Paani Foundation was set up in 2016 by the core team of the ‘Satyamev Jayate’ TV show, with the mission of making rural Maharashtra drought-free and prosperous. For decades, drought has severely affected thousands of villages in the state. However, this is not just a natural calamity. It is a crisis largely caused by humans – by poor management of water and rapid destruction of nature. If we can create such a problem, we can solve it too. At Paani Foundation, our work is geared towards creating a people’s movement to tackle drought. We mobilise, train and motivate villages to lead this fight. From 2016 to 2019, we hosted the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup, a competition in which thousands of villages participated to do the best work in water and soil conservation. Bolstered by its success, we launched the Satyamev Jayate Samruddha Gaon Spardha in 2020, a larger competition aimed at transforming rural ecology and the rural economy.
