India is facing a major water crisis, with demand expected to exceed supply by 2030. One reason is the increasing neglect and lack of conservation of traditional water bodies such as ponds and lakes. These water bodies play an important role by recharging groundwater, providing drinking water and livelihoods, and supporting biodiversity. However, many have been destroyed by urbanization and pollution. Comprehensive efforts are needed to revive water bodies through better management, limiting encroachment and pollution, encouraging community involvement, and ensuring long-term sustainability and maintenance.
India is facing a major water crisis, with demand expected to exceed supply by 2030. One reason is the increasing neglect and lack of conservation of traditional water bodies such as ponds and lakes. These water bodies play an important role by recharging groundwater, providing drinking water and livelihoods, and supporting biodiversity. However, many have been destroyed by urbanization and pollution. Comprehensive efforts are needed to revive water bodies through better management, limiting encroachment and pollution, encouraging community involvement, and ensuring long-term sustainability and maintenance.
India is facing a major water crisis, with demand expected to exceed supply by 2030. One reason is the increasing neglect and lack of conservation of traditional water bodies such as ponds and lakes. These water bodies play an important role by recharging groundwater, providing drinking water and livelihoods, and supporting biodiversity. However, many have been destroyed by urbanization and pollution. Comprehensive efforts are needed to revive water bodies through better management, limiting encroachment and pollution, encouraging community involvement, and ensuring long-term sustainability and maintenance.
India is facing a major water crisis, with demand expected to exceed supply by 2030. One reason is the increasing neglect and lack of conservation of traditional water bodies such as ponds and lakes. These water bodies play an important role by recharging groundwater, providing drinking water and livelihoods, and supporting biodiversity. However, many have been destroyed by urbanization and pollution. Comprehensive efforts are needed to revive water bodies through better management, limiting encroachment and pollution, encouraging community involvement, and ensuring long-term sustainability and maintenance.
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INDIA NEEDS TO CONSERVE WATER BODIES
AND VALUE THEM
Let’s not destroy our water bodies in the name of development and rather value their importance India is endowed with extraordinarily diverse and distinctive traditional water bodies found in different parts of the country, commonly known as ponds, tanks, lakes, vayalgam, ahars, bawdis, talabs and others.
They play an important role in maintaining and restoring the
ecological balance.
They act as sources of drinking water, recharge groundwater,
control floods, support biodiversity, and provide livelihood opportunities to a large number of people. Currently, a major water crisis is being faced by India, where 100 million people are on the frontlines of a nationwide water crisis and many major cities facing an acute water shortage.
The situation will worsen as United Nations and Niti
Ayog reports say that the demand for water will reach twice the available supply, and 40 per cent of India’s population will not have access to clean drinking water by 2030. One of the reasons is our increasing negligence and lack of conservation of water bodies. Since independence, the government has taken control over the water bodies and water supply. With a colonial mindset, authorities move further and further away in the quest of water supply, emphasising more on networks, infrastructure and construction of dams. This, over time, has led to the neglect of water bodies and catchments areas. As a result, we have started valuing land more than water. In the last few decades, water bodies have been under continuous and unrelenting stress, caused primarily by rapid urbanisation and unplanned growth. Encroachment of water bodies has been identified as a major cause of flash floods in Mumbai (2005), Uttarakhand (2013), Jammu and Kashmir (2014) and Chennai (2015). Further, water bodies are being polluted by untreated effluents and sewage that are continuously being dumped into them. Across the country, 86 water bodies are critically polluted, having a chemical oxygen demand concentration of more than 250 mg/l, which is the discharge standard for a polluting source such as sewage treatment plants and industrial effluent treatment plants.
In urban India, the number of water bodies is declining
rapidly. For example, in the 1960s Bangalore had 262 lakes. Now, only 10 hold water. Similarly, in 2001, 137 lakes were listed in Ahmedabad. However, by 2012, 65 lakes were already destroyed and built upon. Hyderabad is another example. In the last 12 years, it has lost 3,245 hectares of its wetlands. The decline in both the quality and quantity of these water bodies is to the extent that their potential to render various economic and environmental services has reduced drastically. Action taken and to-be-taken The Centre had launched the ‘Repair, Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies' scheme in 2005 with the objectives of comprehensive improvement and restoration of traditional water bodies. These included increasing tank storage capacity, ground water recharge, increased availability of drinking water, improvement of catchment areas of tank commands and others. However, in this regard, not much has been seen on the ground. Action taken and to-be-taken Experts say that cities may not run out of water if urban planning engages more critically with the city’s terrain, along with propagation of knowledge about the local history of lakes, meaningful community engagement and ownership of water bodies.
The announcement of the Jal Shakti Abhiyan, a time-bound,
mission-mode water conservation campaign initiated by the new Jal Shakti ministry is a welcoming step focussing on rainwater harvesting, rejuvenation of water bodies, reuse of treated wastewater, and intensive afforestation. Action taken and to-be-taken The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) plans to revive 155 water bodies while the Flood and Irrigation Department will revive 46.
DJB claims that the aim is to achieve bio chemical
oxygen demand to 10ppm and total suspended solids to 10mg/l. In order to achieve the goal of revival of water bodies, it is important to understand that one solution may not fit all the water bodies. Depending on the purpose, ecological services, livelihood and socio-cultural practices, the approach will vary from one water body to another. However the issues with regard to lack of data and action plans, encroachments, interrupted water flow from the catchment, siltation, violations of laws, solid waste deposit and polluted water, involvement of too many agencies, etc have to be taken into consideration. Action needs to be taken towards: 1. Attaining sustainability emphasis on long-term goals, operation and maintenance should be included along with the allocation of budget. 2. Success of the lakes should be tested on all three fronts namely economic, environmental and social. Many studies point that a deliberate effort has to be made on the social front for which better publicity of the environmental benefits of the project and enhancing environmental awareness, especially among the local community is required. Action needs to be taken towards:
3. Encouraging local people to collaborate with other
stakeholders to successfully utilise resources and ensure the protection and conservation of water bodies.
4. Traditionally, water was seen as a responsibility of citizens
and the community collectively took the responsibility of
not only building but also of maintaining the water bodies.
This needs to be brought back into the system.
Action needs to be taken towards:
Thus, an integrated approach taking into account the
long-term sustainability, starting from the planning
stage where looking at every water body along with its
catchment, is required.
To make it a reality, it is time to invest in governance,
capacitating our institutions, strong regulations and