Some Thoughts on Sustainable Water Resource Management
H C Srivastava

One of the earliest acts of civilised man was construction of systems to control water for useful purposes.   In India, Mesopotamia and the fertile crescent in Egypt’s relatively sophisticated water  systems reveal the marvel of ancient water management.  Over time, as people of these ancient civilizations established mastery over management of their water resources, three profound forces were released.

These three factors are relevant even today for water resource development and utilisation. But, the  prevalent conditions are very complex.  The fresh water availability on the earth is barely 0.8%  of the total water, the rest being saline water of oceans  (97.1%)  and  water trapped in Ice caps and glaciers (2.1%).  Inland water is 25% of the total fresh water and 75% is in ground water aquifers. 

After industrialisation of India, and particularly in the process of the green revolution, inland waters have been grossly mismanaged due to extensive surface irrigation and indiscriminate dumping of industrial and domestic wastes.  Ground water too is overexploited to the extent that the water level has, on an average, gone down by 8 meters between  1983 to  1995.  This is inspite of the fact that India is well endowed with water resources as the figures below illustrate :

It may be interesting to know that while in Kerala and Karnataka 80 to 85%  of the runoff is drained to the oceans the same in Tamil Nadu is only 12% .  This is mainly on account of the prevailing practice of construction of storage ponds.  In Madurai District alone there are 30000 surface tanks.  Water today is subject to a range of conflicting demands  of agriculture, industry, recreation, transport, urban water supply etc.  But the cardinal principles of water resource management remain unchanged, viz.

The above clearly indicates that water resource management should not be viewed and practised in isolation - restricted to demand-supply aspect only; rather, it should be an integrated management of all correlated environmental and social factors without which no tangible results will be possible irrespective of the technological development.

Pollution control, repulsion of saline waters from estuaries, flood protection, municipal and industrial supply, waste disposals, recreational uses such as swimming, fishing, boating, or just plain viewing, preservation of wild rivers, beautification, ground water replenishment, and a host of other equally non quantifiable and competitive purposes now demand and receive equal attention with the more economic purposes of irrigation and municipal industrial supply.

These great differences, in today’s socio-political-technological environment, place a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of those who must make the decisions concerning water resources and those who would advise the decision makers.  It is no longer sufficient to respond to local requests with the project that has a favourable benefit-cost ratio.  Other regional or national alternatives, affecting other people as well as local proponents, may be permanently foreclosed.  The many competing and complementary objectives of public concern in the broad aspects of conservation and utilisation of water resources must be and will be heard in the political market place.

But in course of advancement in water resource management we have lost track of traditional wisdom.  We have paid a great price, and continue to do so, primarily due to just copying western models - capital intensive and good in the short run, from giant river valley projects to command area development to microshed development.  We have nearly reached where our forefathers had left this science in a real sustainable and eco-friendly manner without having chanted these words through the course of their labour.  We have touched the solid base of ancient wisdom yet we are too far in the sense that instead of blending the modern science with the ancient, we continue to look down upon it and stubbornly ignore what is happening in our backyard through the labour and resolve of individuals and groups.  ‘Pani Panchayats’ of Maharashtra for water sharing; water conservation schemes of Anna Hazare of Relegaonsiddhi in Ahmadnagar District; construction of Bandhis by ‘Banwasi Seva Ashram’ in Sone Bhadra; restoration of Sukhna lake in Chandigarh and soil-water management of Sukhomajri in Haryana; construction of check dams by Development Alternatives for ground water recharge with excellent results in Bundelkhand region are examples of wisely blended water management systems.  Let us take the case of Relegaonsiddhi where measures like nala bunding, contour bunding, land shaping, afforestation, pasture development with extensive involvement of the community, have yielded dramatic results.  In less than two decades the land under irrigation has increased by about 9 times (40 ha to 350 ha) and the cropped area by 38% (from 4 quintals to 12 quintals and 15 to 20 quintals on good land).  In addition to this there have been several other indirect but socially relevant benefits.

These eminently successful stories of water resource management, often achieved at a fraction of cost of what is spent in the so called modern technological systems, put a question mark on the latter.  Many of these examples are well documented and score high even if modern tools of evaluation like social cost-benefit analysis, capital invested per unit of water harvested or conserved, etc. are applied.  What we need today is freedom from obsession for big schemes, documentation of successful examples of micro-watershed development through people’s participation and giving all possible support for their widespread replication wherever feasible.  Unless this is done, most of our ambitious water resource management plans will go a cropper.  We are already in for a severe water-crisis far more alarming than the power crisis.  Urgent steps are required to be taken throughout the country and we have practically no time left.  For even the best of the efforts will need at least 5 to 10 years to halt the march of a major crisis of water resources.  The national water  grid idea must be shaped in this context.  q    

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