Background: Madurai Symposium 2025

Madurai Symposium is a “Unique” Knowledge Mart inviting Development Stakeholders and aspirants to showcase and appreciate the success stories in development arena. DHAN Foundation has hosted 11 Symposiums in Madurai so far involving many stakeholders with diversity in development: Community Organizations, Civil societies / NGOs, Government, Banks, Insurance Companies, CSR Foundations, Donors, Philanthropists and Academia. The deliberations have envisaged sharing knowledge & experience, shaping future actions, contributing to policy and practice change and developing mechanisms to work collectively. The “Twelfth Edition” of Madurai Symposium is being organized at Madurai from September 17-21, 2025. Every Symposium is hosted on advancing a specific development theme and this symposium theme is “Enabling Development Partnership”. Vayalgam programme has conducted seven knowledge events on each day with different stakeholders. The knowledge synthesis of the events are consolidated and brought out as this article as “Development Partnership – The Vayalagam Way”.

Need for Sustainable Development Partnerships in the Era of Water Crisis

Water as a common-pool resource. Water is a finite resource used by multiple people, making it challenging to manage sustainably without clear ownership. Integration ensures that water management addresses these complexities and avoids overuse or degradation. Water is viewed as a collective resource, accessible to many without clear ownership, requiring shared responsibility for its sustainable use and preservation. This involves incorporating traditional ecological knowledge and ancestral practices with modern scientific understanding to develop holistic water management strategies. India stands at a critical juncture in its water trajectory. With more than 600 million people already living under high to extreme water stress, and projections suggesting that demand will nearly double availability by 2030, the crisis has direct consequences for livelihoods, food security, and ecological stability. Conventional state- and market-driven approaches, often projectised and fragmented, have proven inadequate to address this systemic challenge. In such a context, the Vayalagam Way, pioneered by DHAN Foundation, emerges not merely as a development project but as a philosophy of partnership rooted in collective action, commons governance, and mutuality. It provides an indigenous, practice-based response to the global debates on sustainability, resilience, and inclusive growth. (NITI Aayog, 2019; UNDP, 2015). There are several systemic flaws that continue to undermine water governance. Small, rain-fed tanks, which were once the lifeline of villages, now receive scant attention compared to their larger, Public Works Department-managed counterparts. Maintenance remains sporadic and poorly coordinated, in part due to frequent administrative transfers and weak enforcement against encroachment. India’s water and land commons—tanks, ponds, rivers, forests, and pastures—once sustained rural livelihoods and cultural traditions. Knowledge exchange faces serious gaps. Stakeholders often lack understanding of the hydrology of traditional systems, and awareness of entitlement schemes is low. Academic research rarely reaches marginal farmers, while community-driven conservation successes are insufficiently documented and shared. Digital platforms remain underused, limiting visibility and learning. The erosion of traditional governance systems, like kudimaramath and Neerkattis, coupled with limited awareness of holistic conservation approaches, has weakened community resilience Further compounding the problem is the lack of water literacy, which limits community participation, while the over-reliance on groundwater has left tanks underutilized despite their proven potential. Over time, population growth, urbanization, weak rights enforcement, and encroachments have led to their decline.

Climate change, with erratic rainfall, droughts, and floods, has further intensified the vulnerabilities of smallholders and landless families.

Building Sustainable Partnership: The Vayalagam Way

Evolution in Components: From Conventional to the CAUSE framework

At its core, the Vayalagam Way recognises water bodies—tanks, ponds, ooranis, and cascades—not merely as hydraulic structures but as socio-ecological commons. Their decline represents not only the loss of irrigation potential but also the erosion of community cohesion, cultural practices, and ecological balance. DHAN Foundation revived the ethic of mutuality by mobilising small and marginal farmers into Vayalagams (tank user associations), where savings, co-investment, and collective labour became instruments of empowerment. The philosophy of commons governance, demonstrating how locally evolved rules, nested institutions, and trust-based reciprocities outperform top-down management is an unique model. Development here is relational rather than transactional: it is about restoring dignity, building resilience, and ensuring equity. The programme initial actions are

• Institutional setup: facilitates regular meetings, interactions with resource persons, and continuous capacity building.
• Handholding support: provided by federations, enabling farmers to adopt new technologies confidently in the initial stages.
• Facilitation of entitlements: from government departments supports technology adoption.
• Agricultural Finance Groups: within federations provide access to credit needed for acquiring and adopting new technologies.
• Collaboration with resource institutions: Farmers’ federations partner with resource institutions to channelise technologies to the farmers.

Then the shift towards the wholistic CAUSE framework. The CAUSE (Conservation, Agriculture, Usufruct rights, SCRIPT, Encroachment eviction) framework provides a holistic solution. Community-led renovation of tanks, ooranis, wells, and check dams restores ecosystems, with partnerships among government, CSR agencies, and communities ensuring quality and sustainability. Agricultural initiatives — soil and water conservation, organic farming, horticulture, livestock, and collective marketing — make farming climate-resilient and profitable. Usufruct sharing models ensure equitable benefits for landless households, while SCRIPT (savings, credit, remittances, insurance, pensions, digital transactions) strengthens financial resilience. Encroachment eviction, backed by panchayats and legal frameworks, protects commons and governance.

Evolution of Partnerships: From Projects to Institutional Partnership

The evolution of the Vayalagam model reflects a shift from fragmented projects to basin-wide programmes and finally to a people’s movement. In the early 1990s, DHAN Foundation began with small-scale tank renovation projects in Tamil Nadu. By 2011, in partnership with Key CSR partners like Axis Bank Foundation, it launched a water-centric programme in various river basins, saturating entire cascades of tanks. CSR funds served as catalytic capital, unlocking government investments under MGNREGS, watershed missions, and Jal Jeevan schemes. Over time, nested institutional structures evolved: tank-level Vayalagams, cascade associations, block federations, and Farmer Producer Organisations. This federated design embodies the principle of subsidiarity—decisions are taken at the closest appropriate level—while enabling scale. It transforms isolated interventions into durable institutions. To scale and sustain these community-led models, strong development partnerships are essential. Governments, NGOs, academic institutions, bankers, insurance companies, private sector actors like CSR can work together with local communities to pool resources, technology, and policy support. Partnerships help bridge the gap between traditional knowledge and modern science, ensuring water commons are restored and managed for long-term sustainability. By mainstreaming such collaborative approaches, we can create a development pathway where water security, livelihoods, and ecological balance reinforce one another, making communities not just beneficiaries but leaders in shaping their water future.

Practices of Partnership in Action

The Vayalagam Way rests on diverse partnerships that converge on people’s institutions:

• Farmers contribute up to 25% of renovation costs, fostering ownership and accountability.
• Panchayats enter usufruct agreements, enabling fishery rights, tree plantations, and revenue sharing.
• Government schemes provide large-scale financial and technical support, especially under MGNREGS.
• Banks facilitate Agricultural Finance Groups and extend credit, while mutual insurance schemes minimise risk.
• Research institutions and Krishi Vigyan Kendras introduce innovations—GIS mapping, System of Rice Intensification, organic practices—ensuring that technology reaches smallholders.

Unlike conventional Public–Private Partnerships (PPP), which are often contractual and infrastructure-centric, this is a Public–Private–Community Partnership, relational in nature and centred on commons stewardship. (Pretty, 2003).

Impact

The outcomes of this approach are both quantitative and qualitative. Over 6,000 water bodies have been restored across 25 basins, enhancing irrigation, drinking water, and groundwater recharge.

An example of Development partnership with Axis Bank Foundation in Pambar basin: “In 13 years, the DHAN–ABF partnership has restored 2,379 irrigation tanks across 100 cascades, creating an additional 6.51 billion litres of storage. Alongside, 2,175 AFGs mobilised ₹33.46 crore in community savings and facilitated ₹124 crore in credit. Convergence with government schemes like MGNREGS enabled renovation of 603 waterbodies and wage employment. Agriculture was further strengthened through quality seeds, organic inputs, and diversification into fisheries, livestock, and orchards.”

Pambar experience offers a blueprint for sustainable basin-level governance. It demonstrates the need to move beyond fragmented, sectoral projects toward programmatic investments anchored in community-led institutions. Similar to this, Vayalgam programme has worked with various partners and renovated various waterbodies and impacted poor farmers.

Another example of partnership with panchayat institutions “Through 49 usufruct agreements, panchayats have partnered with Vayalagams to promote tree plantation, fish rearing, and equitable sharing of profit. Nearly 7,200 Vayalagams have secured NoCs and approvals from panchayats, ensuring transparent management of tanks and other commons.”

There are various cases of impact created through Vayalgam interventions. The deeper impact lies in the revival of institutions: women chairing meetings, farmers negotiating with banks, neerkattis regaining relevance, and communities re-establishing cultural bonds with their water bodies. The poverty eradication efforts of DHAN Vayalagam Tank Foundation (DVTF) began with the renovation of traditional water resources and evolved into federation-based collectives, including the Farmer Producer Organisation (Jevidam). Over the past three decades, strategic partnerships with government agencies, banks, CSR entities, and research institutions have enabled 1.17 lakh farmers to graduate out of poverty. A significant share of this transformation is attributed to the revival of defunct traditional water bodies. Currently, 4.5 lakh families, primarily small and marginal farmers, are organised under Vayalagam institutions and benefit from Vayalagam programme

Lessons for Development Theory and Policy

The model resonates with contemporary discourses on resilience, where adaptive, self-governing institutions are seen as the backbone of sustainable ecosystems. (World Bank, 2006). The Vayalagam Way offers key lessons that enrich both practice and theory of development partnerships:

• Institutions First: People’s organisations must anchor development, not projects.
• Co-Investment Builds Ownership: Even the poorest can and must contribute to ensure accountability.
• Convergence Multiplies Impact: CSR, state schemes, and community resources together achieve saturation.
• Holistic Livelihood Integration: Water restoration must be linked with credit, markets, and social security to graduate families out of poverty.
• Grassroot Innovations: The technologies, and the new innovations, pilots and studies by academia must converge and help the farmers at grassroots as affordable and scalable models.

India’s water crisis is daunting, but the Vayalagam Way demonstrates a viable pathway. It shows how long-term, community led partnerships can revive degraded commons, empower marginalised farmers, and foster rural prosperity. By moving beyond simple demand driven, it redefines development partnerships as processes of community centric holistic development approach enabling them to move out of poverty. The Vayalagam experience calls for embedding such partnership models into national water policy, CSR strategies, and academic discourse. Ultimately, it affirms that when communities rise as custodians of commons, development becomes not a project but a shared journey towards dignity, equity, and sustainability.

Declarations of Madurai Symposium 2025

A. Declarations on partnership building through Vayalagam Mutual Movement for mainstreaming water

• It is resolved that the local community institutions are to be recognized and strengthened as primary custodians of water commons, promoting inclusivity and sustained participation for water conservation and management.
• It is resolved to foster greater integration among Kalanjiam federations, Vayalagam Mutual Movement, government schemes, and other stakeholders, including banks, CSR entities, NGOs, and research institutions, to pool resources and knowledge for maximising the impact.
• It is resolved that the water literacy initiatives are to be expanded at the grassroots level to empower communities with the knowledge and tools needed for effective water conservation and sustainable management.
• It is resolved to encourage long-term investments from CSR funds, government, and donor agencies focused on sustainability rather than short-term project cycles, ensuring the resilience and continuity of community-led water conservation institutions.
• It is resolved to promote the restoration of traditional water bodies (tanks, ponds, irrigation structures), alongside the adoption of modern technologies such as rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, GIS mapping, and climate-smart practices, to enhance water security and environmental health.
• It is resolved that the Vayalagam Mutual Movement would advocate for formal recognition of water federations as key partners in water governance and for supportive policies that enable community-led water resource management at local and national levels.
• It is resolved that the Vayalagam Mutual Movement would commit to addressing issues like encroachment, depletion of groundwater, and climate variability through coordinated action and community vigilance.
• It is resolved that the Vayalagam Mutual Movement would pursue replicable best practices and knowledge sharing to scale up water conservation models across regions.

B. Declarations on partnership building for urban water bodies restoration through CURE units

• It is resolved that the revival of urban water commons must be driven by the community institutions such as Vayalagam associations wherein the contractor-led models will be replaced by participatory approaches envisaging the local communities as custodians and co-creators of their urban waterbodies.
• The forum declares that the effective partnerships built among local communities, government bodies, corporates, technical agencies, and citizen forums are seen as the foundation for restoring urban water and they should work with clear roles and responsibilities guided by the district-level water body committees and legal frameworks.
• It is resolved that the water body revival should prioritise hydrological boundaries over administrative limits, with a focus on restoring cascades (networks of tanks and ponds) and improving water quality, biodiversity, and flood absorption capacity, rather than cosmetic beautification.
• It is resolved that the integration of technologies like GIS, SAR, NDVI, and DGPS surveys with traditional community knowledge and practices should get high priority to ensure scientific accuracy, transparency, and scalability.
• The forum declares that the governments and corporates to institutionalise long-term financial and policy support for urban water commons restoration and facilitate CSR and public platforms to prioritise sustainable, community-led models along with clear accountability for long-term maintenance and water quality management.

C. Declarations on partnership building for Livelihoods advancement through DVTF interventions

• It is resolved that the small and marginal farming families are to get access with latest technologies and advisory platforms to augment farm production, productivity, and income in tank-fed agriculture facilitated through multiple partnership products.
• It is resolved that the partnerships to provide top priority for organic and integrated farm practices envisaging sustainable conservation of soil and water in order to foster food security, improved soil health, and income stability by keeping crop diversity as a key approach.
• It is resolved that the small millet farming to be revived as a climate-resilient, nutritious, and low-cost farming choice wherein the state governments are expected to launch special mission along with series of schemes and financial facilitation in convergence with community institutions.
• It is resolved that the livelihood planning would be made mandatory across all the partnership models wherein the classification of member categories and their livelihoods needs to get significant attention.
• It is resolved that the skill development platforms and partnership are to be expanded for strengthening the agriculture, allied, and alternative livelihoods wherein the entire members are envisaged to avail equal opportunity towards skill upgradation.

D. Declarations on partnership graduation in Pambar River Basin towards saturation and sustainability

• It is resolved that the saturation of Vayalagam in Pambar river basin to get systematized through cascade approach wherein the Vayalagam institutions at village, cascade, block and sub-basin level to ensure that waterbodies-based watershed development takes place across entire geographical context.
• It is resolved that the Vayalagam federations, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), SUHAM and Mutual Collectives in Pambar river basin to achieve self-sustainability through expanding specialized social capital, endowment funds, credit linkages, and diversified livelihoods.
• It is resolved that the inclusive and equitable development in Pambar river basin would be scaled up by prioritizing landless, women, youth, and marginalized groups and ensure every family to avail multiple services aiming at holistic development.
• It is resolved that the resilience building would be embedded as a core component across entire Vayalagam institutions in Pambar river basin by promoting climate-smart agriculture, orchard development, integrating green technologies, green river and carbon-sequestration initiatives.
• It is resolved that the partnership journey so far in Pambar region to get consolidated, documented and disseminated in the form of best practices, innovations, success stories and showcased through series of platforms aiming at partnership expansion besides graduating the existing partnership.
• It is resolved that the collaborative endeavours across DHAN Collective institutions would be expanded for mainstreaming water by emphasizing water-linked livelihoods, water governance, collective and integrated basin development keeping water as central and unifying theme.
• It is resolved that the new line of partnership strategies and platforms would be evolved aiming at localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and position the Pambar river basin as a model one in achieving universal goals.

References

DHAN Foundation (2023). Vayalagam Tankfed Development Programme. Available at: https://dhan.org

DHAN Vayalagam Tank Foundation (DVTF) Reports (2010–2024). Internal documentation and impact assessments.

Elinor Ostrom (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.

Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press.NITI Aayog (2019). Composite Water Management Index. Government of India.

NITI Aayog (2019). Composite Water Management Index. Government of India.

UNDP (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations.

Axis Bank Foundation & DHAN Foundation (2021). A Decade of Partnership: Water-Centric Poverty Eradication in the Pambar Basin.

World Bank (2006). India: Water Supply and Sanitation - Bridging the Gap Between Infrastructure and Service. Washington, DC.

Pretty, J. (2003). Social Capital and the Collective Management of Resources. Science, 302(5652), 1912–1914.