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Background:-
India has long undervalued one of its most precious resources, water. The country’s chronic mismanagement of water is staring at it now. Over 600 million Indians rely on the monsoon to replenish their water sources, and the unpredictable nature of rain leaves them vulnerable.
Water crisis in Shimla:-
Over the past three summers, water availability had plunged to 29 or 30 million litres per day (MLD). This year, the supply was only about 20 MLD.
Reasons for water crisis can be :-
Challenges with respect to water availability in India :-
Traditional water storage systems:-
Ancient Indians understood the art of water governance. Most of India’s traditional water management has been at the community level; relying upon diverse, imaginative and effective methods for harvesting, storing, and managing rainfall, runoff and stream flow.
Role in averting water crisis:-
Ecologically safe engineering marvels of water conservation have existed in India for nearly 1,500 years, including traditional systems of water harvesting, such as the bawari, jhalara, nadi, tanka, and khadin.
They continue to remain viable and cost-effective alternatives for replenishing depleted groundwater aquifers. With government support, they could be revived, upgraded and productively combined with modern rainwater-saving techniques such as anicuts, percolation tanks, injection wells and subsurface barriers. This may be a far more sustainable approach to alleviating the water scarcity crisis across India.
The basic concept underlying all these techniques is that rain should be harvested whenever and wherever it falls.
Katta:- Katta is a temporary structure made by binding mud and loose stones available locally. Built across small streams and rivers, this stone bund slows the flow of water, and stores a large amount (depending upon its height) during the dry months. The collected water gradually seeps into ground and increase the water level of nearby wells. In coastal areas, they also minimize the flow of fresh water into the sea.
It is a cost effective and simple method, used widely in rural areas. Series of stone bunds built one behind the other have proved to be more effective than modern concrete dams in some villages, as these local structures can be easily repaired by farmers themselves.
These water soak pits called as Madakas in Karnataka, Pemghara in Odisha and Johads in Rajasthan, are one of the oldest systems used to conserve and recharge ground water. Water from Johads is still been widely used by farmers to irrigate fields in many parts of India. In fact, the arid state of Rajasthan has seen a drastic improvement in water conservation due to the revival of Johads
In Himachal Pradesh, kuhls(surface water channels) have been used since ancient times to carry glacial waters from rivers and streams into valley fields. These kuhls need to be desilted and fortified to prevent them from breaking during torrential rainfall.
Another effective traditional water management system is bamboo drip irrigation, practiced in the tribal pockets of the Khasi and Jaintia hills of Meghalaya. In this, a network of bamboo pipes of varying diameters, lengths and positioning is used to harvest water from hill springs or streams. This can be adopted on a larger scale wherever possible. Nagaland’s Zabo is also a great way of collecting run-off in community tanks/ponds. Rainwater that falls on forested hilltops is led by channels that deposit it in pond-like structures created on the terraced hillsides. The channels also pass through cattle yards, collecting the dung and urine of animals, before ultimately meandering into fields at the foot of the hill.
Way forward:-
Urban India needs to focus on recycling and harvesting water, having better testing and purification facilities and increase public awareness on the need to conserve water.
International examples:-
By: SONAM SHEORAN ProfileResourcesReport error
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