Although much progress has been made in the country in respect of drinking water supply to public with almost every village units connected with potable drinking water supply system, there are still some pockets where the citizens are deprived of this basic need. In such places, females, who are burdened with the onerous job of running the household, have to tread couple of kilometers to fetch just a pot of water. The females are supported by the children who, on account of this, suffer from attending school in time. Inspired by Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s message: “Potable water should be accessible to everyone”; SSSSON has constructed so far eight Community Drinking Water Projects in very remote hilly areas especially catering to the needs of financially and socially disadvantaged people.
Construction Strategy
SSSSON’s strength lies in the use of organization sevadals, wherever possible, in the construction of service project. SSSSON utilizes these opportunities as service sadhana. Sevadal work hand in hand with the workers as part of sadhana. The biggest advantage of this system is that the devotees feel ownership of the project.
This water project supplies drinking water to 154 families of Satrasayaphant, Tanahun district. The inhabitants of the area have long been forced to depend on an antiquated water supply system of inadequate capacity, poor quality and erratic supply. The feasibility study suggested that constructing a new project would be cheaper than renovating the existing one. Hence, the new project was launched in November, 2009.
Youth of SSSSON were actively involved as Seva Dals during the construction work.
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This project was launched in July 2012 in Chhinchu village of Surkhet District, 580 km west of Kathmandu. The project serves 115 households, 208 students and teachers of a community school. The project was completed in record seven months’ time offsetting various constraints posed due to remoteness of the location. “Life has become way easier with the continuous flow of Sai Baba’s water in our locality,” remarked one of the beneficiaries. Before the construction of this project, people had to tread nearly one kilometer along arduous hilly slopes to fetch water.
Considering the altitudinal variation of the project area and to maximize the coverage of beneficiaries, the project was divided in three different sites in the same area. All the three sites were separately inaugurated on the same day.
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The foundation stone of this project was laid on Avatar Declaration Day, 20 October, 2018 and project was inaugurated on 7 June, 2018. The project serves 335 families of very sparsely populated large hilly area using total 12,000 metres pipe length. The project implementation involved on-site volunteer services of large number of Sai sevadals. Altogether 1218 man days (unskilled) volunteers, both male and female, were involved. Initially when the villagers saw the Sai volunteers (for them – white coloured city dwellers) working for them as labour, they refused to let them work for them and started working in their places.
The impact of this Seva project was conspicuous with the villagers starting greeting everyone with “Sai Ram”. Impressed with the selfless service of SSSSON, people were so keen to start Sai center that about twenty people learnt Sai bhajan singing and started conducting bhajan regularly since the construction started in March, 2018. Above all, Swami blessed the work with streaks of Bibhuti appearing on His hair in one of the photos at the altar. On the inauguration day, the local villagers sang Sai bhajans for more than one hour. Later, this bhajan group was accredited as a Sai center.
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This is the biggest water project so far done by SSSSON. The Balkot village of Arghakhachi district of western Nepal lies on the top ridge of a mountain, totally devoid of water. The people especially the females and children had to tread down to the valley for a pot of water that required minimum 2 hrs to complete the trip. That severely hampered the health of women and schooling of children.
Geographically the project area is fairly large. Total 542 households, 502 students of 4 government schools benefit from this project. Water is brought from a 9 km away perennial natural spring, to the reservoir that distributes water to beneficiaries through a crisscross 20 km network of pipelines. Altogether about 30 km pipelines have been used in the project.
Earlier some INGOs and government department had attempted to do the project but for various reasons had to abandon it. The impact of the project on the villagers has been so massive that the village general assembly unanimously adopted a resolution naming the village as “Sai Baba Sthan” (place where Sai Baba resides).
This hamlet depended on natural spring water. After the devastating earthquake the water source dried up. SSSSON constructed a water supply system that benefits 70 households. The villagers were so gratified that they started a Sai centre immediately after the construction of the project.
This project sources water from underground unlike all other seven projects which depended on natural springs and transported water through gravity. Two deep tube wells were dug in the valley and water lifted through high pressure pumps to the reservoirs to a distance of about 700 meters and distributed to the beneficiaries. Total 192 households, mostly socially disadvantaged tribal aborigines, and 700 students of a higher secondary school, benefit from this project. The impact on the villagers has been so immense that the villagers learnt singing Sai bhajans and started a Sai centre while the construction was still in progress. In this place too, Swami blessed with streaks of bibhuti on His photo when the village chieftain was doing aarati after bhajan.
The SSSON has constructed 22 houses and one Sadhana Bhavan at this place after the devastating earthquake that raked all the houses of the hamlet. Recently, geological changes underneath resulting due to the earthquake has caused drying of the spring water source which was the mainstay of this hamlet for drinking ware. The SSSON will construct a Water Supply at this hamlet.
This is another very big water project. A natural perennial spring is tapped and water brought
through a 9 km long transmission pipeline to a reservoir. The distribution network consists of
about 15 km long pipelines. This serves 246 households composed mostly of Chepang, a socially and economically deprived tribal community. This village lies on the mountain top from where to get a pot of water, one had to tread to the valley river that required hours.
The villagers typically would start their day with alcoholic drink and remain drunk whole day. The project had a holistic approach. Besides providing drinking water, the project had Education, Hygiene and Sanitation, Spiritual components. The project was implemented under the leadership of the youth wing of SSSSON.
The impact to the villagers has been so massive and visible that the people, who would otherwise remain drunk whole day, have started singing Sai bhajans. Few people have given up alcohol drinking as well. SSSSON has constructed a Sadhana Bhavan where people are regularly conducting Sai bhajans which would graduate to a full-fledged Sai centre in couple of
months’ time.
This project serves 80 households, all tribal class. A natural spring lying about 3 km away is the main water source. The distribution pipeline is about 4 km.
SSSSON has constructed toilets at two major religiously important places in the country, Pashupati Temple Premises and Devaghat. While Pashupati temple is one of the most venerated temples of Hindus, Devaghat is termed as Prayag of Nepal. Every day large number of pilgrims use these toilets, however, during religious ceremonies the number increases to hundreds of thousands, a good number of them coming even from neighboring Indian places.