A.T.E. Chandra Foundation, a non-government organisation (NGO) founded by Amit Chandra - Chairperson of Bain Capital in India, is rejuvenating water bodies by increasing the water storage capacity.
This helps store water for agricultural use and improves groundwater levels, making water more accessible for farming activities.
The foundation supports the adoption of sustainable and climate-friendly farming methods, including the promotion of natural farming techniques that reduce dependency on chemical inputs and enhance soil health, said Gayatri Lobo Nair, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors and CE.
It is working on introducing and supporting the cultivation of crops that are better suited to withstand changing climatic conditions, ensuring more reliable yields for farmers.
Working with the government
Officially launched in 2015, the A.T.E. Chandra Foundation in 2018-19 decided to focus on rural development, particularly water rejuvenation and regenerative agriculture.
“Given the dependence on rain and with climate change leading to more droughts, we figure that we need to work on an area that can kind of mitigate that over-reliance on rainfall. So, what we do is we look at existing water bodies that have, over time, dried up or silted over, and we rejuvenate these so we would desilt them,” Nair told businessline in an online interaction.
The foundation initially began working on its own and later started working with the Government.
“A large part of our work was to identify what schemes should be taken with a major part of the cost being taken on by government, while we, as philanthropy, would pay whatever the government can’t pay and kind of project manage it to happen,” she said.
Cutting costs
On regenerative agriculture, Nair said the objective is to cut inputs costs for farmers by reducing fertilisers, pesticides and other such crop inputs. “The benefit is climate besides multiple others that is good for all of us,” the foundation CEO said.
Emphasising that the focus is on farmers and will be related toagriculture, she said the foundation initially concentrated on rejuvenating water bodies in Maharashtra in 2013.
“In 2017, the Maharashtra government asked us if we could scale it up. It came up with the Galmukt Dharan Galyukt Shivar Yojana (Water conservation and saving in agriculture), said Nair.
In this scheme, the government would pay for the diesel of the excavators, and the foundation and other donors would pay for renting them. The community would take the silt and put it on their farms, she added.
The silt is nutritious that farmers’ expenditure on fertilisers came to almost zero.
“In a lot of places, the water body being rejuvenated before the monsoons meant that they had more water to potential take on a second crop,” she said.
Lowering desilting expenses
The foundation learnt from third-party surveys and research studies that farmer incomes increased by up to 120 per cent in the first year when silt was utilised.
“The reason the government got excited by this is because the desilting costs dropped. Typically, the desilting cost is anything between ₹120 and ₹200 per cubic metre. But because we do this with the community and the farmers take the silt at their own cost, the cost of government and donors came down to ₹30,” the CEO said.
The work, carried out till 2019, got interrupted in 2020 due to the pandemic. The foundation then explored whether the model could be successful outside Maharashtra, piloting similar projects in Rajasthan and Karnataka.
“In both States we saw the same model working. The only difference in Rajasthan was that it was not just farmers taking the silt there. The community took it for levelling roads and building playgrounds,” she said.
The economic costs, however, remained the same at ₹30 per cubic metre.
With Niti Aayog
In 2022, the foundation approached Niti Aayog, and the government’s think tank became enthusiastic about the initiative due to its low cost and strong community involvement. Niti Aayog decided to pilot the scheme in aspirational districts as a starting point.
“We worked in six districts initially and rejuvenated about 350 water bodies that year. Seeing that success, we came back to Maharashtra government. Now the scheme has been changed that the Maharashtra government pays the entire cost of ₹30,” said Nair.
Over the past two years, the A.T.E. Chandra Foundation has done projects that are more than the previous five years.
“Our role in all of this is largely supporting the Government through project, managing the entire thing. We have also built certain technology tools to executive the work in an efficient manner, where there is a potential additional benefit of groundwater recharge,” she said.
Usage of apps
The foundation utilises the Avni Gramin app, which tracks how much silt farmers collect. The data is OTP-verified and used by the government. The app includes GPS-tagged images of the water bodies before and after silt removal, while a government nodal officer conducts physical verification and measurement.
This goes into the dashboard and provides an update if the project is rolling out smoothly or needs some intervention. The foundation uses another app called Clart, created by FES, which will provide data where to prioritise work.
“So we can stand at a water body and the app will tell us if there is a better recharge going to happen there of groundwater or not,” she siad. .
The foundation has worked in Maharashtra’s Latur district in collaboration with the NGO that works with widow and single woman farmers to switch over to sustainable agriculture practises on the footsteps of “Subhash Palekar’s natural farming route”.
Additional initiatives
The foundation dedicates significant time working with farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh who are transitioning to regenerative agriculture.
“Another place we are looking to support is the Pani Foundation, where it has expanded to 10,000 villages to help farmers over time transition to using zero to very little chemicals on their farms,” said Nair.
Across these projects, the foundation has workedin Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan - in a big way -and, a little bit in, Karnataka.
The foundation is also involved in agroforestry, focusing on the Sahyadri hills in Maharashtra. It is working in two forests there, collaborating with tribal communities through the NGO AERL to conserve the forests without disrupting their livelihoods.
A.T.E. Chandra foundation is also working on capacity building and social stock exchange verticals.