Measuring what gets saved, so it can be trusted.
aKasmika ideates solutions for vulnerable people in low-resource settings — from a handful of soil pressed to check moisture, to GIS backbones tracking livelihoods across districts. Water Pressure, its centre for water enquiries, has spent a decade turning field savings into audited numbers.
aKasmika
A small digital resource group working to bridge the divide between disadvantaged communities and the wired world — recognising that the volunteers and NGOs who work alongside them are part of that same divide.
aKasmika ideates solutions for vulnerable people in low-resource environments, through innovations and applied technologies. Sometimes that means information systems and mapping for spatial distribution; sometimes it's a handheld phone capturing offline data directly from the field, or simply a handful of soil pressed between fingers to read its moisture.
It builds GIS/MIS data backbones for data aggregation and accountability — the infrastructure that lets a field intervention prove, later, that it actually happened and actually worked.
aKasmika is also exploring a package of Accountability Credits to bring transparency into fundraising for water, tree, and CO₂ monitoring, and for village-level e-commerce.
Data backbones built for
- Kallike, the SDTT-supported education resource group in Yadgiri — a livelihoods database.
- MSSRF, Chennai — tracking carbon benefits of interventions across 3 tribal communities in Koraput district.
- Climate-Neutral Village — a platform tracking how rural communities cope with climate change.
- Intideepam, a women's federation across Nizamabad, Nirmal and Kammareddy districts, Telangana — aggregating micro-credit and livelihoods work.
- IRDT, Hosur district.
- DC, Bengaluru Rural — problem identification and tracking for Agallakuppe's Sansad Adarsh Grama Yojana.
- ICAR South Zone, Bengaluru — a 6-district presentation of PRA data.
Water Pressure
Water Pressure supported the HUF–SAMUHA partnership to develop and monitor water conservation in canal-irrigated paddy, and to build community-held water storage through MGNREGA. It's now developing accountability credits to fund the next stage of this work.
In November 2019, Water Pressure supported SAMUHA in submitting its canal-irrigated paddy experience to the drafting committee for India's new National Water Policy. Today it supports Prarambha, secretariat for the Janara Network — a platform for community-based organisations across Raichur and Koppal districts.
Accountability credits in development
A Covid-19 + climate adaptation response.
Monitors tangible community benefits toward India's SDG commitments, on a backbone built to keep evolving.
Supports the shift from canal-paddy practices that poison the food chain toward non-pesticide-managed paddy.
Builds on MGNREGA resources to develop the commons across 175 villages, adapting Miyawaki forest principles.
A tree-growing network across Biotasoil, Samarthya and Prarambha. Supporters give ₹450 per surviving tree, per year, and receive O₂·CO₂·H₂O credits in return.
Ideation & lessons learned
Not every enquiry ends where it was pointed. aKasmika keeps a plain record of what's in motion and what didn't work — because an honest ledger is the whole point.
aKasmika submitted a proposal through the Fair Climate Fund, Netherlands, to the Climate Ledger Initiative. Built around blockchain technology, it would connect cookstove users directly to retail carbon purchasers. A decision is still pending.
After SAMUHA presented its MGNREGA experience to the National Water Mission on 22 June 2019, Water Pressure helped prepare two district-level funding proposals totalling ₹861.36 crore:
- Raichur district — ₹416.64 crore
- Koppal district — ₹444.72 crore
Neither proposal received a response from the National Water Mission.
aKasmika set up ecom operations in Chikkaballapura, Karnataka, to help small shopkeepers and service providers sell to their customers online. 1,237 shops were onboarded — but online sales weren't available to composite GST businesses, and the pool of regular-GST shopkeepers was too small to make it viable.
Resources
Documents and presentations from a decade of water enquiries, kept here for anyone building the case for canal-irrigated water savings elsewhere.