Baramati was in severe famine people were starving for food and water and started famine riots. To fulfill their hunger, British rulers started building the Nira left Bank Canal, Khadakwasla Canal Pune and Krishna Canal near Karad. In the later time Britishers constructed Loyed Bhatghar Dam on Nira River in 1930. The Nira left bank canal provided water to twenty two villages in Baramati tehsil. As an agrarian economy basically Indian people are at the mercy of the monsoon and agricultural harvest. Baramati region is in the rain shadow and is one of the areas with lowest rain. This situation of Baramati, a rain shadow and lowest rain area somewhat changed in twenty-two villages after the construction of Veer Dam by the British government in 1930 benefitting agriculturists of these villages. The Nira left bank canal divided Baramati tehsil into two parts – 22 villages reaped the bounty of nature while the remaining 43 villages were looking at the sky for a drop of water. People from these villages were poverty stricken and had to move for work to the richer parts of Baramati tehsil. Meantime, two Australian ladies from Church Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), Miss.Hessel Skues and Miss Edna Wazar started humanitarian work in the region by distributing free wheat and oil to the famine stricken people. In 1965, ‘Son of the Soil,’ Mr.Sharad Pawar, a young graduate while working for the people of this region realized the need of water for irrigation to change the drastic situation. He found that due to the geographical condition, it was difficult to irrigate the land from alternate sources. A survey revealed that there were about 200 streams flowing in the region during the rainy season but they would dry up soon. So Mr.Sharad Pawar thought to construct percolation tanks in some of the villages but there was no source of money for this work. In these circumstances, he convinced Miss Skues and Miss Wazar to distribute wheat and oil to the local people under the scheme of ‘Food for Work’. Under this scheme, the first percolation tank was constructed at Tandulwadi near Baramati in the year 1967. Mr.Sharad Pawar did commendable work in the region without the assistance of the government. He helped in the construction of eighty percolation tanks in the villages. Due to these percolation tanks, the free flowing water during the monsoon was stored.