Boond Boond Se Badlav: Water Awareness in Rural India
Aashray Samiti’s Jal Raksha Yatra is a grassroots campaign focused on changing how rural communities think about water.
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Date
June 9, 2025
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Water doesn’t vanish overnight
Water doesn’t vanish overnight. It disappears slowly — one leaking tap, one unused rooftop, one forgotten well at a time. And in the same way, awareness doesn’t appear suddenly. It begins with one poster, one puppet show, one schoolchild measuring water with a notebook. That’s where Boond Boond Se Badlav begins — in the slow return of attention
Aashray Samiti’s Jal Raksha Yatra is a grassroots campaign focused on changing how rural communities think about water. Not just saving it, but understanding it — as a shared resource, a fragile balance, and a daily decision. Our volunteers travel village to village, using simple but powerful tools: wall paintings, nukkad nataks, rainwater demos, and “Jal Diaries” — where children track their family’s water usage.
Why Ground-Level Water Awareness Works
These aren’t dramatic interventions. But they work. Because they speak in the community’s voice, in their spaces, using their rhythm. And when that happens, people stop treating water as background noise — and start treating it as the main story.
Why Ground-Level Water Awareness Works:
- It uses local language and logic.
Our street plays and puppet shows are designed in the village’s own dialect — with characters and humour they understand. - It involves children as water guardians.
“Jal Diary” activities turn schoolchildren into daily observers, making the message stay in the household.
It revives forgotten local solutions.
From tank cleaning to rainwater harvesting, communities are reminded of systems that once worked — and can work again.
These are not massive changes, but they’re permanent.
In one school, a 12-year-old convinced her father to install a drum to catch rainwater from their roof. In another village, a group of women pledged to report leaking handpumps. In yet another, children began correcting neighbours for keeping taps running while brushing.
“We don’t save water for today — we harvest it for the child who’ll thirst tomorrow.”
At Aashray Samiti, we don’t just focus on where water is lost. We focus on where understanding was never planted. Once a family sees how many litres go in one bath, they begin to change. When they measure the overflow from a handpump, they start respecting the drop.
This campaign is about shifting water from “someone else’s problem” to “our everyday responsibility.” It’s not a project. It’s a mindset.
We believe water will stay only if our attention stays with it.
And attention is built — boond boond se.
So we go, village to village, story by story — not as experts, but as reminders. Of a time when every matka was sacred. When every drop had a name.