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The worst drought in more than a century in southern India has led to protests, farmer suicides, and clashes at the water taps as reservoirs and lakes dry up in the searing heat.
It has also led to an unusual crowdfunding campaign that helped restore a village pond in one of the worst affected areas, with a similar effort planned for a second pond.
The effort, led by The Better India website, raised more than 1.1 million rupees ($17,000) on crowdfunding site Milaap.
"We had crowdfunded other social impact projects before, including destitute women and underprivileged children," said Aishwarya Guha, head of impact projects at The Better India.
Farmers from Tamil Nadu had travelled to Delhi earlier in 2017 to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide relief after the rains failed, leaving many of them in debt.
They displayed the skulls of fellow farmers believed to have committed suicide, and placed live rats in their mouths to draw the nation's attention to their plight.
The Better India's crowdfunding effort hit its goal of 1 million rupees in 40 days, drawing contributions ranging from 100 rupees ($1.50) to 7,00,000 rupees ($10,900) from a philanthropy, Guha said.
Crowdfunding is growing in popularity in India as a means to finance medical emergencies, help underprivileged people, and assist during disasters. Environmental causes – from planting trees to cleaning beaches – is a relatively new focus area.
The restoration of the pond in Nagapattinam was done by conservation group Environmentalist Foundation of India, which has cleaned lakes and ponds across the country.
Restoration of a water body entails removing garbage in and around the lake or pond. The lake bed is then dredged, with the captured silt used to heighten and strengthen the bunds around its edges to increase storage capacity and prevent overflow.
The community is encouraged to plant native plant species around the pond to prevent erosion and limit evaporation losses.
The Thiruvaimur pond, which measures about five acres (2 hectares), was restored in two months, and the improvement in water storage is expected to benefit about 2,000 families, said Krishnamurthy.
Deadly clashes erupted in 2016 over the diversion of water from the Cauvery river, which has been a source of tension between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states for more than a century.
Farmers were once able to grow three crops a year in its fertile soil. But with rains failing as climate change strengthens, hundreds of lakes and ponds have dried up, and farmers are barely able harvest a single crop of rice.
After the rains failed in 2016, Tamil Nadu declared drought in all its 32 districts, with Nagapattinam among the worst affected. Water levels in reservoirs fell to a fifth of their capacity, and hundreds of farmers have killed themselves.
Desperate, a state minister attempted to cover a dam in Tamil Nadu with sheets of polystyrene earlier in 2017 to limit water loss from evaporation.
In Nagapattinam, the state is funding the clean up of several ponds, district revenue official S Suresh Kumar said.
But conservationists say the state has failed to take broader pro-active steps such as de-silting larger lakes and ensuring recharging of groundwater.
While crowdfunding is not the only way to finance these projects, it offers a unique model, Guha said.
(This article has been published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
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