Karauli's Success Story: How DS Group's Initiative Changed The Village's Fate

Water is essential for survival and stability of any city or village, but excess or deficiency destabilises everything and compromises basic livelihoods. In certain parts of India, there are hardly any water sources, and villagers cover miles on foot daily to collect water to utilise in everyday life. Climate change and natural disasters have also intensified the issue.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, climate change is affecting the hydrological cycle and increasing the frequency and intensity of storms. Over 90% of “natural” disasters are weather-water-related, including drought and aridification, wildfires, pollution, and floods. They lead to death, injury, loss of livelihoods, and displacement and place a huge burden on societies, economies, and the environment.

While many face water crisis, villages in the Dang region of the Karauli stand tall, proclaiming, "Come to our village and see how we turned adversity into opportunity, making the impossible possible with the help of DS Group.

Gone are the days when Karauli's people had to walk miles to fetch water from limited sources, shared by the entire community for their daily household needs. Today, the village boasts a cumulative water storage and recharge capacity of around 19.31 lakh cubic meters across various structures, including 10 community ponds, 59 pokhars, 28 pagaras, and few kundas.

DS Group, primarily a food and beverages company, believes the farming community is a key stakeholder-. In corporate social responsibility (CSR), the best approach is to identify the closest community and address their challenges and issues. The company decided to focus on two core areas: water and agricultural practices that affecting farmers most. The combination of these two forms the concept of a "Water Economic Zone," aimed at building rural and local economies through effective water management.

Four Part Framework
In order to put this model into practice, DS Group selected areas that had a large population of marginal and small farmers and had a framework that consisted of four main components:

Water Conservation and Management: It includes watershed development, soil conservation measures, water harvesting structure construction, and enhancing effective water use. Its aim is to utilise water to its optimal level to support livelihood.

Enhancing Farming Techniques: The company collaborates with farmers to discover or identify gaps in their existing crop management practices - and implement improved package of practices more appropriate for the local environment, leading to increased productivity and sustainability.

Institutional Building: The third component is institutional building. Marginal farmers often struggle to access markets for inputs or sell their products due to their small landholdings. Collectivization offers a better chance at overcoming these challenges. By forming water users' groups, farmers' collectives, or farmer producer organizations — depending on the local context — they can tackle common problems collectively and access markets more effectively.

Various types of community institutions have been formed under the project based on specific needs. For water conservation, 345 Water User Groups (WUGs) have been established to manage stored water and maintain water structures. An apex body, comprising representatives from these WUGs, oversees overall monitoring and ensures the programme's long-term sustainability.

Market Linkages: This component connects institutional buyers with farming communities, encourages crop diversification to cater local demand, and identifies local entrepreneurs to drive economic growth and strengthen market linkages.

Why Karauli?
When DS Group decided to work with farming communities, Rajasthan emerged as a priority due to its vulnerability to water scarcity and similar challenges. In the search for a reliable local partner, the team discovered Gram Gaurav Sansthan, an organisation working in the region.

When they visited their intervention site in Karauli, the Mandrayal block, it was evident that this community required urgent intervention. The project commenced in 2017 with a pilot phase, building some infrastructure and assessing their effectiveness. Success in the early stages resulted in a second phase between 2020 and 2023, and a third phase to expand the interventions.

The process is constantly evolving. Every project starts small to assess its effectiveness in the local context. If the outcomes are promising, the initiative is expanded further.

Challenges and Learnings
While the project faced no unique challenges, identifying the right implementing agency was crucial. Many agencies have their own objectives and vision, so aligning those with DS Group’s CSR goals was essential for long-term successful partnership

Project implementation itself came with hurdles, but trained professionals and DS Group’s experience in designing such initiatives helped navigate them smoothly. Each phase provided new insights, strengthening the model and ensuring more impactful results.

Technology: A Lifesaver
There are many technologies available to improve irrigation, and different stakeholders are encouraging their adoption. DS Group focuses on three key approaches. First, they promote solar pumps to improve water access. Then, they connect this improved access with micro-irrigation methods like drip irrigation, rain guns, and sprinklers.

Since many of these products are already in the market, farmers or other interested parties can easily purchase and use them. Additionally, the government supports these technologies by offering subsidies. DS Group plays a crucial role in helping vulnerable communities access these schemes, ensuring government resources reach the right beneficiaries.

Soil Conservation Solutions
The Dang region's terrain is highly undulated, causing severe soil erosion during rainfall. To combat this, DS Group’s water conservation efforts also focus on soil conservation. In the Dang region, they promoted the construction of "pagara" structures — around 40 have been built so far. A pagara is a soil conservation structure placed in valleys to reduce erosion, eventually converting the non-arable land into farmland.

Financial support is crucial but not the sole focus. Farmers already invest heavily in agriculture — what they need most is technical know-how. DS Group acts as a facilitator, engaging in detailed discussions with communities to identify suitable interventions. Often, the best ideas emerge from the farmers themselves.

For example, with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), they started with a few early adopters — about 10 to 15 farmers — who applied the technique on just one acre of land. As other farmers observed the process and saw improvements in yield and reduced input efforts, interest grew. This prototype approach helps scale successful practices naturally, driven by community engagement and proven results.

The Impact
Management of water has been the initial and most important process, not merely the building of these facilities but also encouraging conservative use of water through technologies such as solar lift irrigation, sprinklers, and drip irrigation. In addition to water conservation, the project emphasized improving agricultural production. Farmers who were in areas surrounding these facilities and lacked available water sources prior to this time are now turning to improved agricultural practices.

One of these is the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which has enhanced paddy cultivation with increased production and less effort on inputs. Vegetable farming has also been brought in to cater to both livelihood and nutritional needs. Kitchen gardens are now supplementing houses with fresh vegetables and fruits, and commercial vegetable cultivation has created an alternative source of income. High-value crops such as strawberries and floriculture with good prospects have been seen in other areas, which can also be replicated in Karauli.

In addition, the project is now also investigating livestock management as an alternate second route to better livelihood, breed improvement focusses and enhanced livestock handling practices.

Since 2017, these interventions have reached around 50,000 farmers in different or multiple geographies. Karauli is now an exemplar for comprehensive rural development, where water conservation has also been a force of change toward sustainable agriculture, better nutrition, and livelihoods. Real beneficiaries in Karauli are being counted even today, but palpable transformation cannot be denied.

The Expansion
The future of DS Group’s CSR operations extends far beyond Karauli, covering a pan-India landscape. The Water Economic Zone initiative, which began in Udaipur, has now expanded to eight locations across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan, there are three zones in Udaipur and one in Karauli. In Madhya Pradesh, four zones operate in Katni, =Seoni, Betul, and -Khandwa districts.

While speaking to ResponsibleUs, Prabhakant Jain, Head CSR, DS Group, shared details beyond these zones. He said, “Our work with farmers spans several states. In the Northeast, we’re active in Karbi Anglong, Assam, a Sixth Schedule area, and earlier in Phek, Nagaland, near the Myanmar border. In the South, we’ve collaborated with 2,000 farmers in Karnataka mainly involved in cash crops like areca, black-pepper, & other spices. In the West, we’ve supported farmers in Jhalawar and Jodhpur, Rajasthan, as well as in Kachchh, Gujarat.”

He added that water conservation is also what motivates the group’s efforts. “In the Himalayas, we have revived almost close to 75 springs and constructed 37 Tanks in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, providing clean drinking water to these far-flung areas. In the years ahead, the activity will continue to grow and tackle a chain of agricultural as well as water management issues confronting India.”

In India, around 85% of farmers are marginal or small, owning less than 5 acres or 2 hectares of land and owned about 47% of the country’s farmland. Despite being the majority, they face significant challenges, especially with water access. Initiatives like these play a crucial role in driving sustainability through collective efforts, creating lasting impact for these vulnerable communities.

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