The Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Smt. Vasundhara Raje has planned something more for the much talked about Mukhyamantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyaan (MJSA) of Rajasthan state. The scheme was focused on water conservation through rainwater harvesting. The scheme starts from the ground level and involves the participation of village locals, NGOs, non-resident villagers, religious communities, and also corporate houses. After completing the first phase successfully, the Raje Government now focuses on speeding up the process and enhances the benefits of rainwater harvesting by the plantation of trees alongside the water catchment structures. Such plantation will not only help in reducing the soil erosion but will also prevent the run-off of manure and fertilizer into water.
The MJSA team now aims at planting 25 lakh saplings in this procedure to increase the ground water level. Such plantation would be done around water catchment structures built under MJSA campaign. The CM also asked the official involved to make sure that the saplings are properly taken care of for them to grow and survive. For this purpose, she instructed that the saplings would receive and taken care for at least a time span of 2 years.
The plans are to do the plantation of saplings more and more before the monsoon arrives so that, the most benefit could be taken of rain water. This exercise is planned in all the 3500 selected villages, as confirmed by the Forest Department.
The mission is not only to harvest rainwater now but rather tree plantation will also benefit us by locking up the carbon and reduce the net carbon emissions. Trees enable the crops to use and reuse the groundwater more efficiently to reduce the need for irrigation. So, let’s join this campaign with our CM and plant more and more trees around so that we could have a long-term solution for the water needs of the state.
