Villagers restore a 200-year-old stepwell in Kheralia, and the water comes back

For most of the last 40 years, the stepwell at Kheralia, a village about an hour from Jodhpur, was a rubbish pit. This monsoon, for the first time in living memory for many residents, water stood 14 steps deep.

The change came from six months of shramdaan, or voluntary labour. Villagers, students and a handful of masons removed tonnes of silt, plastic and broken stone, repaired the channels that once fed rainwater into the well, and rebuilt a collapsed side wall using lime mortar.