Duel among duals?: popular science of basaltic hydrogeology in a village of Saurashtra

Just as scientific data collection forms the backbone for national-level policy making on groundwater, There is a parallel stream of popular science that is used in decision making by farmers. These two \u2018dual\u2019 streams of knowledge exist together, sometimes complement, and at others times at conflict with each other in a \u2018duel\u2019. People\u2019s knowledge on hydrology is not \u2018dying\u2019, but thriving and growing well, being refreshed continually by interfaces with science. It may be crude and unpolished, but it is localized, pervasive and relevant to needs of people. Especially in case of hard rock areas, the high hydrogeologic variability makes observation as important as theory. Such observation over decades leads to a developing science such as found in hard rock Saurashtra. It is this innate knowledge in society that has energised the action on conservation of water over the past two decades. Pockets of knowledge sources in villages are repositories of this science. Tapping such pockets, example that of well drillers, and harnessing them towards the state-organized data collection can potentially open up a new direction for localized groundwater management. The Jasdan area of Rajkot district has stirred in terms of groundwater recharge and conservation. In this area, the main actors of groundwater, apart from farmers are well drillers and related professionals of different vocations. Each professional has their own role, but as the main risk- taker, the farmer is the final decision-maker. Decisions on well drilling, location of ponds or recharge structures are made within these multiple points of knowledge sources. Innate terminology such as Kanh, Aadwan and Pad are used for describing hydrogeology, but these words have their roots in the local language. The main structures such as dykes and pore interspaces are easily located by knowledge generated through years of both, vertical and extensive horizontal drilling. Further, using these basic concepts, other applied subjects such as, well hydraulics, can be explained in these same terms. Comparison of this village hydrogeology with regional-level databases shows that there is rich information stored within these knowledge sources. The large level picture of surface lineaments available through geophysical and remote sensing studies, imparts a global picture to this localized knowledge and a potential fusing of these two can be highly potent. Perhaps, this apparent duality between formal science and people\u2019s science is just an illusion, a product of our point of observation, and both of these possibly belong to the same process of societies\u2019 program of knowledge generation. Thus, as this case study shows, instead of launching new data collection programs at village-level or persisting with the nation-wide monitoring networks for groundwater as is the current practice, it might be better to listen to the people and tap the right knowledge sources. There might be a large treasure hidden beneath just by scratching the surface.