A window into the future of India’s rural stepwells: perspectives from Gujarat

India’s rural stepwells (or vavs, baolis or jhalaras) mark past relationships between communities and local water supply. Today, many are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India as historical sites of heritage. But, in the face of modern-day challenges, this second blog in a two-part series asks, what future lies ahead for these water sources with their intricate architecture, and for their local rural communities? To find out, I went to Adalaj Ni Vav near to Ahmedabad, Gujarat in early 2023.

Gujarat’s rural vavs: under threat from competing demands

More than just a water point, Adalaj Ni Vav is steeped in history with a story of love and tragedy. Yet, as nearby Adalaj village expands to meet the demands of this tourist hotspot, changing surroundings and competing priorities bring new challenges for the future conservation of this stepwell, and others like it. Buses arriving with tourists lack drop off spots. I saw the congestion on the roads leading to the well in the absence of an auto rickshaw stand, with vehicles, pedestrians and street vendors fighting for space.

The water body in the stepwell is also under threat. Local women no longer climb down Adalaj’s steps to collect water. Over time, the water has been polluted due to the influx of visitors dumping plastic into it, contaminating it, and leaving it stagnated, and no longer fit for use[i]. The Urban Management Centre [ii]’s work with the jhalaras of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, has identified challenges of overflowing and flooding during monsoon seasons. As piped water supply reaches every household, water is not collected from the stepwells and they stand neglected. This is despite them being part of a network of natural and artificial reservoirs where upstream water bodies collect the water and transfer it downstream. Lessons can be taken from this work in India’s cities to adopt a renewal approach for the adaptive re-use of rural stepwells such as Adalaj Ni Vav and others.

Sustaining Gujarat’s vavs

At present, there is significant focus on the maintenance and restoration of the sculptural elements of Adalaj Ni Vav, through protective guards that stop the many visitors from directly interacting with the structure, and vigilant caretakers ensuring their upkeep. Coverings over the octagonal well demonstrates the efforts being taken to prevent the water being contaminated by visitors dropping waste from outside the structure into the well.

Covering at the top of the structure to protect the well (Photo: Amita Bhakta)

Protecting and sustaining Gujarat’s vavs for the future also requires interventions from external organisations. Aside from the protection granted for Adalaj by the Archaeological Survey of India, it comes under nearby Ahmedabad’s recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Gujarat’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums has been pivotal in efforts to clean the stored water in the state’s vavs, and has a role to play in supporting local authorities to conserve stepwells such as Adalaj for the longer term. As heritage sites, there remains a challenging balance to strike in the longer term. Whilst creating a ‘tourism zone’ through public-private partnerships can generate much needed revenue for the local economy, the re-use of the vav as an attraction should not come at a cost of further harm to the vav from pollution. Ensuring public awareness of the need to conserve vavs as markers of India’s water history is key.

Sustaining vavs for the future involves curation. Stepwells could be turned into ‘living’ water ‘museums’ to teach future generations about the importance of water security as climate change takes hold in India. Converting stepwells to water museums can create awareness of the rich history and the role that Adalaj and other vavs played in supplying water, acting as community hubs, and providing livelihoods for well-digging artisans in the past.

Rural stepwells of the past could inspire engineers and architects of today. As we grapple with the challenges of energy security, we should look to vavs for lessons on integrating light and natural ventilation into buildings of the modern era.

Adaptive reuse of rural vavs can be done creatively. The magnificent architecture that strikes tourists as they descend towards the pool of water can provide a temporary backdrop for outdoor concerts and art exhibitions. Water festivals at stepwells, which can provide exhibition spaces, can incorporate traditional music and stories of their rich past, to educate younger generations about their historical roots and recognise the cultural significance of stepwells for their ancestors.

Looking ahead

Gujarat’s rural stepwells may no longer fulfill their traditional purpose of supplying water, but there is no need to consign these beautiful structures to the past. Let’s look forwards towards routes to celebrate and keep India’s rural water history alive. It’s time we worked together to ensure stepwells continue to play a role in our lives in creative ways.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to my friend, Mona Iyer, for facilitating this field visit, and to Mahesh Popat for his brilliant support in the field. Thank you to the secretariat for their moral support for this work and to Temple Oraeki for reviewing drafts of this blog.

About the author: Amita Bhakta is a freelance consultant and co-lead for the leave no-one behind theme at the Rural Water Supply Network. She has specialised in looking at hidden issues to achieve equity and inclusion in WASH and has a keen interest in rural water heritage in India.

Amita Bhakta at Adalaj Ni Vav, Gujarat, India

Photo credits: Amita Bhakta.

[i] Srivapathy, U. and Salasha T. 2021. Adalaj Stepwell: A Magical Resonance of Architectural Ingenuity. Athens Journal of Architecture – Volume 7, Issue 2 pp. 275-304

[ii] Anurag Anthony, Urban Management Centre, personal communication, March 2023

Measuring water point functionality is trickier than you’d think. Here’s how we tried to make it more reliable in Uganda.

If you measure something, how do you know that someone else would get the same result? This is a fundamental question in many fields including medicine and psychology, but it is rarely considered in rural water supply.

This is a guest blog by Daniel W. Smith, a Water & Sanitation Advisor at the Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene at USAID in Washington, DC.

Photo: A handpump mechanic performs preventive maintenance in Uganda
(Photo: Daniel W. Smith)

This problem became painfully apparent during a recent study of professionalizing handpump maintenance in Uganda conducted by the Program for Water, Health, and Development at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and International Lifeline Fund. Our data collection team had a seemingly straightforward instruction: Count a handpump as functional if it provides water. But different data collectors interpreted the instruction differently. Some would count a handpump as functional even if it took a long time to get a little water. Others counted handpumps in a similar condition as nonfunctional. We needed a clearer, more reliable procedure to ensure that handpump functionality measured by different people would be comparable.

Learning from Gujarat’s past relationship with rural water through its stepwells

India: home to almost a fifth of the global population. Yet, its rural communities continue to face challenges in accessing water, due to overextraction depleting groundwater, poor recharge, and increased demand for water as industries expand and the rural economy grows. Ensuring water security for the future requires us to learn from the past. Across India, rural populations once met their water needs through ingenious feats of architecture in the form of stepwells (or baolis or vavs). I went to visit Adalaj Ni Vav (Rudabai Stepwell), on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat in February 2023. In this two-part blog series, I reflect on the lessons we can learn about the significance of stepwells for India from past uses of Adalaj (part 1) and look ahead the role that stepwells could play in the future (part 2).

What are stepwells?

Stepwells are linear buildings. Steps lead down to landings with pavilions that house two shrines, and columns which make them resemble a room, followed by more steps, until reaching a cylindrical well at the bottom. The roof of one room becomes the floor of the pavilion above. Gujarat’s stepwells range from 60 to 80-feet in depth, with their upper-most landings receiving the most light, screened by walls known as Jalees to provide shade. Stepwell corridors are open to the sky except where it enters a pavilion. The terraces of stepwells are typically marked by noises and splashes as women beat clothes and scour pots, animals drink and children run around. The stepwells are referred to by landmarks (e.g. station vav), goddesses (e.g. Surya Kundi), patrons (e.g. queen) or place (e.g. Adalaj)[i].

Shrine in a pavillion at Adalaj (Photo: Amita Bhakta)

Adalaj Ni Vav: a well with a tragic tale

Adalaj Ni Vav is a 75.3-metre-long stepwell laid out in a north-south direction. On my visit, I made my way down one of the three flights of steps arranged in a cross to enter the vav, which are attached to the main stepped corridor leading to the well at the bottom, with an octagonal opening at the top and a pavilion resting on 16 pillars with 4 built-in shrines. The vav was built between 1498-1505 by Sultan Mahmud Begada in honour of Queen Rudrarani, who he promised to marry after it was completed. When the vav was completed, Rudrarani committed suicide by jumping in to the well. Through his grief, the Sultan killed those who built it to prevent another similar vav from being built, who are buried in the graves in the nearby garden ⁱ.

Learning from Gujarat’s past links to Adalaj

Adalaj Ni Vav was once a hub for the local community until the British Raj put it and many other vavs into disuse, deeming it unhygienic and introducing taps, pumps and borewells. Rainwater harvesting enabled the community to wash their clothes and feed their animals. Travellers used the vav, built along trade routes to support India’s economic development, as a resting site[ii].

Whilst it is no longer used as a water point, Adalaj’s long-standing spiritual connections to local people can help to sustain the cultural legacy of the stepwell. There is scope to pave a way for the community to continue its traditional purpose as a place of worship. The shrine on the outer wall has long been used and maintained by local Brahmin women to the present day, who worship local goddesses for fertility, health, and family prosperity.

But, it is not just people who stand to benefit from lessons from Adalaj’s past. Birds and animals used to be attracted to the vav as a cool spot, drawn in by food left over from festivals. In an era of global challenges such as climate change, it is important to recognise that the stepwell was once a place where rich biodiversity could flourish.

Moving forward: bridging the history of Gujarat’s stepwells to the future

The history of Gujarat’s rural stepwells reflects the cultural significance they held in the past, and show a need to recognise them as previous places of sustenance and of continued spiritual value. Whilst it is unlikely that Adalaj will once again serve as a water point, it can provide a place for biodiversity to flourish, and has the potential to teach and reengage local communities with their own water management systems for future preservation, particularly in these parts of Gujarat where drilling for petroleum is creating depressions in the water table. Let’s recognise the collective memory of Gujarat’s rural stepwells as historical sites of interest and work to preserve these ancient structures for the future.

Acknowledgement

Photo credits: Amita Bhakta.

References

[i] National Institute of Design (1992) Adalaj village: a course documentation Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design

[ii] Adalaj stepwell exhibition, Adalaj, India

UN Special Rapporteur – What’s next: the legacy of the UN Water Conference

Pedro Arrojo Agudo
UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation

Reposted from OHCHR

After some days of reflection, I want to share my thoughts on the UN Water Conference, which was undoubtedly a historical event for all those committed to the human rights to water and sanitation.

First, I would like to congratulate the President of the UN General Assembly and the UN Secretary-General, as well as the co-host member states, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Tajikistan. For the first time in 47 years, the UN family gathered to host a global event on water; this is in itself a positive achievement. The UN provides an important platform to discuss the fundamental human rights to water and sanitation and I welcome the decision to hold a third UN Water Conference in 2025.