As film lovers across India mourned the death of veteran actor Nana Patekar on Thursday, a village in central Maharashtra remembered how he helped make it ‘tanker-free’ by funding a water conservation project ten years ago.

Drought relief

Patekar, 76, passed away at his Goa residence in the early hours of Thursday. NAAM Foundation, set up by Patekar and fellow Marathi actor Makarand Anaspure, adopted Dhondalgaon, a village in Vaijapur tehsil, in 2016. Every year, the village, 57 km from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city, would need water supplied through tankers as the monsoon ended and Diwali approached, said river expert Anand Asolkar. During the Nizam era, the village was famous for its sweet limes, which were transported to other parts of the country from nearby Karanjgaon railway station. But with local river barrages choked with silt, farmers could no longer cultivate sweet lime trees or grow more than one crop a year.