While collective action and community ownership still form the bedrock of effective water stewardship, it is necessary to acknowledge the need for dedicated actors to play an enabling role among the community. For this purpose, it is imperative to move past the often convenient logic of voluntarism. Often the emphasis on voluntarism fails to recognize that sustainable resource management requires sustained efforts, nested within an appropriate organizational and institutional structure. Given the presence of legislative support for groundwater management in the form of the 2009 Act, it is imperative that in the near future (after the effectiveness of the jalsevaks has been established) they are incorporated into its institutional structure. The jalsevaks facilitate and support the preparation of village and cluster level Water Stewardship Plans, comprising water budgeting exercise, prescribing appropriate crop plans, water-use efficiency measure, and different water augmentation activities. Jalsevaks also make efforts to guide farmers and villagers to get support from different government schemes that are aligned with these activities and goals. The jalsevaks act as a bridge between an organisation and local communities by organising meetings, visiting farms, doing demonstrations and leading water budgeting sessions. The jal sevak’s main goal is to make every villager water literate. The demystification of hydrogeological knowledge coupled with the spirit of social entrepreneurship promoted among local youth will strengthen local knowledge on water resources and its efficient use. This has the potential to change the groundwater extraction game in existing groundwater resource use pattern. The blind race of groundwater over-extraction amongst farmers and the resultant scarcity has mainly occurred because of lack of appropriate hydrogeological knowledge, and the absence of an institutional setup that incentivizes collective action and the adoption of water-use efficiency practices. The jalsevaks may emerge as the CHANGE MAKERS in groundwater exploited pockets to make village communities water literate and more sensitive to water-use practices. Source: WOTR website Excerpts from an article written by Eshwer Kale and Karan Misquitta