The Better India · 4 days ago

How Ias Officer Prathap M Converted 1,200 Dry Borewells Into Rainwater Harvesting Structures in Tiruvallur

When borewells across Tiruvallur district ran dry, most saw them as monuments to a failing water table-but IAS officer Prathap M, who grew up in a farming family where water was "measured carefully, season by season," recognized them as something else entirely. His administration transformed over 1,200 abandoned borewells into recharge points, redirecting monsoon rainwater back into depleted aquifers instead of letting it rush through drains and disappear. Within one season, groundwater levels rose five to ten feet in several areas, reviving wells and hand pumps that villages had given up on. The intervention required no expensive technology, only a willingness to see possibility in what others had already abandoned-a quiet reminder that "a dry borewell can remain a symbol of depletion, or it can become an entry point for rainwater to return underground."