Issues engaging the world - climate change, peak oil, recession, poverty, food shortages, commodity price increases etc- are discussed in very fine detail in urban parts of the world. In fact experts in these fields produce erudite papers loaded with complex numbers and many more young people are in line to gain doctorates in these subjects and swell the rank of experts.

And yet, to the urban world the adverse consequences of these crises seem quite distant. Well-paid jobs or profitable enterprises enable city folk -thus far- to buy petrofuel at whatever the price, turn on their air cons, run power generators, consume food from afar. Despite the chilling details and numbers with which articles and documentaries narrate the crises facing the world, the level of urban comfort does not reflect any awareness. There is the occasional environmentalist party bore who has the centrestage for a moment but it soon passes.

In rural India however, consequences are felt directly, often almost immediately. And they are coped with and assimilated in entirely different ways. Let me give a few instances from the last month in Chennai, India where I live.

Fierce and unseasonal rains lashed the whole state of Tamil Nadu in the middle of March. ‘Climate change’, murmurred the city in a knowing voice, as it looked out from behind safe windows. In the villages around pointReturn paddy, peanuts and watermelons awaited harvest when the unexpected rains arrived. If peanut is not harvested and sun dried, residual moisture makes them sprout. Rice stalks go limp and grains gone damp will begin to ferment. Watermelon loses esteem and prices during a cold spell quite apart from not completing their sun ripening phase.

As I drove to pointReturn, farmers everywhere were bringing out wet crops and drying them on roads and their fore yards. It is back breaking labour. These are true entrepreneurs - at least insofar as ‘risk taking’ goes- who in the absence of any hand-holding interpret climate change in their own way. “The seasons are changing”, they mutter, “these are evil times”. They may not be far off the mark.

“Information is the key,” declare learned city folk. In the week preceding the rains, the leading daily of Chennai, ‘the Hindu’ carried a small satellite map of the arriving storm in its inner pages. Its headlines belonged to -what else?- inflation, recession, politics, ideology and analysis. The state’s agricultural officers were too deep in slumber to notice the storm. Once the skies opened up however, farmers got their day of fame as cameras telecast them soaking wet beside ruined fields. Government announced ‘due’ compensation which the farmers mocked away saying it will never arrive.

A debate has been raging about biofuels. Can they replace current petrofuel networks that serve transportation systems? I will argue in a moment that it is the wrong question to ask and the wrong goal to pursue. But before that a quick round up of other tasks got done at pointReturn.

First, the embankment on the southern side of the main pond was recognised as redundant and therefore removed. The land slopes away to the north-east in the locality of the pond. Rainwater surges are restrained by ample embankments on the pond’s east and north. Once the southern embankment was removed, the large area by the pond’s side suggested itself as suitable for growing crops. This has now been partially levelled.

A 500′ site-wide trench was dug to intercept runoff from the west. The trench is 2′ wide and 4′ deep and is connected to the spillway of the main pond. It begins at the spillway in the north and runs all the way to the south-western fence of the property. This was the missing last piece of an integrated runoff control system; it covers 3.5 acres and is located within grids G1 and G2 of the site map. Runoff management success in these acres is the key to success in the rest of the site. Let me summarise it briefly.

The first factor to consider was the project’s mission: to enable 40 people living on the land to be self-sufficient in water, food, energy and cash. For these there would be spaces respectively, for water catchment and storage, for agriculture and for mixed planting of trees for biofuels and marketable produce.

It’s best here onwards to discuss details with reference to a sketch of the land. Anyone attempting similar projects would be well advised to begin with an accurate sketch of the land. A great drawing tool which I used for this purpose is Google’s SketchUp. It’s free and it’s easy to learn. I have used it a lot and most of the sketch in the next page was made using it.

I used government land survey sketches which give precise dimensions. An editable scale drawing is very useful to accurately plan and locate various intended features. A good sketch gives us pause; it’s amazing how many mistakes, that are later regretted, are made when one works without a well contemplated plan.

A fair knowledge of the slopes, features like ditches, existing trees, differing soil types within the land etc will make armchair planning a meaningful and rewarding exercise.

Chennai city and its environs -where the pointReturn site is- receive two spells of rain in an year. The South West Monsoon during July-August is the lesser one and it’s failure or weakness is not taken too seriously. The North East Monsoon between October and December is the crucial one. It determines the economy of the land. When it’s plentiful, farm produce is abundant, drinking water supply to the city is assured, money in rural households leads to greater sales of manufactured goods and politicians take note of peace and cheer and plan their moves. In addition to these two monsoons there is the odd storm or two that surprises the coast in some years, constituting either a bonus or an emergency.

Culturally too, the NE Monsoon plays an important role. It cools the weather down and lifts spirits everywhere. Beginning December, for 6 weeks Chennai has what is popularly known as ‘the Season’. Hundreds of fine-arts events take place at over fifty venues across the city. Music, dance, plays, poetry, art shows, street festivals, religious discourses are all enfolded by the Season. Christmas, Bakr Id and Pongal festivals also occur during this period. January 15 marks the start of the wedding season too and much shopping precedes it. Altogether, the monsoon is a key determinant of the wealth, mood and spirit of people. Visitors from abroad find this a congenial time to visit Chennai and several hundreds do.

Chennai’s record of rainfall shows it’s quite a blessed place. The official annual rainfall figure for Chennai is 1,300 mm, which puts it in the middle third of cities. But it is not an assured place. In some years the rainfall is well below that number and in the odd wild year, well above it. Historically, people had learnt that their water security lay in creating abundant storage capacity. It was happily a time when one of the ways a man could brag his wealth was to endow a well, a pond or a temple tank lest he should incur the silent contempt of people. So they were competitive brags as the rich usually are. The equivalent of packing one’s garage with high-end cars or celebrating family weddings as nauseous public spectacles alone was not enough then, to be called truly wealthy.

It is possible to visualise how the land may have been, say a thousand years ago. From the foothills of Vellimalai hillocks in the west, running north-south, the land must have fallen sharply forming a ravine and risen again about 300 metres away. Across the ravine, 300 m away, was a north-south chain of rocky piles of a far lower altitude than the Vellimalai range in the west. Beyond this rocky pile, the land fell to a far lesser extent, formed the plains and ran to the sea about 20 km away. This 22 km stretch is fertile almost up to the sea, blessed by deposit of minerals and organic matter carried by rainwater run off.

The following fact let’s you imagine the topography better: Over the 500 metre run of the pointReturn property from the foothills in the west to the fence in the east, the land falls 2.5m. But from there, over the next 22 km run to the sea, it drops only 30 m. That is, the gradient eases from 5m per km to 1.3m per km.

The pointReturn adventure has to do with the harsh end, closer to the hillock, where the worst erosion occurs. Ironically, what has saved it is the ravine that was. My conjecture is that over centuries this ravine has received deposits until it was filled. Rainwater then raced over the filled ravine’s sharply sloping surface, and once over the rocky lip in the east, slowed down and evenly distributed soil over a long run. Even today the run off is at two speeds - fast over the first 300m and then far slower. This leads to a happy conclusion: the ravine, until it was filled must have held water for long periods of time, encouraging organisms to multiply, die and enrich the soil. What’s below this part of the land must be very rich indeed, but unfarmed because no one has cared to arrest the annual run off.

A slender book, the “Hind Swaraj” [downloadable from here] is widely considered to be the essense of all that Gandhi sought to convey through his life and convictions. Its sub-title “Indian Home Rule” made many think of it as a political manifesto for freedom from British Rule; Gandhi exasperated them by saying it was not. It is a book where Gandhi defines Satyagraha or soul force. It is also a book where Gandhi castigates western civilisation, machinery, lawyers and violence. Not surprisingly, many consider him obscurantist. One of the participants at the retreat thought so. Does it urge us to create lucrative markets for village produce? An elderly former industrialist thought so. Does it advocate local self-sufficiency? I thought so.

At Gandhigram, Ram and Priya read us through the text and set us up elaborating our points of view. As the retreat was in concluding stages, there was consensus that Gandhi was driving at this: unless the individual was free in spirit, a ‘free’ nation is irrelevant to him. Replacing the British ruler with Indian ones of the same mindset does not constitute ‘independence’. What we needed to do was to restore the Indian value system and way of life.

I was quickening now. How might one do that? What in fact is it that we must ‘restore’? What are the difficulties in doing so? I found good expositions in the words of two participants from rural Tamil Nadu, who had not been too exposed to ‘modern’ education.

The first Mr Kumaravelu of Vilathikulam, had me spell bound as he described a way of life he experienced as a child. I paraphrase his words:

“The family’s 40 acres which I still farm- but with difficulty- has no assured irrigation- no river, no tank, no wells, let alone pumpsets. It depends entirely on rains. Yet it supported a household of 50 dependants and provided for our food and health and gave us the money for marriages and crises for several generations. How did we do it, whereas I struggle now?

“We managed because we lived as one large family. We were not all blood related; there were others and labourers too. Everyone was assured of food, clothes, shelter and those needs at times of birth, marriage, ill health, old age and death. We all worked hard, throughout the year. There were over fifty heads of cows and goats and chores of farming, land husbandry and processing produce kept us forever busy.

I had spent the last year listening to local folk and observing the water run-off paths. After choosing the location, I consulted competent people at work in watershed management. All this preparatory work was detailed in an earlier article.

1,300 cubic metres [=46,000 cFt] of earth had to be excavated, carried away and usefully disposed off. The digging called for coordinated work between a back-hoe [called locally by the popular brand name, JCB] and several tractor drawn tippers trailers. They are both paid for by the hour; the former at Rs.600 and the latter, Rs.130. The number of tippers required depends on the distance to which the earth is carted away. Some days, I needed up to 4 and some days just 1. It saves a lot of money to plan ahead carefully.

As the digging would be done over several 14-hour days, I guessed I would be kinder on my body and the earth’s resources by camping out at the site, rough thought it would be, rather than commuting daily. So I ticked off items in another shopping list that read, camp cot, stove, pots, pans, provisions and a solar lantern.

JCBs are the ubiquitous work horses, to be seen everywhere now. They are in great demand and so, not turning up on the promised date and time is a common happening. I was racing against the approaching monsoons. I wanted the pond dug, its embankments dressed and reinforced by plants and creepers before the rains arrived.

I was twice stood up by the JCB. There was nothing to do but be patient. But being patient does not slow the monsoons and that was my anxiety. Finally, I got the crew together on Oct 13 and work began.

The pointReturn site is quick to comprehend when looking at this drawing. Most of the action so far is taking place in Grid-1, and so here’s a view of it. Referring to it, the windmill has been erected and is functioning. The regular and irregular shaped water bodies are yet to be created. You can see the channel connecting the two ponds and the overflow channel from the larger. Spaces earmarked for the roads can also be seen.

Roughly midway between the two water bodies is the brick and mortar strong-room. On top of the room are four plastic water tanks of 1,000 litres capacity each. Discharge from the windmill is led up to these tanks and stored. From these, water can flow to any point on the 17 acres site. The main reason for the strong building -with a strong steel door, too!- is to safe-keep tools and materials at the site which is unmanned at night.

For living and working however one does not require a strong walled room. In fact, to enjoy the views and breezes all one needs is a canopy to shield against the sun. For pillars, I chose granite hewed by hand from hillocks in the next village. These were 7′ long; a stone mason sculpted cradles at one end to receive runners. The other options were to use brick walls, concrete columns or wood, the last, if one did not have concerns about termites which I had. I chose rough stone pillars.

These were lined up five on each side, 9′ apart. The two rows are 20′ apart, on either side and in front of the strong-room. The pillars are let in 2′ into the ground and 5′ stood above the ground. The soil here is gravely red earth. Lacking in humus it’s hard and compacted. The pillars were let into holes, a few small rocks were thrown in and the hole backfilled and tamped down: no cement or concrete was used.

When I stood first on the piece of sloping wasteland by the hillock, I fell in love with it.[…more] It challenged and beckoned me to show my commitment as a steward of nature’s regeneration process. I knew the one access from the west, was indirect, rutted, and inaccessible during the rains. I had to park my car half a kilometre away and carry water, food and tools through rock strewn path along the foot of the hillock. You can spare yourself that ordeal. So, my first advise would be that you ensure you have a motorable access before you buy land; but then if you are a romantic -and it’s useful to be one, to pursue such dreams- you will probably disregard this advise.

I have sat in the treeless terrain on many days to figure out how I would begin. It was used as a shortcut between two villages and cattle grazed whatever stunted growth there was. Two old shepherds would come and sit by me and tell me stories of the land and ask why I had bought the forsaken lot. There was a well nearby and it had water at 15′ and so I was optimistic. “Don’t go by it”, they cautioned. “There’s water because the well has not been used for more than a few weeks in its twenty years. If you began to pump, it will go dry in under an hour. You are going to struggle for water.” That was a prophetic statement.

The land where the well stands had been gifted to Vinobha Bhave as part of the Boodhan movement in the sixties. A common well was dug to serve five poor allottees and they were left to themselves after that. Without hand-holding and support for several years, such a terrain cannot be farmed. For several decades before the well was dug, the land had stood bald and flushed by annual run offs. The land needed care and restoration. In the euphoria of the first season, the allottees had sown a millet. The harvest was insignificant and their will had been broken.

The shepherds of course, had emerged out of the practices of their childhoods. Then, land shaping,water saving, native seeds and minimum input farming had been the practice. Produce was for personal consumption first, and then for cash. They have since witnessed the ‘green revolution’ replete with borewells, submersible pumps, free electricity, tractors, chemical fertilisers and pesticides and market demands dictating crop selection. So, they wondered how I was going to get a well dug that was generous enough to sustain a 5 HP pump, I’d no doubt be installing.

The saga of creating a 4,000 litre storage at about 11′ elevation took me to unexpected roads and kept me there for long. I began with four 1,000 litre plastic tanks, lying unused at my country house in Muttukkadu. They are ten years old and referred to as Sintex tanks after a popular brand. They are made of solar ultra-violet resisting HDPE [High density poly ethylene] and are reasonably sturdy. Of course mine being a decade old, had a few scars and cracks. As options go they are not bad. Though they are made of petro-plastics, their longevity could be a redeeming feature. I would not buy another today, but starting literally from scratch at pointReturn, I was happy not to get into building a masonry or ferrocement tank.

That was a wise decision, as it turned out. Being a remote, unprotected place, I needed a strong room in which to store and lock away a few essentials. I decided to build a small [100 sqFt] room made of bricks and mortar with a large enough concrete roof to mount the tanks. Therein hangs a heroic adventure consisting of daily vigil over 60 days, guessing if workers would show up, watching price of cement rise from Rs.190 a bag to Rs. 260, worrying over building materials lying about unguarded at nights, protecting cement bags from rain and seeing three contractors come one after another disappeared.

Finally, on August 20, 62 days after work began, a 100 sqFt strongRoom was ready. It cost me a sum of money too vulgar to admit. I next got ready to hoist the four plastic tanks atop the room and connecting them into a system. The idea was to lead the water from the windmill to pour into one of the four tanks. Equalising connections were to be made between these four. And a single outlet was to run to ground and have a master valve fitted. There was to be an overflow line as well. Once done, the land would have 4,000 litres on call. That would be some way towards water security.