Recognition
The work belongs to the villages of Jhabua. The recognition that has followed — a Padma Shri, a national water award, and press that keeps returning to the same hillsides — belongs to them too.
None of these were won in Delhi. They were won on bare hills in Jhabua, over years, by people who went back the next season and dug again.
Conferred by the President of India
Shri Mahesh Sharma, founder member and President of Shivganga, was awarded the Padma Shri for his contribution to the empowerment of tribal rural areas in Madhya Pradesh — the work of two decades spent living in Jhabua rather than visiting it.
Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India
Shivganga took first prize in the National Water Mission Awards 2019, in the category for focused attention to vulnerable areas, including over-exploited areas. Union Jal Shakti Minister Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat presented the trophy and cheque to Shri Mahesh Sharma and Shri Rajaram Katara.
Lions Club New Delhi Alaknanda
Lions Club New Delhi Alaknanda awarded Shivganga Samagra Gramvikas Parishad the Chiranji Lal Dhanuka Memorial Service Award in the Major NGO category for 2020, for its contribution in the field of rural development and tribal upliftment.
Indian Social Responsibility Network
Shivganga’s approach to holistic and sustainable village development was included in The Vision of Antyodaya, a volume of 408 practices from across India chosen for working at ground level and making a substantial difference. Shri Mahesh Sharma was present at the release.
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Jhabua Naturals, represented by Nitin Dhakad and Vijen Amlaiyar, took first position in the Enterprise category at Ipreneur ’18, organised by TISS Mumbai — two young men from the villages competing as founders rather than as beneficiaries.
Coverage in the national and regional press, in English and in Hindi. Select any clipping to read the scan at full size.
A page-one report on the bamboo enterprise led by Krishna and Lata Ninama, in which hundreds of young tribals craft and market bamboo products from their own villages instead of migrating for work.
A Shivganga Halma raised a bori bandh that brings water within reach of 45 families, one of 35 such dams targeted that season.
Karyakartas from three districts gathered at the Shivganga Gurukul in Dharampuri for a spiritual satsang.
A long interview with Padma Shri Mahesh Sharma on how the villages of Jhabua took the restoration of their own land in hand.
A one-day exposure visit under the girls’ empowerment programme took 57 girls through the district hospital, the police station, the women’s desk and the agriculture science centre.
Shivganga distributed 40,000 medical kits across 900 villages during the pandemic, working through village-level karyakartas.
The same relief effort reported at length: kits assembled and carried out to the villages by trained karyakartas through the worst of the second wave.
Photographs from the Halma and the years of digging around it — the hills these awards are actually about.
Every one of these came out of a village deciding to fix its own water, its own forest, its own livelihood. That work is still going on, and it still needs hands and support.
