| Sumario: | Surajpura, Rajasthan: The villagers of Surajpura in Rajasthan have built a wall: a 15-feet mud bulwark that snakes through vast barren land for nearly a mile, with an equally long trench dug painstakingly beneath it. The soil even today appears loose but the wall passed its strength test last year when it arrested rainwater runoffs, and the trench channelled the water to parched farms in the drought-prone region, reviving them for the first time in over two decades.
For the 650 residents of this village in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, who toiled on the wall for six months in 2022, it is nothing short of an architectural marvel. For climate advocates, it’s a case study in climate resilience powered by an Indian social welfare policy, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). One of the world’s biggest job programmes, climate activists are increasingly citing MGNREGA’s role in building water security in villages amid growing climate uncertainties.
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