NEW DELHI: Once a community gathering space, the Bansilalpet stepwell in Secunderabad had for decades been reduced to a neighborhood dumping ground. Only a few years ago, an urban restoration initiative revived its 18th-century glory, drawing attention to India’s traditional water systems and their possible use today.
Stepwells are deep, open wells with steps, landings, and corridors descending to the water level. Popular in Indian cities between the 11th and 18th centuries, they allowed people to reach water as the level rose and fell with the seasons. During the monsoon, rainwater absorbed into the soil recharges the groundwater that supplies them.
Beyond their practical function, they also offered shelter from heat and were a place for social gatherings.
Largely forgotten under British colonial rule, which banned their use, these unique structures are now being revived with hopes that they could help mitigate India’s growing water scarcity and restore community bonds that they used to maintain.
“People used to walk down to the well and fetch water, so the connection with the community was very, very strong,” said Kalpana Ramesh, an urban designer based in Hyderabad, Secunderabad’s twin city and the capital of the southern state of Telangana.
In 2022, her nongovernmental organization, Rainwater Project, restored the Bansilalpet site.
Originally built by the Asaf Jahi dynasty — the Nizams of Hyderabad — in the early 18th century, the stepwell has since regained its status as a landmark and public space, and also become a tourist attraction.
“I wanted to bring back that vision. I wanted to transform that place in such a way that people living there should find it a nice, clean, good environment — clean water, clean air, and clean everything,” Ramesh told Arab News.
“About 8,000 people visit the well in a month. All of them drink that well water when they come there ... It’s created a beautiful micro economy.”
Active as an urban architect, she has been working on sustainability and rain harvesting for over a decade.
After the Bansilalpet site, her Rainwater Project has revived 30 other stepwells and is currently working on six more across Telangana.
“These stepwells can really fight the water crisis in India because most of the cities are heritage cities and all of these cities have stepwells. In Telangana, there are about 600 heritage stepwells,” Ramesh said.
“You don’t have to build them. They are already there.”
India is among the most water-stressed countries, where 600 million people face shortages, according to World Bank data. With climate change, parts of the country have regularly faced drought in recent years.
Besides Telangana, severe water stress has also been recorded in Maharashtra. To address it, Pune-based NGO Sevavardhi has been trying to restore stepwells in the most drought-prone areas of the western state.
It has revived 26 such sites since 2023. The first project was a stepwell in Jejuri, a small pilgrimage town some 50 km from Pune.
“It took time for us to explain to the villagers the utility of reviving stepwells ... Now, from that stepwell, every day, they use at least 100,000 liters of water from February to May,” Girija Sirshikar, Sevavardhi’s chairwoman, told Arab News.
“Revival of stepwells is very important to address the water crisis we are facing. We still don’t know what treasure we have — people in Maharashtra don’t know that the revival of stepwells is crucial for our water needs.”
It takes Sevavardhi about eight months to clean an average stepwell from waste that has accumulated over the years and restore its original function.
“Our target is to revive at least 100 stepwells in the next two to three years. That will generate good water bodies and it will also be a historical revival,” she said.
“These stepwells are very unique structures, and a lot of thought has gone into creating them.”
