TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Hi. My name is Sagar Dharia. I am from Pune, Maharashtra, India, and I happen to be a trustee of Vanarai organization Pune. Is a NGO which is working in thought leadership and action on soil and water conservation, sustainable agricultural practices, farm based livelihood, and ecological restoration for socioeconomic empowerment of rural India. And you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

My name is Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing.

So periodically on trust me, I know what I'm doing, we share a spotlight conversation and feature brief chats with an individual from the community about a special topic or a unique endeavor. So it's springtime in a lot of our areas where traditionally things everywhere are starting to bloom. And with melting snow and healthy rains, it also means that water is flowing freely to activate dormant soil and nurture the land so that communities and villages can thrive.

Or at least that's the idea. But in today's reality, more and more rural land is suffering at the hands of a climate in crisis. This is especially true in rural India where the cyclic pressures of growth, urbanization, social exodus to the cities, and drained resources have made yesterday's once fertile land turn into today's eroded dry deserts. So I was intrigued to learn more about one group's mission to try and bend the narrative away from that erosion to one of holistic abundance and abundance and empowerment. And it was absolutely wonderful to share some time catching up with Sagar Dharia, one of the trustees of Vanarai, an organization deeply committed to rural grassroots conservation and sustainable land restoration.

Vanarai was started nearly forty years ago by Sagara's grandfather, the late Badmavi Bhushan Mohandharia, whose vision was to bring together stakeholders and make villages more self reliant through education, watershed management, health, sanitation, and farming. Working with over 250 villages across Maharashtra and other states, Vanarai has succeeded in integrating a strong rural development strategy by rejuvenating water and soil, reviving farming practices and economies, and stimulating social change through education and community building. I have to tell you that it's an absolutely inspiring design of community activism and energy that's based on climate science, thoughtful planning, social science, and a modern strategy that doesn't ignore the challenges of rural development in a rapidly evolving India. Now ultimately, cultivating relationships and trust are at the core of this very eco conscious people movement. And so I asked Sagar why he believes that rural villages are so relevant to India's successful future.

That's actually a very beautiful question. I'd like to start with a little context. First of all, thank you for that lovely introduction, and we are honored to be a part of the show. Let's first understand how this country functions in terms of its rural landscape. For that, we must get four facts to our to to the back of the mind.

A, India receives roughly around 1,180. Say, 1,200 millimeters of rainfall a year. We are able to conserve just 6% of this rainfall that the country receives. 94% of it is gone, which brings me to my second fact. The water when it passes away, the water when it flows away, doesn't go away alone.

It carries the top fertile layer of the soil along with it, which actually causes a phenomena which is known as desertification in Marathi, Varavanti Karan. Yeah. Well, what is desertification is when lands lose their air ability or the potential to grow anything in them. Now as we speak, more than 30 of the country's land mass is undergoing this, this process of desertification. And of course, Rajasthan happens to be the most desertified state in in India, followed by Maharashtra, surprisingly.

So out of the three crore hectares of land mass, more than 43% of Maharashtra's land mass is undergoing the process of desertification. The third fact here is even today, around 70% of our population resides in rural geographies with agriculture being the base. And due to the changing landscape of climate, due to the changing landscape of heavy rapid urbanization, the youth, the next generation doesn't want to work in the fields anymore. All of them want to be in cities and towns. They are happy working at a lower pay scale, but they don't want to go to doing what their ancestors and what their DNA is actually made of.

They don't want to go there. Which is why there has been a total shift in the last couple of decades. Now what is that shift? That brings me to my fourth fact is in India, if you look at the forest cover, which stood at roughly around 33% back in the day, has now gone to less than 15%. And the last number and which is the most important number is around nineteen fifties, precisely 1951, there was a water storage to the tune of 5,500 cubic meters available per person in India.

It was projected by 2050, this number, this water store will reduce lower than 1,500 cubic meters per person in India. And the scary fact is today in 2025, this number is already lower than 1,250. So we are moving towards doomsday much faster than it was anticipated. And this is exactly what plays a big role in the operation or the ideology of Finrite. So if you ask me how rural India is could contribute in a big way to this global climate change, the answer is quite simple.

If we are to do something if we are to do something in the natural resources place, where will we go? Where a little natural resources exist. Right? Mhmm. And these natural resources today exist in the rural geographies in India.

So where people see this as a big challenge of, rapid urbanization, lack of, water conservation and soil, soil loss prevention measures, we look at it from the point from the lens of an opportunity. Because India is a land of opportunity and sunlight. And we believe that if we are able to harness every single element of natural resource that's available at the village level, at the level, at the rural level, this country will make a comeback and, contribute very positively to this global climate change challenge. So that's what we generally look at. First off, that story of these basic four facts and looking at this as an opportunity is, offers a lot of optimism and vibrancy.

And, sadly, of course, the state of many, many rural areas is fraught with just challenges. And with the opportunity that you speak of, that is often juxtaposed by the fact that so many rural villages, so many so much rural land, given those four facts, have have been neglected. You're right. What sets the tone in a way that you have this cycle that seems so hard to break, where we see the opportunity is there and yet there is also a equal apathy or neglect for these rural opportunities to really be harnessed. Why why is that cycle so?

So if you look at, the journey of India since independence, a a lot of, focus or a lot of importance is given to industrialization. And because of that, I mean, I understand that it's very important for, industrialization to happen in a very positive manner in any country for the development in terms of the GDP. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. However, if you look at the agricultural GDP and if you look at the agricultural contribution into the GDP of this country, it has been quite large. It's just that they need a little nudge.

Now if you'll I I I'd love to, correlate this with the educational and the exposure, part of point of view. So in what happens is due to lack of education and due to lack of exposure in rural geographies, at least till maybe fifteen years back before the age of Internet actually started to play a big role. People were not very very exposed to what all they could do, what all the possibilities are with, the natural resources they have in that particular region. I mean Yeah. India is a large country.

There are many agroecological zones within this country, and every ecological zone needs a different approach. So the secret is to actually identify, study, assess the needs of that ecological zone, dive deep into that particular gram panchayat so as to understand what exactly is stalling their growth or what exactly is it that's stalling their progress. So typically, we are able to boil down or narrow down to a couple of points. A, lack of soil and water conservation measures is the first. Number two, what happens is since we haven't really planned or implemented, core water conservation and soil soil loss measures into those job fees, there has been some kind of a compounded effect of apathy in these rural gram panchayas.

And when and when when Wanrai looks at these villages, we have to start from scratch. We have to first start by building, water conservation measures. What happens then, say, a village which has, a water requirement of hundred liters a day, example, or hundred liters a year. And they're able to conserve or preserve maybe 40%, we understand that, okay, here's the gap. 60 liters per year is the gap.

Now how do we harness or how do we conserve this water? So this typically happens on the surface or the ground. So either in the ground water stores or in the surface surface water stores. So that's how we first begin by removing these apotheas. Second, the biggest challenge is imagine when a person I mean, I always like to cite an example due respect to everybody, but there are a lot of beggars who beg for alms on streets in India.

And if you give a value of a bundle of cash to these people, they will not know what to do with that money because they haven't seen that kind of money ever. Same is the case with water. When you create water reserves in an area or a village that has always been deprived of it, it's very easy for farmers to slip and make nonjudicious use of that water. So that's the other challenge. We need to teach or build these individuals from within in a way that they know the modern agricultural practices.

They know how to judiciously use this water because it's gonna be it it can be valued, to the tune of gold for them in that particular geography. And when you do this, farmers in particular, they believe what they see. So more than preaching, what one does is and what the challenge has been is, there are many who teach, there are many who preach, there are very few who actually create reasons to believe in the farmer's land. And this is another challenge that has sort of hindered the progress. And lastly and most importantly, India is a little heavy on the population front.

And when a large number of population is, deprived from exposure or modern ways of trade or doing business per se, the challenge remains open in terms of market linkages. So that's a large challenge in terms of why this growth hasn't happened as much as it should have. And that's precisely what we do. We just look at the basics. We just focus on the core.

Right. Again, very, very elegantly put. With all of these different phases, whether it's education, whether it's market partnerships, whether it's investment, how do you perhaps how has Ranadae done so, with some success and even partnering with with other organizations? But how do you bend the curve and change the mindset, especially for those who are wielding levers of power or levers of policy such such that more partnerships, investments, particular culture change can happen to say that you cannot actually expand industrialization and growth and development without actually taking care of these rural communities. And yet, we don't always see those priorities happen.

So how how do you change the mindset of those who are really at the forefront of growth and development so that this can be a priority? Right. So this actually has been a large question. So since one way has been in action for the last four decades, the outlook of one way towards these challenges have kept evolving. So back in the day when my grand my grandfather started this organization, he was at the helm of affairs, even with the government.

And he was in a position to influence, get policies, focus on some neglected areas with regards to rural geographies. However, in the later years as it progressed, we realized that policies are more of talks and for policies to actually become laws in India. Specifically, it can be, a decently long span of time. And why should the people on the ground suffer for that period? Because you never know when that law is gonna get passed.

Right. So we changed our approach. What instead of looking at what we don't have, we started looking at what we have. So what we had and what we realized is a, we have some kind of expertise in terms of building or building these ideal villages, which which we call, the sustain the underlying sustainable rural development model. Yeah.

That's something that is one of our strength. And b, connect with the actual people who stay in the villages. And by connect, I mean a physical connect. Mhmm. So we thought, why not instead of, pushing for policy changes at the national level, why can't we actually start making change at the rural grass root level in a way that people can look, learn, adopt, and adapt?

So that's the kind of outlook we had, and more than the policy, we look at cultural changes or community capacity building at the grass root level. So when any organization goes into, goes in for working with these rural communities, there's a certain mindset that they have. Yeah. And to change that mindset, which has, become a part of their lifestyle, it's like breaking a bad habit, you know. It takes time, and there are many, many things, many, many layers to actually reach their subconscious.

And we have made a very beautiful module which runs throughout. So when I talk about a sustainable rural development model, it's a project that lasts anywhere from three years to six years. And we have a module where we slowly slowly look at different stakeholders in that typical rural geography and try positively influencing their mindset in a way that they're able to get back to what they're made to do, make food. You you know, one thing I wanted to ask you about that is I know that there's a quite a multifaceted and multi pronged approach where you're talking about not only just water and soil conservation, but sustainability and health and education and, again, sort of grassroots investments here. How much success have you had from empowering particularly youth and those who are not just farmers, but other village stakeholders?

How much success have you had in not only empowering those individuals and those families and those communities, but also making sure that those successes are retained and they don't, again, leave, the villages? Because, again, with that empowerment also comes that mobility. And so how tell me how, you know, that that three to six year plan has made it and even grown without losing some of that talent and some of that skill to leave the village. Let me tell you a small story. This story is of a village, a small village in the Jallna District of Maharashtra in a small town named Bazar Wahegao.

The organization started working with them in 2011. I'm citing this example because it's the latest one. Sure. 2011, when we started working with these guys, so these people had a total land this grand panchayat had a total land bank of roughly around 1,300 hectares of land. In those days, 80% of the people of that village used to go out in search of seasonal labor jobs.

The those jobs which pay you per day, 80% of the population used to go out because they had lands. They had great soil. They used to although that region receives a little less rainfall, the soil was great, but they weren't able to harness the power of this. When we started working, only more than 800 hectares of land was what do you say? It was not being developed.

It was not being, tended to. It was not being, it was not under agriculture at all. The water stores Underutilized? Absolutely underutilized. Yeah.

The water stores or the water spread was to the tune of 12 hectares. The settlement areas on which the actual village was settled was roughly around 12 hectares. And the fallow lands were, as I mentioned, around 853 hectares. Cut to 2,019 when we were actually just about wrapping the project up. The agricultural lands had gone up from 350 hectares to 890 hectares.

The water stores had gone up had no have gone up from roughly around 12 hectares to 29 hectares. The fallow lands reduced from eight fifty hectares to lower than two fifty hectares. And the outcome of all these things is the settlement areas went up from 12 hectares to 17.5 hectares. Now what had actually happened is the people who are going out in search of jobs went the farmers are super smart. They know exactly what to do when they see water.

The landscape under agriculture, there was a threefold growth in agricultural land. There was a two times increase in the water storage capacity of the village, which led the people to actually come back. And today in 2025, that village happens to be one of the highest producer of sweet lime, a Musamba, in that entire district. And we see orchards and orchards of fruits, and orchards of fruit can come only when there is a consistent supply of water. So how do you sustain this or what change do we see?

This is one story. And one has worked in more than 500 villages to date and is at different stages of success with regards to this story that I mentioned. So there are there are many villages of the past, many current villages, many villages which will be of the future. So to maintain sustainability of what we do is we love to teach. We love to empower.

We love to disseminate knowledge, which is built on knowledge that is captured right from them. We just sort of consolidate that knowledge in a way that people easily understand that. So farmers, they probably haven't read or learned in school, but they have learned about agriculture like nobody else has. No university has the kind of knowledge which the farmers have. We just sort of pitch them and match them at the right times so that they get in that get in that, positive, cyclical groove of growing more and more.

Once they see that money flowing into their homes, nothing succeeds like success. And then it's the chain reaction. You know, let me ask you a quick question. Even though I know that the answer to this question, we could spend another half an hour talking about. But, you know, there there is a direct correlation sometimes to the success, especially over this amount of time with the political climate.

And like it or not, the political climate changes much, much more rapidly sometimes than every three to six years. And so is there some secret to sustaining those gains without suffering from the constant shift of the political winds that that tend to change, you know, so quickly sometimes. So the way in which we look at it is, at Manrai, we always say, whom does Manrai belong to? Van Rae belongs to everyone. So we happen to remain in the neutral space of pure development.

Now when we go to our village, in many cases, see politics is, their job and development is ours. So when we look at development of a village, the first, in one of the first couple of months when we actually go inside the village to work with them for the next couple of years, we just have a very simple prerequisite that's required so that we can work together. When it is work, we leave politics back home. And we work for the development of our village jointly. So we typically form a in the village, which does not see political inclinations, does not see cast, creed, race, nothing at all.

We look at individuals who are driven, who are charged, and who are inspired to truly change the landscape of their village per se. And this one comprises of people who are in power, people who had been in power, people who aspire to be in power, or just random people who don't care about power. So it's a mix of everybody. And governments come and go, and we have been very fortunate enough that since Manrai has been working for a very, very long time, everybody respects the work that we do. And we we find very few challenges in terms of the politics the changing political landscape in the country.

So we are great we we are very grateful for that. Yeah. Cultivating that trust and respect, especially over a long, long time, probably feeds a lot into that. I I'm curious about the you know, you mentioned that it's a three to six year process, and culture change takes time, and education takes time, and completely shifting the framework of how a village can be sustainable and really, really self serving and empowered takes time. And and yet the growth and development of India comes at a speed sometimes that is really, really just stunning.

And particularly, when that speed is being driven by an urban wealthy ecosystem of of power. So with the notion that this is a slow moving process and yet the rest of development that's going on is is, again, happening at such a a stunning speed, how do those two kind of how can they may basically both live and mature hand in hand? Very honestly, it's tough Yeah. To balance the speed of growth in, urban places and to balance the change, the perceptual shift in rural geographies is is is a contrast and it's a tough job. So my grandfather used to tell us as kids, you know, that the job, the work one right does is like rubbing your head against a concrete wall.

You have to keep rubbing. You have to keep rubbing. But one day, you're sure to make a hole. So consistency and persistence are two values that we truly believe in at Man Ray. And although this change actually takes place in a series of years, we are able to see small, I mean, especially in a in an era of, instant gratification that, the beneficiaries want, be it a customer or a rural beneficiary.

We we play things a little smartly as well. What we do is in the very first year when we start to change a particular village, we focus on the key core problems, which are typically drinking water needs and, water for their animals. And this is typically supplied through the village water level, the the village water well. In the first year itself, we focus on this well to create a small example of how things change when we work across the ridge lines. Let me give you another story.

A small village which happens to be in the second year of its growth story. They used to they they the water after the rainfall used to finish in the month of November or December. And we targeted that particular problem. They used to feed, they used to supply water through water tankers, which is a very expensive affair. We are in the 03/15/2025 as we speak, and they have not required a single tanker of water since December, and they are confident then they'll be able to pull it off till the monsoon arrives in June.

Yeah. Every household is getting water twice a day. And when people see this, they say, okay. These guys are talking sense. And when they see result, when they see water, the entire village actually comes together as one unit saying, let's get it done.

So that's how we generally we have to creep keep creating reasons to beliefs that people believe in what you're doing. Yeah. Having that faith in something that is reliable, something that they can see, something that's tangible, certainly in a way outweigh and that's right in front of them and it's a basic human need is definitely very different than the, of course, prospectus sometimes that is laid out by larger scale, industrialization and growth and whatnot. I I'll I'll leave it with this. I mean, the the foundations that your your grandfather laid, the work that you've done, thankfully, with this background that your family, and legacy that has been laid.

On top of that, then the work you're doing as a trustee, all this entire framework for village sustainability, for water reclamation, for soil preservation, and and really restoration, and all the different things that are tentacles of that. This is all amazing work, but I I'm so curious for you, Sagar. What have you personally learned? Maybe about yourself in in this work and and how it's transformed, maybe how you live your own life. So we'll have to go back in history for that answer.

So me and my father, we have a business. We are into manufacturing of gym equipments, gymnasium equipments since 1989. And, of course, I was a part of that business. I still am, of course. Come COVID, the gyms and the swimming pools industry was one of the worst hit across the globe.

We were the first ones to shut down and the last ones to open. That's when, I had the opportunity to actually dive deep in how OneRise functions, why it does what it does, the true purpose behind its existence, and how we exactly get things done. And believe me, I was able to identify a part of my brain which I did not know I had till that period. The joy of giving, the joy of doing something for a community that has been deprived of something is something else. And Yeah.

You always have a choice. Right? You always have a choice of whether I want to do this or whether I want to do that. And it was when I saw that, when I experienced the work that was being done across different regions of, the country, I think that was a very obvious and easy choice for me to make saying, man, this is something I really want to do, and this is something that gives me joy. It gives me pleasure.

And it's it's a as you mentioned, the legacy has been here for such a long time. It has to be taken forward because the intent with which it was started holds true even today. So in spite of the business, which is of course mindset, that's happening. And I sort of give a lot of my time to learn more about how one that I can do things in a better way. So personally, if you ask me, it was a choice and I made I think I made the right one.

So Well, I know it's a choice that that you've made and that, of course, is yielding such blossoming results for so many and giving you a lot of personal joy. I hope more than anything else that people who are continuing to learn a lot more about Vanarae are also finding the same kind of joy, and the people who are really, really benefiting from all the work that the amazing work that Vanarai is doing, I hope that can continue for a long, long time. So I gotta thank you so much for joining us and really sharing more about Vanarai. You know, we wish you and Vanarai all the best. Thank you very much for having us over.

Once again, please visit Vanarai.org, and the information about their work and how to get involved is all in the show notes. Check out Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing Everywhere, and thanks to everyone for listening, subscribing, reviewing, rating, and sharing with your friends and family. If you have thoughts, suggestions, feedback, or just wanna say hello, please drop a line to info at abhaidandekar dot com. Till next time. I'm Abhay Dandekar.