Rainwater harvesting - a tool for making friends with your neighbours

About late 1995 when we shifted to the present colony we live in called East of Kailash in New Delhi, we were the only people in our lane who didn't use a hose pipe to wash our cars and strangely enough the only guys to actually plant fruit, nectar, and shade giving trees OUTSIDE our house in the service lane as well as on the main road median. This created quite a few ripples in our neighbourhood. Interesting reasons people came up with to cut beautiful trees down.

1. The roots are getting into the foundations of our house
2. The tree gives too much shade in the winter
3. The birds who eat the fruuit off this tree, dirty the area
4. When it rains these trees are dangerous as their branches will break and harm someone.
5. The tree is always shedding leaves it makes my garden and courtyard messy
6. Children from the nearby colony come to steal the fruit, so cut it down
7. It attracts street hawkers and passerbys to rest underneath

These are just an example of the kind of arguements one faced every single day. Till one day my mom decided to convert the dumpyard across the street into a green belt. We had to buy water tankers every single day to water the plants because we had no municipal water supply even at home. Every single day people saw my mother watering the trees in the late afternoon with a watering can. Now all the people in our lane (and its mostly the women) have taken the responsibility to water and take care of the plants as well as leave water in ghadas (earthern ware water containers) outside for people passing by.

Another thing that we did right in the beginning to stop rain water runoff was too put pvc pipes of 20 feet each at an interval of 6 feet into the drains. The rain water goes straight to the roots of the trees and the road in front of our house no longer gets blocked when it rains.

Now about 20 housewives in the colony are represented in the Residents Welfare Association. These are one amazing bunch of women, they've scared off cops, Municipal Corporation (MCD) Officials, and the local counsellor all of whom wanted to make the green belt a MCD parking area. These trees are now like a platform for these women to get their voices heard.

Another thing we got two households to implement was not to buy a front loading washing machine but to buy a top loading one. This way atleast one has control over the amount of water wasted. We fill the machine manually with water and when the first bit of water comes out of the machine it is collected in a large drum and used to swob the floors in the house.