News
Gram Vikas launches a network for Water Secure Gram Panchayats in Odisha
12 Dec 2025
By GV News Desk
Gram Vikas launched the Water Secure Gram Panchayats (WSGP) Network on 2 December 2025, during the Mohuda at 50 convening in Ganjam, Odisha. The network brings together eight civil society organisations working across Odisha and Jharkhand to strengthen local governance around water, planning, and community institutions. It frames water security not as a standalone intervention but as the organising principle for rural development in eastern India, and establishes the WSGP Network as a platform for place-based planning and implementation.
The launch comes at a moment when climate variability, erratic rainfall, and groundwater stress are reshaping rural life across Odisha. These shifts have widened the gap between water demand and supply, affecting domestic use, agriculture, health, and patterns of migration. In many districts, weak local governance has made it difficult for Gram Panchayats to plan for scarcity, coordinate departments, or ensure equitable access. Women, youth, and marginalised groups bear the heaviest impacts, often with the least voice in decision-making.
The WSGP Network is a response to this complexity, recognising that water security depends as much on resilient institutions and inclusive processes as on the resource itself.
A new architecture for place-based action
Anchored by Gram Vikas, the WSGP Network is a collaborative platform anchored by Gram Vikas, designed to scale the Water Secure Gram Panchayat (WSGP) programme across geographies through partnerships with grassroots organisations. The Network was formally launched with Gram Vikas and partner organisations committed to accelerating place-based action across Odisha.
The founding partner organisations bring long experience with natural resource management, livelihoods, health and nutrition, agriculture, and youth and women’s leadership. The organisations are Yuva Vikas Foundation, Area Movement for Awareness, Growth, Action and Motivation (AMAGAM), Kandhamal Zilla Sabuja Vaidya Sanghathan (KZSVS), People Awareness and Hilly Area Development (PAHAD), Samajik Seva Sadan, Janamukti Anusthan, and Social Education for Women's Awareness (SEWA).
Aims to support 1,000 Gram Panchayats across Odisha and Jharkhand by 2030, with a substantial focus on 15 districts in Odisha
The network's primary objective is to scale the WSGP approach through community-rooted organisations, focusing on strengthening local governance and community resilience. It aims to support 1,000 Gram Panchayats across Odisha and Jharkhand by 2030, with a substantial focus on 15 districts in Odisha and one district in Jharkhand. Gram Panchayats will be selected to enable strategic clustering for better political-administrative and geo-hydrological alignment. This structure is designed to function as a distributed leadership platform, keeping Gram Panchayats and communities central.
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WSGP Image
Scaling proven WSGP innovations
The launch event showcased the successful outcomes of the existing WSGP approach by Gram Vikas. Since 2021, the programme has delivered piped water to over 4.14 lakh people in 83,801 households, provided toilets and bathing rooms with running water to 87,967 households, and helped over 36,000 households improve their livelihoods. Community-led conservation has also regenerated 2,759 hectares of new tree cover.
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Liby Johnson speaks on the exploration that Gram Vikas is doing through the WSGP programme.
The WSGP Network will replicate and scale proven innovations developed through this work, which include:
- Water Passbook and Community Water Resource Management.
- Comprehensive sourceshed development.
- Hyper-local weather and crop advisories to reduce wastage and costs.
- Resource convergence using tools like VPRP (Village Poverty Reduction Plan).
- Mechanisms for water quality management to ensure access to safe drinking water.
The aim is to move these practices from isolated demonstrations to routine governance processes in Gram Panchayats. Through this shared platform, the network partners will access technical tools and policy linkages, and collectively drive water-secure, resilient development at scale.
The Mohuda Resolve
The convening culminated in the articulation of the Mohuda Resolve, a shared commitment to building resilient, water-secure rural futures. This resolve mandates efforts to empower youth, deepen local governance, democratise knowledge, and strengthen the collective spirit. Reinforcing this focus on youth, the Village Vision Saathi Hub was also launched. It is a collective of young people from Thuamul Rampur, Kalahandi, dedicated to supporting community-led development in areas such as migrant safety and strengthening MGNREGS for water security.
As Odisha faces increasing environmental and social pressures, the Water Secure Gram Panchayats Network represents an attempt to consolidate learning from the past decade into a shared architecture for future action.
Acknowledgement
The Mohuda at 50 team supported the reporting.
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