Back in March 2020, Asok Kumar, as Mission Director, National Water Mission (NWM), started a simple campaign “Catch The Rain”, with the tagline, "Catch The Rain, where it falls, when it falls”. This has now become a national movement with the blessings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Coming to know about the  campaign, PM Modi, in his “#MannKiBaat on 28 February 2021, directed the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, RD & GR to take it up as a national program with “the whole of Government approach and people’s Participation”. PM Modi himself launched it as “Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch The Rain" campaign” on 22 March 2021, World Water day.

The original campaign “Catch The Rain” initiated in 2020 was "to nudge the states and stake-holders to create appropriate Rain Water Harvesting Structures (RWHS) suitable to the climatic conditions and sub-soil strata, with people's active participation, during the pre-monsoon and monsoon period". 
Under this campaign, drives to make check dams, water harvesting pits, rooftop RWHS etc; removal of encroachments and de-silting of tanks to increase their storage capacity; removal of obstructions in the channels which bring water to them from the catchment areas etc; repairs to step-wells and using defunct bore-wells and unused wells to put water back to aquifers etc were to be taken up with active participation of the people. Asok Kumar who then was then the Additional Secretary & Mission Director, National Water Mission (NWM) wrote DO letters to Chief Secretaries of all states (on 27 February 2020), to all District Collectors and District Magistrates (on 12 May 2020) and to heads of institutions like IIMs, IITs, Central Universities, Railways etc having large tracts of lands requesting them to take steps to "Catch The Rain".  To facilitate these activities, it was requested that “Rain Centers”  be opened in each district, at least for 4 months from May 1, 2020 in Collectorates/Municipality/GP  offices.  These "Rain Centers" were to have a dedicated mobile phone number and manned by an engineer or a person well trained in RWHS. These centers were to act as a technical guidance cells to all in district as to build appropriate RWHS suitable to the district  to catch the rain, as it falls, where it falls. 

The success of the campaign, initially confined to institutions with large land areas and individual houses due to the restrictions of 2020 Covid period, caught the attention of Prime Minister Modi,  who mentioned it in his "Mann Ki Baath" of 28-Feb-2021 and went on to announce that on 22 March, 2021, Ministry of Jal Shakti would launch the campaign "Jal Shakti Abhiyan : Catch The Rain" with the tag line "catch the rain, where it falls, when it falls". This announcement on 28 February, 2021 meant that there were just 22 days to launch the massive the countrywide campaign, covering all districts.

As on a cue, bureaucracy swung into action. Many inter-ministerial meetings were quickly called for ensuring a coordinated approach. Cabinet Secretary held meetings with Secretaries of related Ministries, and then on 18.3.2021 with Chief Secretaries of all states to assess their readiness. Secretaries of Ministries of Jal Shakti; Housing and Urban Development; Rural Development and Panchayati Raj signed a common letter to all Chief Secretaries detailing the steps to be taken. National Water Mission under Asok Kumar as its Mission Director was to be the implementing and coordinating agency, as it was already driving the “Catch-The-Rain” campaign, since 2020.

 All arrangements could be done in such a short time, seamlessly, because, the Catch the Rain campaign running since March 2020 had cured the pitch and all stakeholders were aware of the campaign concepts. Intensive awareness and IEC campaigns were being taken up since December 2020 using volunteers of Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sanghatan (NYKS). As per a MoU between NWM and NYKS in October 2020, lakhs of Youth volunteers of NYKS motivated communities to participate in water conservation and RWH by organizing various activities like talks, oath taking programs, rallies, quizzes, debate competitions, slogans writing, posters, banners, wall writings; nukkad nataks, community work camps etc. Over 2.9 crore people had participated in its over 16.31 lakh activities, by then. Besides, National Water Mission had initiated lot of IEC activities like Water Talks, seminars etc for awareness generation about the campaign using webinars, social media tools and on the digital platforms of certain PSUs, banking institutions, etc. MyGov platform organized quizzes and promoted water pledges. These activities served as a perfect launching pad for the Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch The Rain Campaign.

The  Catch-The-Rain campaign was then launched as  “Jal-Shakti-Abhiyan: Catch-The-Rain” (JSA:CTR) covering all districts - urban and rural- all municipalities the country, by Hon’ble Prime Minister Modi on 22 March 2021, the World Water Day, in a function in New Delhi, in which he addressed officers of Departments concerned in the Central and State Governments, District Magistrates/ District Collectors/ Deputy Commissioners of Districts and Sarpanchs of Gram Panchayats of all States (except those where model code of conduct was in place) via  Video Conferencing. 
This would be arguably the biggest launch of a Water conservation campaign in the world, with more than 1 crore people participating online watching the live TV broadcast and NIC links to Gram-Panchayats. (even if only 1 lakh  Sarpanchas out of the total 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayat Sarpanchs, who were asked to hold their  gram-sabhas in a hall with a TV at the launch time, held gram-sabhas with 100 people participating, it is a crore (10 million) people in attendance!  The Sarpanchs were motivated and enthusiastic to participate in the launch, as each of them were given  letters addressed to them by the Prime Minister himself.  (Network of Ministry of Panchayati Raj and their state counterparts had ensured this !)  This overwhelming participation at the launch reflected also in the outcome of the campaign!

Jal-Shakti-Abhiyan::Catch-The-Rain campaign had 5 focused interventions-
(1) rainwater harvesting & water conservation 
(2) enumerating, geo-tagging & making inventory of all water bodies; preparation of scientific plans for water conservation 
(3) setting up Jal Shakti Kendras (JSKs) in all districts (JSKs were the much expanded versions of Rain Centers and were to the one point resource center of all water related information/ resources in a district)
(4) intensive afforestation and 
(5) awareness generation/ peoples participation 
Efforts were made so that all buildings in the districts should have rooftop RWHS and that maximum quantity of rain water falling in any compound should be impounded within the compound itself. The basic aim should be that No or only limited will water to flow out of the compound or #NotADropFromMyCompound.

Advantages of Catching the Rain: Catching the Rain helps in improving soil-moisture and raising ground water table, there by recharging the depleting aquifer. It also helps in reducing the utilization of energy and associated expenses for pumping water out from under-ground using bore wells. In urban areas, it reduces water from compounds covered with tiles and concrete gushing out onto the roads (damaging them) and low lying areas.  It thus  mitigates urban-flooding.
Under the “Catch-The-Rain” initiative, all water bodies in the districts were to be enumerated, (checked with revenue records) and encroachments to be removed.

NWM got IEC materials developed in all regional languages on water harvesting and conservation by professional agencies and uploaded in the official website of NWM for the use of stakeholders to ensure uniformity of messages and giving diverse ideas for messaging. These included slogans for wall writings, social media posting, e-posters, scripts for Nukkad nataks, topics for debates and essay writings, quiz questions etc. The link was also shared in webinars/meetings to maximize its outreach.

NWM  collaborated with Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS), Department of Youth Affairs to spread awareness on JSA:CTR campaign. NYKS helped in generating awareness on JSA:CTR campaign in 623 districts of the country. .  A series of VC meetings were held by Minister, Jal Shakti and Mission Director, NWM with ALL DISTRICT COLLECTORS/ Magistrates  (DCs) and Commissioners of Corporations and big Municipalities  of the country, state wise in a phased manner, ensuring at-least one meeting with every DC/MC  during the campaign period. NWM started "CatchTheRain: Dialogues with DMs" - a webinar series every Saturdays with 3-4 DC/DMs//MCs and NGOs, giving a digital platform for them to show case their works related to CatchTheRain; River Rejuvenation and Water Conservation.  

The results of the campaign were phenomenal and well documented, though an App created by NIC for feeding the data of water bodies and works done and their pictures/videos  from each of the districts every day or at-least every week during the campaign period
Under the campaign, since the launch on 22 March 2021, till 31 December 2021, both urban and rural areas put together:  
a total of 46,70,271 water related works were completed/were on-going, 
in addition to 36,75,68,460 afforestation activities carried out.  
The expenditure under MNREGS alone was Rs 65,666 Crores. 
306 Jal Shakti Kendras were set up in various States/UTs. ( this is now over 700) As reported by the Ministry of Rural Development, more than 2.03 lakh GPs out of the 2.69 lakh GPs prepared water conservation plans. 
15.32 lakh water bodies were enumerated with its details like its latitude and longitude, ownership, state of health, photos etc. 
Over 16.67 lakh photos on the activities undertaken/works done under the campaign were uploaded on the portal jsactr.mowr.gov.in created for collation of information about the campaign from the field level. 

The phenomenal success of this campaign in 2021 prompted the government to continue it every year since then - launched in successive years by Hon President Kovind, Hon Vice President Dhankar and Hon President  Murmur etc. Relentless efforts made by National Water Mission and the Secretaries of Water Depts of State Governments, NGOs etc are sustaining the campaign, even now!. 
The latest reports suggest that water table has gone up in many states, despite increased exploitation of Ground water and there is an increased/ enhanced awareness for rain water harvesting and conservation. 
Most of the data on waterbodies have been collected and verified on ground. Over 700 Jal Shakti Kendras are in place. 

Asok Kumar had designed a logo of the CatchTheRain campaign, which was adopted for the JSA:CTR also.

Asok Kumar  also created “Pikku” the popular mascot peacock of Catch The Rain campaign. Peacocks and Rains are supposed to have a natural connection, a symbiotic relationship! Peacocks spread their wings and dance when there are rains. More over, Peacock is our national bird and What more can be is best suited as the  mascot for a National campaign- Catch The Rain!

This successful Catch-The-Rain campaign, incidentally, got Asok Kumar a popular moniker - “the Rain-man of India”

Catch The Rain campaign started in 2020, expanded as “Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch The Rain” from 22 March 2021 onwards, is being done every year since then.

For a detailed write up on the Catch The Rain Campaign, please click on the first link below ⬇️