Many years ago, on a blistering summer afternoon in Latur district, the air once carried the sound of quarrels. Villagers in Bansawargaon would gather around tanker trucks, fighting for a few buckets of water. Wells drilled down to 700 feet yielded nothing but dust.

Crops withered, livelihoods collapsed, and disputes became routine. “We had lost faith in the soil,” recalls farmer Haribhau Sarkale. “Even the earth seemed to have given up on us.”

For decades, Bansawargaon — a village of around 1,300 residents spread across 421 hectares in Chakur taluka — lived with a harsh reality familiar to much of Marathwada. Agriculture depended on erratic rainfall and poorly regulated groundwater.

When the Groundwater Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) declared its aquifers “over-exploited”, the village was barred from digging new wells. Borewells plunged to depths of 700–1,000 feet, driving over-extraction, unemployment, and social conflict. Farming shrank to rain-fed seasonal crops, migration increased, and each summer, drinking water arrived only by tanker.

The first drops of change

In 2017, a spark of hope emerged. Youth leader Nilesh Bhande was elected sarpanch and addressed the panchayat with a simple message: “Our problem is not poverty; it is water. If we solve irrigation, everything else will change.”

His conviction cut through years of resignation, and for the first time in a long while, villagers felt change was possible.

Change, however, needed money that the village did not have. Support slowly came together. The Sakal Relief Fund contributed Rs 2 lakh, Latur citizens living abroad added another Rs 2 lakh, and funds followed from the local MLA’s office and the tehsildar, Bharat Suryavanshi.

“Every rupee was like a drop of water for us,” recalls Bhande. “We knew we had to use it wisely.”

With resources in hand, villagers began reshaping their landscape. Two main irrigation canals were deepened and widened. Under the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, canals were........

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