as the drought was severe at that point and cash gave quicker relief to the drought-hit villagers.