IWMI, Sehgal Foundation Sign MoU to Advance Water Security and Rural Resilience in India

New Delhi: The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the S M Sehgal Foundation, formalizing a strategic partnership aimed at strengthening water security, climate resilience, sustainable agriculture, and rural livelihoods across India.

The agreement brings together two organizations with complementary strengths: IWMI’s technical expertise in applied research, groundwater governance, and irrigation systems, and Sehgal Foundation’s decades of grassroots experience in community engagement and field-level implementation. Officials from both organizations described the partnership as a step toward bridging the persistent gap between scientific research and practical, on-the-ground application in India’s water and agriculture sectors.

Scope of the Partnership

Under the terms of the MoU, IWMI and Sehgal Foundation have outlined four core areas of collaboration. The partnership will focus on generating actionable evidence and learning to inform water and agriculture systems, drawing on rigorous data collection and analysis to guide decision-making at multiple levels. It will also involve piloting and scaling innovative solutions for climate-resilient rural development, with an emphasis on testing approaches at the community level before expanding them more broadly.

Additionally, the collaboration will work to strengthen stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and knowledge sharing among farmers, local institutions, and policymakers, while supporting the development of evidence-based policies and practices designed to deliver lasting impact on rural water security.

By combining scientific research, systems thinking, and community-led action, the two organizations aim to develop scalable models that can be replicated across India’s diverse agro-climatic regions, many of which face mounting pressure from groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall patterns, and climate variability.

A Shared Vision for Water and Agricultural Resilience

In statements accompanying the announcement, representatives from both organizations emphasized that the partnership reflects a shared commitment to long-term, collaborative problem-solving rather than short-term project delivery. The MoU is expected to serve as a framework for joint initiatives that leverage IWMI’s research capabilities alongside Sehgal Foundation’s established networks in rural communities, allowing findings from applied research to be translated more efficiently into field-level interventions.

Both organizations expressed optimism about the collaboration’s potential to generate meaningful, lasting change, describing it as the beginning of a sustained journey of shared learning and joint innovation.

Water Security Challenges in Rural India: Background

India faces mounting challenges in water resource management, with groundwater depletion emerging as one of the most pressing concerns for agricultural sustainability. The country is the world’s largest extractor of groundwater, a resource that supports roughly 60 percent of its irrigated agriculture, according to widely cited assessments by water research institutions. In several states, particularly in the northwest, unsustainable extraction rates have led to sharply declining water tables, threatening the long-term viability of farming systems that rural livelihoods depend on.

Compounding this challenge, climate change has introduced greater unpredictability into India’s monsoon patterns, with many regions experiencing more intense but less consistent rainfall, along with prolonged dry spells. These shifts have heightened the vulnerability of smallholder farmers, who make up the vast majority of India’s agricultural workforce and often lack the resources to adapt quickly to changing water availability.

The International Water Management Institute, headquartered in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is a CGIAR research center that has worked for decades across South Asia and beyond on water management, irrigation efficiency, and groundwater governance issues. IWMI’s work in India has historically focused on generating research and policy tools to help state and local governments manage water resources more sustainably, including through initiatives on aquifer mapping, participatory groundwater management, and climate-resilient irrigation practices.

The S M Sehgal Foundation, established in 1999, has built a substantial track record in rural development across India, with particular focus on water management, agriculture, and community empowerment programmes implemented directly with farming communities in states such as Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The foundation’s approach has centered on participatory, community-driven models that engage local stakeholders in designing and implementing water and agricultural interventions suited to local conditions.

The convergence of these two organizations’ capabilities, IWMI’s research and policy expertise paired with Sehgal Foundation’s grassroots delivery mechanisms, reflects a broader trend in the development sector toward partnerships that aim to close the gap between evidence generation and practical implementation. Such collaborations have gained increasing traction as development actors recognize that research findings often fail to translate into meaningful change without strong community engagement and localized delivery systems.

The partnership between IWMI and Sehgal Foundation is expected to unfold through a series of joint programmes and pilot initiatives in the coming months, with both organizations indicating that further details on specific projects and target regions will be announced as the collaboration progresses.