Weekend volunteer work links rainwater conservation and village libraries in Telangana
Source follow-up: November 12, 2026
The published report's account gives a more detailed picture of the weekend work: while posted in Mumbai, the officer travelled about 600 kilometres to the Narayankhed area, leaving on Friday night, working with villagers over the weekend and returning for Monday's job. An environmental volunteer told the the published report that this continued for eight weekends in April and May. The report says the officer has since been transferred to Hyderabad, so the Mumbai journey should not be read as his current weekly commute.
Residents and organisers described six large ponds across Peerlathanda, Chitrathanda, Poosalapadu and Mukthapur. They said the work helped provide water for livestock and that some borewells began yielding water. Those are local observations, not an independent groundwater study. Villagers also asked for small check dams. The account traces the volunteer partnership to tree-planting work involving young people in 2019, and describes the officer helping at night as well as during the day.
The officer's father told the published report that 32 libraries had been created and that students were using them to read. He said the projects operate through the Sarvodaya Grama Seva Foundation with support from friends, fellow officers and villagers. He stressed that the work was collective rather than his son's alone. The the published report said departmental rules prevented a direct interview with the officer. The library total is therefore an attributed source figure, not a newly audited count by this publication.
The family credited encouragement from retired income-tax official R.K. Paliwal. He described earlier work with women in self-help groups in Gonguluru, including a business making products such as oil and soap, and the wider effort to give rural students access to books. The source places the work alongside earlier projects in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and describes progress observed in 2023-24 after his Hyderabad posting in 2018-20. These historical accounts explain the organisers' aims; they are not a current census of every project or a guarantee that all water problems have been solved.
Community efforts to retain rainwater in Telangana's Narayankhed area are drawing attention to the role of sustained volunteer work. The published report's November 11 report describes how income-tax officer P. Sudhakar Naik travelled from Mumbai during weekends to work with residents on water-conservation projects. It is an account of an ongoing local initiative, not the announcement of a new statewide programme.
Earlier reporting by Telangana Today described residents, environmentalist Paladugu Gnaneshwar and local authorities working together on community soak pits and ponds. The aim was to keep rainfall from running off quickly and help it enter the ground. The June report said the team wanted to study the structures' performance after the monsoon before expanding the approach. That distinction matters: constructing a pond does not by itself establish a measured improvement in groundwater across a region.
The Sarvodaya Grama Seva Foundation's own project pages describe water-conservation work with the Gonguluru gram panchayat and a separate programme to develop libraries in government schools. Its library model depends on cooperation from schools, village councils and residents. These accounts place local participation alongside the officer's contribution, rather than treating village development as one person's work alone.
The published report's follow-up also records residents asking for additional small check dams. Water storage and access to books address different needs, but both projects depend on people maintaining shared facilities after the initial work. The available accounts describe local experience and the organisers' plans; they do not provide a region-wide water audit or a current independently verified total for all the foundation's projects.