It is basically a hole drilled into the ground with a piece of cheap plastic drainpipe inserted with just a few inches sticking out and a filter mesh to stop bits getting in. When the monsoon comes and floods the land, which happens because the scorched earth has an impermeable salty crust, the waters drain down the pipe and create a local aquifer for use during the dry seasons. One bhungroo can irrigate about 8 hectares.
India loses millions of hectares of arable land every year to the flood/drought phenomenon, and millions of people have been displaced because of it.
So who came up with the idea? Was it NASA, some Oxbridge dons, a leading engineerring research establishment? No. It was a couple of female smallholders in India who had had enough and wanted to do something about it.
It is simply the best, so good in fact that the UN wants to make the idea a global effort in areas suffering similar problems.
Cheap as chips, and it works.
