When Fauzia Shaikh arrived in Kutch between 3 and 7 September, she expected to see Banni after the monsoon: seasonal ponds holding water, grass spreading across the plains, and Banni buffaloes moving through the grasslands.
Instead, she found a landscape still waiting for rain.
“It was supposed to have a lot of vegetation by now because it was the monsoon,” Shaikh tells The Better India. “It should have been a wetland by now. But it was still just land with almost no vegetation.”
The absence of water was visible everywhere. Ponds had dried up. Rivers and seasonal water sources had receded. Grass, which sustains Banni’s pastoral economy, had barely appeared.
A monsoon that did not arrive
By early September, Kutch had received only around 29–30% of its normal seasonal rainfall, with some talukas receiving barely a tenth of what they usually get.
On 2 September, the district was already reporting a rainfall deficit of about 60%. By 13 September, the deficit had widened to around 70%, with just 149.7 mm of rain recorded against a normal 499.8 mm.
The consequences reached agriculture first.
Around 4.82 lakh hectares were cultivated this year, but only about 1.8 lakh hectares had irrigation. The cultivated area itself had fallen sharply from roughly 6.5 lakh hectares the previous year. For farmers who managed to sow their fields, the prolonged dry spell left crops struggling for moisture.
But Banni’s pastoral communities face a different calculation.
Their fields are the grasslands. Their harvest is livestock.
And their water sources have to work across a landscape where groundwater is often saline.
When the grass disappears
Shaikh travelled through villages and settlements, where she saw how the dry landscape was affecting both livestock and the people who depend on them.
“I actually saw that there was no water in the ponds,” she says. “The rivers were dried up too.”
Vegetation was sparse. Shaikh mainly noticed gando baval, or Prosopis juliflora, an invasive species, and pilu, a native plant whose twigs are traditionally used as natural toothbrushes.
“Gando baval does not really help in this situation because animals and cattle do not eat it,” she says.
For Maldhari families, the lack of grass creates a chain reaction.
With grasslands drying up, Kutch’s pastoral communities are struggling to find fodder and water for their cattle, putting milk production and livelihoods under pressure. Photograph: (Varun Suchday)
Animals need more purchased fodder. Fodder becomes expensive. Livestock produce less milk. Families then have less milk to sell.
“The cattle are not producing enough milk because it has not rained and there is no grass,” Shaikh says.
She says dry fodder that had earlier cost around Rs 6 per kg was selling for about Rs 12 per kg in retail markets.
The problem, then, is not just a shortage of water. It is also the loss of the grass that supports pastoral livelihoods.
And this is where Banni’s traditional water systems offer an important lesson.
The water is there, but not always where you expect it
For generations, Maldharis in Banni have used virdas — shallow wells dug into the beds of seasonal ponds and natural depressions.
A virda begins with an understanding of how Banni holds rainwater.
During the monsoon, rainwater collects in shallow depressions and seasonal ponds. Some of that water seeps through the soil, creating relatively fresh layers above deeper saline groundwater.
Maldharis have traditionally identified these places through knowledge passed down across generations. They dig shallow wells into the freshwater layer and construct them using locally available materials.
“The virdas are becoming very few and far between,” says Varun Suchday, a travel journalist and researcher from Kutch who has spent considerable time travelling through the region and documenting its pastoral and nomadic communities. “Their use and even their construction is rapidly declining.”
This year, some new virdas are being dug again, he says, but there is no guarantee that they will yield usable water.
“Not every virda gives you sweet water. This is a salty terrain, so a lot of the virdas just bring out saline water and are of no use.”
But virdas are not the only traditional water sources that matter here. Suchday points to dhands, saucer-shaped seasonal water bodies that dot Kutch.
“There are around 44 or 45 dhands across Kutch. All these animals, and even humans, depend on these dhands for water.”
With fodder prices doubling from Rs 6 to Rs 12 per kg, Kutch’s livestock-dependent families are paying more to keep cattle fed. Photograph: (Varun Suchday)
This year, however, the water disappeared faster.
“Because of the hotter-than-normal summer, especially May and June, these dhands dried faster,” he says. “The grass also dried faster than normal.”
Citing reports, he says milk production fell by around 30% in May and 50% in June, with further declines reported later.
“I look at these small changes as indicators of climate stress,” he says. “When milk production drops like this, that is also a sign of what the animals and the landscape are going through.”
An ecologist’s perspective
Virdas have a role, but they cannot provide everything people need. Ecologist Chetan Misher says it is important to understand what they were actually designed to provide.
“Virdas are an ancient system, but I don’t think they have failed,” he tells The Better India. “They are more or less the same as they were before. But they were actually never a source of fresh water in the way we understand fresh water.”
The difference lies in what communities have historically called “fresh” water.
“For us, fresh water is something we drink,” Misher explains. “But for the locals, fresh water means something that is not too bad, something that is not completely undrinkable. It is not necessarily as good as the water we drink in cities or elsewhere.”
In Banni’s saline terrain, the water available through a virda can still contain considerable salt and particulate matter. Misher describes it as “very muddy water” and says its relative usability has historically been defined by what other options were available.
New Blog – Jheel and Virdas – The Indigenous and the resilient water system of Banni Landscape in Kutch, India.@JalShaktiAbhyan@MoJSDoWRRDGR#janshakti4jalshakti#JalJeevanMission#JalShaktiAbhiyan#मैं_हूँ_पानी@indiawater@Indian_Rivers@WaterYouthNethttps://t.co/2lkapWSncCpic.twitter.com/kn3TEvI5So
— Paani Wali Baat (@paaniwalibaat) September 28, 2019
“They found it fresh because the alternative they had was even worse than that,” he says.
That history, he argues, should not become a reason to romanticise the system or treat it as an adequate substitute for potable water today.
“A virda has always been there. It helps people survive, but it does not let them thrive,” Misher says.
This does not mean abandoning virdas. They remain a locally understood, decentralised water source, particularly in a landscape where livestock and pastoral communities need water close to where they live and graze.
But Misher believes the bigger priority now is to ensure that people have access to water that is genuinely safe to drink. He also adds that land degradation due to invasive species has negatively affected groundwater in the region, putting additional pressure on virdas.
“People were never adapted to that water,” he says. “You need to provide them better, drinkable water through a pipeline or through a tanker, or whatever means can provide potable water.”
“Cattle and people are drinking the same water,” Misher points out. “It is a very dangerous situation.”
Historically, this may have been unavoidable. Banni is an extremely dry landscape, and during periods without rainfall, communities had few alternatives. But the same constraints need not determine the future.
That makes reliable water infrastructure particularly important during a year when traditional sources are under pressure.
The pipeline is only useful if the water keeps flowing
Some Banni settlements already have piped-water connections. But a pipeline alone does not guarantee a dependable supply.
For water infrastructure to work during drought, the supply needs to be regular, functional and able to withstand prolonged periods of water stress.
The way forward need not be about choosing between traditional and modern systems. The goal is not to discard an old system because it is old, or preserve it simply because it is traditional.
Instead, it is about understanding what each system can realistically provide, recognising its limits and building the infrastructure needed to address those gaps.
