These villages have no water beneath the ground, and no hope in sight

The concluding part of a three-part series looks at recharge efforts in a Haryana village even as some farmers in Rajasthan neither have water nor hope

Women coming out to talk is usually not the case in most parts of Rajasthan and Haryana. So, when Prem Devi of Udaipuria village in Chomu tehsil of Jaipur district starts to speak, she is not sure whether she should sit or stand while narrating her woes.  

Just outside her courtyard is a papaya tree, with plastic wrapped around its fruits that appear big but are yet to ripen. After being prodded to sit, she narrates how two borewells in her holding of less than 0.5 hectare stopped pumping water about six years earlier. Her family now depends on rain-fed