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8/9/2019 DROUGHT: TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
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Dear Membe rs of Parliamen t and State Legislatur es,
Several parts of the countr y are witnessing a serious
drought . The result is acute drinking water
shortages in Gujarat, Rajasthan, western Madhya
Pradesh , Orissa and Andh ra Prad esh. Accord ing to
newspaper rep orts, several towns in Saurashtra are
getting an extremely irregular supply of water
(see table 1: Drinking water availability in Gujarat
towns in April 2000). Most of the dams and res er-
voirs in the region h ave dried up . The government is
trying to deal with t he p roblem by p roviding water
throu gh tankers and by deep ening existing borewells.
The Central government has promised to r un water
trains.But is all this inevitable? That we have to
do this every time the rainfall is less than no rma l?
We do nt th ink so and we wish to b rief you on what
can be done to solve this prob lem almost permanently
unless, of course, th ere is a series of consecutive
droughts for several years . The change we are
advoc ating will come, we ar e afraid to say, only if our
poli t ical leaders are prepared to promote a new
appr oach to water management in this country.
During one of the meetings of the World WaterCommission, which sub mitted its rep ort in th e Hague
in April 2000 to a b evy of water minister s, a mem ber
had strongly emphasized the need for educatingpoliticians about the importance of water. I, however,
found th at argument incorrect b ecause I have rarely
met a politician, espe cially in India, who d oes not
emph asize the importan ce of water. But what I have
indeed found is that h ardly any of them know how to
solve the water problem.
Not su rp risingly, few government initiatives have been
able to deliver the goods as th e current unp recedente d
drought has s hown in such starkness. The por tents of
this so-called once-in-a-century drought had become
clear as far back as Septemb er 1999 when national
elections were being held a nd Shri L K Advani had to
face slogans like Pehle Paani Phir Advani in
Saurash tra . As far back as Decem ber, many villagers in
north Gujarat had begun to leave home because of
water shorta ge. Once the monsoon s eason was over,
the government co uld not have don e anything to solve
the water prob lem except to p rovide some succour in
terms of drought relief works, emergency water su pply
throu gh tankers, and digging deepe r b orewells for
some res idual water in the bowels of the eart h.
But this is not enough. Many wil l term what is
happening in Gujarat and Rajasthan a natural disa ster . This is rea lly far from t he trut h. It is
DROUGHT?TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
By Anil Agarw a l
It is possible to banish drought completely and in ten years maximum
if the government puts its mind to it.
P01
8/9/2019 DROUGHT: TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
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truly a huma n-ma de or rat her a government-
made disaster. Over the last one hundred years or
so, the world and India, too, have seen two major
shifts in water management. One is that individualsand commun ities h ave stea dily given over th eir role
almost completely to the state even though more than
150 years ago no government anywhere in the world
provided water . The second is that the simple
technology of using rainwater has declined and in its
place exploitation of rivers and groundwater through
dams and tubewells has become the key source of
water. As water in rivers and aquifers is only a small
por tion of the t otal rainwater, ther e is an inevitable
and growing and, in many cases, unbe arable stress on
water from rivers and groundwater.
Dependence on the state has also meant that costs of
water sup ply are high; with c ost r ecovery being poor
the financial sustainability of water schemes has
run aground; and, repairs and maintenance is
abysmal. With people having no interest in using
water carefully, the sustainability of water resources
has itself beco me a ques tion mark pro blems we
see acros s the b oard to day. As a result , there are
serious p roblems with government drinking water
sup ply scheme s. Despite all the government efforts ,
the numbe r of prob lem villages does not s eem to go
down. As N C Saxena, former rural development
secretary puts it , In our mathematics, 200,000
pr oblem villages minus 200,000 pro blem villages is
still 200,000 problem villages ( see graph 1:
UNENDING EXERCISE: Record of government rural
drinking water supply sche mes).
Given the fact that India is one of the most
w ell-endow ed na tions in the world in terms of aver-
age annual rainfall , there is no reason why i t
should suffer from d rought. This year o r any o ther
year. The most important lesson that our decision-
makers shou ld learn from the current crisis is how
to drought-proo f the nation in the yea rs to come a ta sk that can ea sily be accomplished in less than
a decad e if the country puts its mind to it.
The government has indeed invested heavily
on water resources development. But these
programmes have focussed mainly on:
(a) Large-scale irrigation development for increasing
Green Revolution-style agricultural pr odu ction;
and,
(b) Drinking water sup ply programmes.
Yet a large part of the country remains drought-
prone. This is becaus e no specific effort has been
made to drought-proof rainfed areas which suffer
from high rainfall variability from year to year
and seas on to seas on. Moreover, the government has
encouraged a massive intervention into th e countr ys
hydrological cycle but it has done precious little to
sus tain the integrity of the h ydrological syst em. A
fine example of the d isintegration of the co untr ys
hydrological system is what we are doing to our
groundwater . The country has been constantly
encouraging exploitation of groundwater but has
done little to rec har ge it . As a res ult, ground water
tab les are falling all over th e coun try. Cons idering the
fact th at over 90 per ce nt of rural Indians de pend on
groundwater to get th eir drinking water, the dec line
poses a serious prob lem which becomes an emer-
gency in a year when th e rains are low as in th is year.
The poor , of course, who depe nd o n du g wells, which
dry off first, as comp ared to tu bewells or bore wells,
are the first to suffer.
2
Table 1 : Drinking w ater a vailability in Gujarat tow ns in April 20 00
Place Availability of drinking water
Rajkot (1) 30 minutes every alternate day
Jamnagar, Jasdan and Amreli (1) 20 minutes once in three days
Jodiya town, Jamnagar district (2) 20 minutes in 12 days
Dhrol town, Jamnagar district (2) Half the population gets water once in eight days
Sources: 1) Janyala Sreenivas 2000, Forget the Sensex for a second, look what else is going down, Indian Express, New Delhi, April 19, p.1
2) Janyala Sreenivas 2000, Once a fortnight, they get a few drops and that too for 20 minutes, Indian Express, New Delhi, Apri l 21, p.1
Governments have paid little attention to efforts needed to
drought-proof the country
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
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3
1. Communities and rain
Community-based rainwater harvesting the
paradigm of the past has in it as much strength
today as it ever did before. A survey conducted by the
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) of
several villages facing drought in Gujarat and
western Madhya Pradesh last December Ghelhar
Chot i in Jhabu a d istrict, Thunt hi-Kankasiya in Dahod
dist rict, Raj-Sama dh iyala and Mand likpur in Rajkot
district, and Gand higram in Kachc hh district found
that a ll tho se villages which had u nde rtaken rainwater
harvesting and/or watershed development in earlier
years had no dr inking water problem whatsoever and
even had some water t o irrigate their crops. On the
other hand, neighbouring villages were desperate for
water and p lanning to migrate when the real summer
hit them. This survey revealed th at rainwater harvest-
ing can meet even th e acid test of a bad d rought.
In late March, we got further confirmation of our con-
viction. Going with president K R Narayanan in a heli-
copter to the Arvari watershed who was scheduled to
give the Down to Earth-Josep h C John Award to village
Bhao nta-Kolyala in late March , we could s ee n oth ing
but bar ren fields all the way from Delhi to Alwar. This
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
Year of Number of Problem Number of villages covered till Number of villages not covered
Survey Villages identified the next survey before the next survey
1972 150,000 94,000 56,000
1980 231,000 192,000 39,000
1985 161,722 161,652 70
1994 140,975 110,371 30,604
1997 61,747
Source: N C Saxena, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India
Graph 1: UNENDING EXERCISE: Record of government rura l drinking w ater supply schemes
The graph shows that even though a large number of villages are covered between two surveys the number of problem villages
keeps growing. For instance, in 1980, there should not have been more than 56,000 problem villages, but there were 231,000.Obviously, the money pumped in and the methods used were unsustainable. As N C Saxena, former rural development secretary,
puts it, In our mathematics, 200,000 problem villages minus 200,000 problem villages is still 200,000 problem villages.
150,000
56,000
231,000
39,000
161,722
70
140,975
30,604
61,747
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
Year of survey of problem villages
Numbero
fproblemv
illagesidentified/
Numberofvillagesremaining
or
waitingtobecovered
Number of Problem villages identified Number of villages wait ing t o be covered
94,000
192,0
00
161,6
52
110,371
Number of villages covered during the specified survey period
1972 1980 1985 1994 1997
Community-based rainwater harvesting has the potential to
drought-proof the entire country
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4
area is su ffering from a secon d con secutive drought-
year. But suddenly we came across green and golden
fields and realised th at we had rea ched t he oas is of the
Arvari watershed where s everal villages have o ver the
last 5-10 years built h undr eds of rainwater harvest ing
structures. Nobody needed to emph asize the impor-
tance o f rainwater harves ting any more. The pre sident
saw a more or less dead Arvari river, unable to with-
stand the b urden of two years drou ght, but wells were
still full of water and, therefore, fields were rich and
prod uctive and villagers re asonab ly hap py.
2. Getting priorities right: Poten tial of rainwate rharvesting
What makes ra inwa te r harves t ing such a
powerful technology? Just the simple r ichness of
rainwater availability tha t few of us r ealise becau se of
the speed with which water, the worlds mo st fluid
subs tance, disappears . Imagine you had a h ectare of
land in Barmer, one of Indias driest places, and you
received 100 mm of water in the year, common even
for this area. That means t hat you received as much
as one million litres of water enough to meet
drinking and cooking water needs of 182 people at aliber al 15 litres pe r da y. Even if you are n ot ab le to
capture al l that water this would depend on the
natu re of rainfall events and type o f run off sur face,
among other factors you could still , even with
rudimentary technology, capture at least half a
million litres a year .
It is, in fact, only with this rudimentary technology
that people came to inhabit the Thar desert and have
made i t the most densely populated desert in the
world. And assuming you could c apture the 2000 mm
annua l rainfall that is commo n in east ern India, you
would need o nly 500 square me tre of land (a 21 metre
by 21 metre p lot) to ca ptu re on e million litre s. It is
also interest ing to note that r ural population density
follows intensity of annual rainfall. Barmer, for
instance, has less rainfall but few peop le and a lot of
land available per person whereas 24-Parganas in
West Bengal has much more rain but more p eople
and less land available per p erson.
Even in th e villages suffering from dro ught t his year ,
it is not as if the re was no r ain. In man y areas like
Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and western Madhya
Pradesh the rainfall levels, though lower than normal,
were still more t han 500 mm, which is an enor mous
amount of rainfall. The average annual rainfall in
Saurashtra and Kachchh, the worst affected, is
578 mm. This year, according to newspape r rep orts,
i t was very depr essed but s t i ll around a coup le of
hundred mil l imetres (mm). But the people of
Saurash tra and Kachch h let the water go.It do es no t
mat ter how much ra in you ge t , i f you don t
cap ture i t you can s t i l l be shor t o f w a te r . It i sunbelievab le but it is true that Cherrap unji which
gets 11,000 mm annual rainfall, still suffers from
serious dr inking w ater shorta ges.
In fact, we ha ve consistently ar gued that there is
no v i l lage in India that cannot meet i t s bas ic
dr inking and cooking needs through ra inw ater
harvest ing. Figures speak for themselves. Indias
average annual rainfall is 1170 mm. It varies from 100
mm in t he d eser ts o f Wester n India to 15,000 mm in
th e h igh r ainfall hills of the North eas t. Nearly 12 per
cent of the coun try rec eives an average ra infall of lessthan 610 mm per annum while 8 per cent receives
more than 2500 mm. But mor e tha n 50 per c ent of this
rain falls in abou t 15 days and less than 100 hours out
of a total of 8760 hours in a year. The tot al number of
rainy days can r ange from a low of five da ys in a year
in the desert regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan
though on some of these d ays there can be high-inten-
sity rainstorms to 150 days in the Northeast.
Therefore, it is very importan t to capt ure th is rainwa-
ter which just comes and goes in a few hours.1
Recognising this fact th at almost all the r ain comes
down in a few years, our ancestors had learnt to
harvest water in a variety of ways:
(a) They harves ted the ra in drop d irec t ly . From
rooftops, they co llected water and s tored i t in
tankas buil t in their courtyards. From open
community lands, they collected the r ain and
sto red it in art ificial wells c alled kundis.
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
Traditionally, our ancestors have harvested water through tankas,
zings, ahars and johads
Cherrapunji has water scarcity for nine months in a year despite
having 11,000 mm of annual rainfall. This should be an eye opener.
If you dont harvest the rain, there will never be enough water
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(b) They harves ted monsoon runoff by captur ing
water from swollen stre ams du ring the mo nsoon
season and stored it in zings in Lada kh, ahars in
Bihar,johads in Rajasth an and eris in Tamil Nad u,
to nam e a few.
(c) They harvested water from flooded r ivers in
places like nort h Bihar and West Bengal.
In 1991, Ind ia ha d 587,226 inhab ited villages with a
tot al pop ulation of 629 million giving us an a verage
pop ulation of 1071 pers ons per village, up from 942pers ons in 1981. Let us, th erefore, assume t hat t he
average po pulation of an Indian village tod ay is abou t
1200. Ind ias ave rage annual ra infall is about 1170 mm.
If even only half this water c an be capt ured , though
with technology inputs this can be greatly increased,
an aver age Indian village need s 1.12 hect ares of land
to capture 6.57 million litres of water it will use in a
year for cooking and d rinking. If there is a dro ught a nd
rainfall levels d ip to h alf the norm al, the land req uired
would rise to a mere 2.24 hectares. The amount of
land nee ded t o meet the d rinking water needs of an
average village will vary from 0.10 hectares inArunachal Prad esh (average popu lation 236) where
villages a re small and rainfall high to 8.46 hectar es in
Delhi where villages a re big (average pop ulation 4769)
and rainfall is low. In Rajasthan, th e land r equired will
vary from 1.68-3.64 hectares in different meteoro-
logical regions and, in Gujarat, it will vary from
1.72-3.30 he cta res (see table 2: EVERY VILLAGE IN
INDIA CAN MEET ITS OWN WATER NEEDS: Land
area nee ded per village in d ifferent states of India to
capture enough rainwater to meet drinking and
cooking water needs). And, of course, any m ore wat er
the villagers catch can go for irrigation.
Does this sound like an impossible task? Is there any
village that does not have this land availability?
Indias t otal land area is over 300 million hec tare s. Let
us assume that Indias 587,000 villages can harvest
the runoff from 200 million hectares of land, exclud-
ing inaccessible forest areas, high mountains and
other uninhabited terrains, that s t i l l gives every
village on average acce ss t o 340 hec tar es or a r ainfall
endowment of 3.75 billion litres of water. These
ca l cu la t i ons show the po t en t ia l o f ra inwa te r
harvesting is enormous a nd und eniable. There is
just no reas on w hats oever for thirst in India .
Therefore, it is possible to drought proof the entire
country. Not just drinking water, most of Indias
agricultural fields s hou ld also be ab le to get some
irrigation water to grow less water-intensive crop s
every year throu gh rainwater harvesting. The s trategy
for drought proof ing would be to ensure thatevery v i l lage captures a l l the runoff resul t ing
from the rain falling over its entire land and the
associated government revenue and forest lands,
espec ia l ly dur ing years w hen the ra in w as nor-
mal , and s tore i t in tanks or pond s or use i t to
recharge the deple t ing groundwater . I t would
then have enough wa ter in its tanks or in its w ells
to cult ivate substa ntial lands w ith wa ter-sa ving
crops like millets and m aiz e.
Even with a national water grid o r all the pro posed
dams l ike those on th e Narmada being built , therejust isnt going to be en ough river water to p rovide
irrigation to every single village of India. A subs tan tial
par t of Indias agricultural land s will rem ain rainfed.
This is confirmed by official statistics. The National
Commission for Integrated Water Resources
Development Plan has est imated th at th e ul t imate
irrigation potential is as much as 140 million
hec tare s. Some 75.9 million h ecta res will be irrigated
by su rface water sch emes of which 58.47 million
hectares wil l be irr igated by major and medium
pro jects an d 17.38 million h ectar es will have t o b e
irrigated by minor irrigation sch emes like tanks 2
while 64.1 million hectares will be irrigated by
groundwater .3 But all this is still a dream. As of
1992-93, 119.3 million h ect ar es were rainfed , of which
78.43 million h ecta res wer e und er foodgrains.4
But there i s enough ra in which wi th a good
combina tion of rainw ater har vesting and ground-
wa te r r echarge , can increase and s tab i l i s e the
prod uct iv i ty of th is ra infed land . These lands
5
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
India receives most of its rainfall in just 100 hours out of 8760
hours in a year. If this water is not captured or stored, their will be
no water for the rest of the year
Only 100 mm rainfall falling on a 1 hectare plot can yield upto
1 million litres of water
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6
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
Tab le 2: EVERY VILLAGE IN IN DIA CAN M EET ITS OW N W ATER NEEDS: Land ar ea needed p er village in
different states of India to capture enough rainw ater to m eet drinking and cooking w ater needs
(in hectares)
State Meteorological Average Estimated Land area Land area neededdivisions annual no. of needed per per village to meet
rainfall villagers village to meet drinking and cooking(millimetres) per drinking and water needs assuming
village, cooking water severe drought2001 needs assuming conditions, that is,
half of normal 50 per cent declinerainfall is captured in normal rainfall
(hectares) (hectares)
INDIA 1,170 1220 1.14 2.28
Andaman Andaman andand Nicobar NicobarIslands Islands 2,967 408 0.16 0.32
Arunachal Arunachal 2782 236 0.10 0.20Pradesh Pradesh
Assam Assam andMeghalaya 2818 807* 0.32 0.64
Meghalaya Assam andMeghalaya 2818 311 0.12 0.24
Nagaland Nagaland, Manipur,Mizoram and Tripura 1881 1153 0.68 1.36
Manipur Nagaland, Manipur,Mizoram and Tripura 1881 726 0.42 0.84
Mizoram Nagaland, Manipur,
Mizoram and Tripura 1881 549 0.32 0.64
Tripura Nagaland, Manipur,Mizoram and Tripura 1881 3496 2.04 4.08
West 1. Sub-Himalayan 2739 1602 1.1.0-1.22* 2.20-2.44*Bengal West Bengal and
Sikkim2. Gangetic West 1439
Bengal
Sikkim 1. Sub-Himalayan 2739 1132 0.46 0.92West Bengal andSikkim
Orissa Orissa 1489 683 1.10 2.20
Bihar 1. Bihar Plateau 1326 1367 1.12-1.26* 2.24-2.52*2. Bihar Plains 1186
Uttar Pradesh 1. Uttar Pradesh 1025 1026 0.68-1.26* 1.36-2.52*2. Plain of West 896
Uttar Pradesh3. Hills of West
Uttar Pradesh 1667
Haryana Haryana, Chandigarhand Delhi 617 2,258 4.00 8.00
Delhi Haryana, Chandigarhand Delhi 617 4769* 8.46 16.92
Chandigarh Haryana, Chandigarhand Delhi 617 2647* 4.70 9.40
Continued
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7
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
Continue
State Meteorological Average Estimated Land area Land area needed
divisions annual no. of needed per per village to meet
rainfall villagers village to meet drinking and
(millimetres) per drinking and cooking water
village, cooking water needs assuming
2001 needs assuming severe drought
half of normal conditions, that is,
rainfall is 50 per cent decline
captured in normal rainfall
(hectares) (hectares)
Punjab Punjab 649 1345 2.26 4.52
Himachal Himachal Pradesh 1251 328 0.28 0.56
Pradesh
Jammu and
Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir 1011 1140 1.24 2.48
Rajasthan 1. West Rajasthan 313 1039 1.68-3.64* 3.36-7.28*
2. East Rajasthan 675
Madhya 1. Madhya Pradesh 1017 867 0.70-0.94* 1.40-1.88*
Pradesh 2. East Madhya 1338
Pradesh
Gujarat 1. Gujarat region 1107 1741 1.72-3.30* 3.44-6.60*
2. Saurashtra and 578
Kachchh
Goa Konkan and Goa 3005 1816* 0.66 1.32
Maharashtra 1. Konkan and Goa 3005 1389 0.50-1.72* 1.00-3.44*
2. Madhya 901
Maharashtra
3. Marathwada 882
4. Vidarbha 1034
Andhra 1. Coastal Andhra 1094 2231 2.34-3.60* 4.68-7.20*
Pradesh Pradesh
2. Telengana 961
3. Rayalaseema 680
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu and
Pondicherry 998 2627 2.88 5.76
Pondicherry Tamil Nadu andPondicherry 998 1106* 1.32 2.64
Karnataka 1. Coastal Karnataka 3456 1343 0.42-2.02* 0.84-4.04*
2. North Interior 731
Karnataka
3. South Interior 1126
Karnataka
Kerala Kerala 3055 14,083 5.04 10.08
Lakshadweep Lakshadweep 1515 3,228 2.34 4.68
Notes: *Calculation based on the assumption that average village population in different meteorological sub-divisions is the same as that of the state.
Source: India Meteorological Department for normal rainfall data and projections of average population in 2000 based on Census of India data for 1981 and 1991.
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today s uppor t some of the poores t p eople in the
countr y. And if w e don t do this, peop le living in
rainfed a reas w il l not prosper .
3. Drought-proofing vs large-scale irrigation
But for th is to hap pen, our p lanners and pol i t i -
c ians w i l l have to s top confus ing i rr igat ion for
dro ught-pro ofing with large-sca le irrigation for
Green Revolution-style a gricultural developm ent.
Otherwise, the country w ill get its priorities w rongand tens of millions of poor people will continue
to su ffer the horro rs o f drought. Depending on the
availability of money and reso lution of prob lems like
rehabilitation, both can b e attempt ed but the p riority
must go to d rought-proofing measures which r equire
little mone y in com par ison and will bring results ver y
qu ickly, within 5-10 years .
Drought -proo fing and large scale irrigation de velop-
ment are not a s ubst itute of each oth er. What one can
do, the o ther cannot. Firstly, because e ven after all
the pr oposed dams ar e built to p romote large-scaleirrigation development and interlinking of rivers
takes place no t every p iece of the count rys cu ltivat-
ed land will see the benefit of canal irrigation. These
lands will have to d epend either on groundwater or
local water ha rvest ing. These two will also h ave to go
together bec ause hea vy use of groundwater can on ly
be s ustained if there are local efforts to keep rechar g-
ing the groun dwate r. Therefore, large-sca le irrigation
development is no substitute for drought-proofing
based o n local water harvesting systems and sus tain-
able use of groundwater.
The se cond argument against large-scale irrigation
develop ment follows from th e first . Big dam s ca n only
help to create pockets of Green Revolutions-style
agricultural prod uction (with water -intensive cr ops )
but th ey cannot dr ought pro of the whole country. As
a result they can at best create national food
security as the y have done u ptil now which means
that few distr icts of country generate a huge
agricultura l surp lus which is then use d to feed the
ones which ar e doing agriculturally poo rly, esp ecially
during drought years.
But t hey ca nno t cre ate local food secu rity which
means that al l areas of the country have water
management s trategies to ensure that local food
production is as pro ductive as p ossible and stable
even during water-short years. Local food security is
as impor tant a s nat ional food s ecur ity. Which Bhil or
Oraon adivasi, for instance, wants to depen d only on
grains from Punjab? All of them would like to growenough grain at least to feed themselves. Water
harvesting and ground water together can d efinitely
drought-proof the coun try and cr eate local food s ecu-
rity which big dams cannot. Then Indias p oor people
and p oor land s will not have to s uffer th e ignom iny of
the kind they h ad to suffer th is year. But th e govern-
ment ha s to rea lise th at Indians canno t survive on a
single-tra ck water mana gement p olicy.
In ad dition, it is importa nt to rea lise that Indias
futur e food secu rity even from its so -called Green
Revolution areas w ill depend heavily on a nation-w ide groundw ater recharge programme, which can
only be taken by individua l communities through
rainw ater harvesting. If this is not done, agriculture
will suffer even in curr ent irrigated ar eas because of the
increasing overexploitation of groundwater and
lowering of groundwater tables acro ss th e countr y.
With more than 17 million tubewells and borewells
energised b y diesel and electr icity, ground water is now
used to irrigate more than half of the countrys
irrigated area. And as areas irrigated by groundwater
show higher productivity than those irrigated by
canals, the contribution of groundwater to Indias total
agricultural output from irrigated a reas is much more
than that of canals. During drought years, when rivers
dry up, groundwater becom es the main source of water
both for drinking and irrigation.5 India n a griculture
and rura l life is toda y heavily dependent on ground-
w ater. Further low ering of groundw ater ta bles can
seriou sly threa ten India s har d-ear ned food
security at a time when India w ill need to prod uce
more food to feed its grow ing pop ulation .
8
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
The solution lies in harvesting rainwater through capturing, storing
and recharging it and later using it during prolonged parched periods
Several village communities have shown their commitment,
potential and perseverance in drought-proofing their own villages
even during the present crisis
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4. Small means even more water
Let us look at the relevance of village-bas ed r ainwater
harvest ing from yet anot her point of view. The keycompo nent o f water man agement is stor age espe-
cially in a co untr y like India wher e th e mon soo n gives
us on average about one hund red ho urs of rain and
the n not hing for th e rem aining 8,660 hou rs in a year.
This water can be captur ed in:
a) large reservoirs with large catchments by build-
ing large dams ,
b) in small tanks and ponds with small catchments,
or
c) by storing it in a way that it percolates down into
the ground and gets stored as groundwater.
In fact, the re is str ong scientific eviden ce to s how
that village-scale rainwater harvesting will yield
much mo re water th an big or medium dams, making
the latter an extremely cost-ineffective and u nscien-
tific way of providing key water n eeds esp ecially in
dry areas. Some very instruct ive lessons can be
learnt from the work of Israeli scientist Michael
Evenari who has prod uced th e best co rpus o f knowl-
edge on th is subject from th e bone-dry Negev desert
where t he aver age annu al rainfall is a mere 105 mm.
Evenari was intr igued by t he fact that the ancientIsra eli civilisat ion had built towns right in the middle
of the Negev desert with t heir own agriculture and
water supply systems much l ike the towns of
Jodhpur an d Jaisalmer that the ent erprisingMarwaris
developed in the Thar d esert. Both t he Israelis and
the Marwaris used the r ain they received with greatingenuity to meet their food and water ne eds. In his
effort t o reco nstruc t th e ancient farms of the Negev,
Evenar i came up with a very s urp rising finding: Water
harvested from small watersheds per hectare of
watershed ar ea was much more in quantity than th at
collected o ver large waters hed s. On hindsight this
makes eminent sense beca use water collected over
larger waters heds will have to run over a larger area
before it is collected an d a large part will get lost in
small pud dles and de press ions, as soil moisture and
through evaporation.
This loss of w ater ca n be stunningly high. While a 1ha waters hed in the Negev yielded as much as 95 cubic
metres of water per h ectare per year, a 345 ha water-
shed yielded only 24 cum/ha/year. In other words, as
much as 75 per cen t of the water that c ould be collect-
ed was lost. The loss was even h igher d uring a drought
year. After yea rs of resea rch , Evenar i summed his find-
ings a s follows: during drou ght years with less
tha n 50 mm of rainfall (norma l rainfall in t he Negev
desert is about 105 mm) wa tersheds larger than
50 ha will not produce any a ppreciable w ater yield
while s mall natur al water sh eds will yield 20-40 cubic
metres per hectare and microcatchments (smallerthan 0.1 hectare) as much as 80-100 cubic metres
per hectare (see table 3: THE SURPRISING
9
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
Table 3 : THE SURPRISING EFFECT OF SIZE: The ef fect of the size of catchments on the quantity of w a ter
har vested a s found in the Negev desert (in case of ca tchments w ith a 1 0 p er cent slope and a 1 05 mm
rainfall year)
A number of factors determine how much rain falling over a watershed will turn into runoff which can be collected by villagers
for their drinking and irrigation needs. This table shows that all other factors like slope remaining the same, the larger the size
of the catchment, the less runoff (water) can be collected from it. This is because in large catchments water has to run over larg-
er distances before it gets collected and during that period, a lot of the water is lost in puddles and small depressions, in evapo-
ration or through infiltration into the soil. Therefore, small catchments give the maximum water. And the difference can be quitehigh. As the table shows, 3000 microcatchments of 0.1 hectare each wil l give five times more water together than one catchment
of 300 hectares even though the total land area from which the rain is harvested remains the same. In simpler words, in drought-
prone areas, 10 dams with a one hectare catchment each will give substantially more water than one large dam with a 10
hectare catchment.
S.No. Size of catchment Quantity of water harvested Percentage of annual(hectares) (cubic metres / hectare) rainfall collected
1 Microcatchment (a) 160 cubic metres/ hectare 15.21%
2 20 hectares 100 cubic metres/ hectare 9.52%
3 300 hectares 50 cubic metres/ hectare 3.33%
Notes: (a) A microcatchment is a very small catchment of size upto 1000 square metres or 0.1 hectare.
Source: Michael Evenari et al1971, The Negev: The Challenge of a Desert, Oxford University Press, UK.
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10
EFFECT OF SIZE: The effect o f the size of catchmen ts
on the quantity of water harvested as found in
the Negev dese rt in case o f catchments with a 10 per
cent slope and a 105 mm rainfall year, and table 4:
EVEN GREATER EFFECT DURING DROUGHT:
The effect of the size of catchments on the quantity
of water harvested found in the Negev desert
during drought years with less than 50 millimetres of
rainfall).
These were cr itical findings becaus e the amount of
rainwater one can collect depends on the amount of
land from which the runoff can be harvested. But
Evenari was finding that even if you have the same
amount of land you will collect more water if you
break up th e land into many small catchm ents th an if
you collect water from it as one catchment. Several
stud ies cond ucte d in India by th e Centr al Soil and
Water Conser vation Resear ch and Training Institute
in Dehra dun also sh ow a clear relationsh ip between
size of catchment and a mount o f runoff that can be
captur ed. One stud y shows that just increasing the
size of the catch ment from 1 ha to ab out 2 ha reduc es
the water collected p er hectar e by as much as 20 per
cent (see graph 2: EFFECTS OF SIZE ON QUANTITY
OF WATER HARVESTED: Studies from India) .
Several other studies conducted by the Central Soil
and Water Conser vation Resea rch Institut e in Agra,
Bellary and Kota and an other study cond ucted in the
high ra infall region of Shillong, have all foun d t ha t
smaller watersh eds give higher amount s of water per
hectar e of catchm ent area.6In simple w ords , all this
means that in a d rought-prone area where w ater
is scarce, 10 t iny dams w ith a catchment of 1 ha
each w il l col lect much more w ater than one larg-
er dam with a catchment of 10 ha (see diagram 1:
SMALLER CATCHMENTS GIVE MUCH MORE
WATER: One dam w ith a catchment of 10 hectares
will collect much less water than 10 dams with onehectare catchement each).
It shou ld not be s urprising that t he large number of
medium-size dams that have been constructed in
Sauras htra store d very little water in this drought year
and s tarted going dry by Decemb er 1999. But th en th e
answer to drought-proofing of the area lies not in
mega-water harvesting projects with medium and
large d ams. It lies in s mall water harvest ing structure s
which are const ructed at t he farm and village-level.
To demo nstr ate h is findings, Evenari even de veloped
an orch ard in the middle of the b one-dry Negev deser t
by creating a separate m icrocatchme nt a plot of
land ranging from 15.6 sq m to 1000 sq m for each
tree to maximise the q uanti ty of harvested water .
Therefore, look at i t any w ay, community-ba sed,
sma l l -scale ra inwa ter ha rves t ing is no t jus t
capa ble of prov id ing more than dr inking w ater
needs even in the worst of drought situations b ut
is also the mos t efficient w ay to collect wa ter.
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
Table 4 : EVEN GREATER EFFECT DURING DROUGHT: The effect of the size of catchments on the qua ntity
of w ater ha rvested a s found in the N egev desert during drought yea rs with less than 5 0 millimetres
rainfall
The table below shows clearly that in a desert very little water can be collected from large catchments in a drought year.
S. No. Size of catchment Quantity of water harvested Percentage of annual(hectares) (cubic metres/ hectare) rainfall collected
1 Microcatchment (a) 80-100 cubic metres/ hectare 16-20%
2 Small natural watersheds 20-40 cubic metres/ hectare 4-8%
3 Larger than 50 hectares No appreciable water yield 0%
Notes: (a) A microcatchment is a very small catchment of size upto 1000 square metres or 0.1 hectare.
Source: Michael Evenari et al 1971, The Negev: The Challenge of a Desert, Oxford University Press, UK.
An average Indian village requires just 1.14 hectares of land to
meet its drinking water needs
Small is ecologically efficient as 10 dams with 1 hectare
catchment will store more water than 1 dam of 10 hectare
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5. Ministers are now talking of rainwater
harvesting
In the last few weeks, since the media storm ondro ught h it our politicians , several of th em, including
the p rime minister and t he ministers for rural develop-
ment, urban development and water resou rces, have
made statements regarding the importance of a
community-based rainwater harvesting strategy to
drought-proof the co untry.
The first statement came from the r ural development
minister , Sund erlal Patwa, tha t the governme nt hop es
to gradually replace a government-oriented pro-
gramme by a people-oriented, decentralised and
demand-driven rural water supply programme, the
budget for the pr ogramme is being increased by 8 percen t, from Rs. 1800 cror e last year t o Rs. 1960 cro re in
2000-01, and a fifth of this b udget will be given t o s tat e
governments which undertake commu nity-based pro-
grammes so t hat villagers h ave a de cisive role. A par t
of the total capital cost and op erat ion and mainte-
nance cos t will be born e by th e users . Some 58 dis-
tr icts have been identified to t ry out this scheme.7
Meanwhile, a stee ring comm ittee has also b een set u p
to stud y the r echarge of drinking water sources.8
The second st atement cam e from the p rime minister
who told the parl iament that only six per cent of the countrys rain is being conserved and that
greater emp hasis will henceforth be placed on water
harvesting.9
The third statement has come from Jagmohan,minister for urban development, who has suggested
that water harvest ing should be mad e compulsory
under the urban building bye-laws of the country.10
The fourth statement has come from the minister of
water re sour ces, C P Thakur, who in an interview in
late Apr il had mer ely talked abo ut water h arves ting in
a few buildings in Delhi like the Shr am Shakti Bha wan
and the Indira Gandhi National Open University and
som e nine bu ildings in Jaipur as his key initiatives in
this area, but by early April he was announcing a
whopp ing Rs. 550 crore plan to r echa rge groundwat er
by cons tructing about 10,000 water h arvesting struc-ture s in water -scar city regions with the se fund s
going direct ly to village ben eficiary group s an d wate r
users associations.11,12
There have been developments in the states, too.
Andhra Pradeshs chief minister, N Chandrababu
Naidu, has announced and already held the f irs t
meeting of a Water Conservation Mission t o r evamp
its existing watershed development programme.13,14
The chief minister told t he Indian Express in an inter-
view, Till now, we have d ump ed c rore s of rupe es
into th e watershed programme. But th e results arevery disappointing. Unless farmers are involved, the
11
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
Diagra m 1 : SM ALLER CATCHM EN TS GIVE M UCH MO RE W ATER: One d am w ith a catchment of 10 hectares
w ill collect much less w ater than 1 0 da ms w ith one hectare catchment each
Catchment Area: 10 hectares Catchment Area: 10 hectares
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12
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
Size of Catchment (in square metres)
R.N. Adhikari et al-CSWCRTI
Size of Catchment (in hectares)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
17.1
13.7212.5
0
6
12
18
0.99 1.85 2.35
Bellary 1996-CSWCRTI
56.7
44.6
39.337.6
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
40.5 81 121.5 162
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
Bellary 1993-CSWCRTI
Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
58
50
39 35
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2 3 4 5
Kota 1985-CSWCRTI
11.9
0.2 0.030
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
4000 8500 14500Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
Shillong 1988-Singh 1988
22.6
29.3
10.66.3
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
0.5 5 40 48Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
Agra 1961-1965 (Avg.)-CSWCRTI
8400 9640
13.4
11.8
0
4
8
12
16
Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
Agra 1990-CSWCRTI
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1550 1970 2060 2900
53.8
27.6 29.5
18.2
Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%o
frunoff-causingrainfall)
Agra 1994-CSWCRTI
Size of Catchment (in square met res)
Annualrunoffcollected
(%
ofrunoff-causingrainfall)
73.5
52
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
8 25
Graph 2 : EFFECT OF SIZE ON QUAN TITY OF W ATER HARVESTED: Studies from Ind ia
Several studies carried out is India show the same results that were found in the Negev desert: Larger catchments resulted in a smaller
percentage of the annual rainfal l falling on the catchment which resulted in runoff being captured.
Source: J S Samra , directo r, Central Soil and Water Conse rvation Research Training Institute (CSWCRTI), Dehr adun ,personal comm unication
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situation cannot be reversed.15 The Andhr a Pradesh
government plans to spe nd Rs. 400 crore throu gh the
new mission an d b ring 10 million h ecta res of land
under good watershed management. In the areascho sen , villagers will be given Rs. 20 lakh to develop a
500-hectare watershed .16
In the urban context , the Delhi government has
expressed interest in water harvesting. Given t he fact
tha t ground water levels have declined by 4-10 metr es
in several parts of the Capital over the last d ecade,
the Delhi governm ent is cont emp lating a law to make
it mandator y for a ll new group housing societies to
har vest th at ra in falling within their com plexes.17 18
Meanwh ile, th e New Delhi Municipal Corpor ation h as
sanctioned a spe cial water har vesting project which
consists of water ponds being constructed in fourmajor parks: Talkatora Garden, Nehru Park, Lodi
Gard en a nd Kush ak Nullah.19
In Gujarat, irrigation m inister Nitin Patel sa id in late
April that the government is planning to construct
10,000 check dams acros s the s tate und er its Sarda r
Pate l Sahbh agi Jal Sanc ha y Yojana . Villagers will have
to pro vide 40 per cent of the cost of the check dam.
The governme nt ha s rece ived over 16,000 app lica-
tions of which 8,563 have been approved and, to
begin the exercise, the government h as sanct ioned
Rs. 100 crore for the construction of 2,000 checkdams. 20 This is a remarkable change as compar ed to
the past. Between 1991 and 1999-2000, various
departments of the Gujarat government only built a
tota l of 1,341 che ck dam s.21
In Madhya Pradesh , a workshop h eld in Neemuch dis-
trict in late April emphasized th e importan ce of water
conservation through water har vesting and th e dis-
tr ict collector promised to pr omote roo ftop water
harvesting in the to wn and draw up a p lan for rest or-
ing and d eveloping ponds in each gram panchayat.22
I f a l l the commitments made by the Centra l
Minister and the State government of Gujara t and
Andhra Pradesh, come t rue , a sum of Rs . 1500-
2000 crore has b een committed for rainw ater ha r-
vesting. This is indeed heartening. Equally hearten-
ing are reports of people promoting rainwater
har vesting. Unde r th e inspiration of the local Anand a
Baba Ash ram , a Lakhot a Jal Sanch ay Abh iyan Samiti
has been set up to collect money from the residents
of Jamnagar t own to de silt the the h uge Lakhot a Lake
that h ad be en constr ucted b y the former r oyal family.
The pe ople of the town have given th eir full supp ort
to this exercise.
23
Under the leadership of theSwaminarayan gurukul in Rajkot, found ation s tone s
were laid for check dams in more than 15 villages in
just five days around the middle of April.24 In
Ahmedabad city itself, the Khadia Itihas Samiti
head ed by the st ates health minister, has comp leted
a survey of the und erground water tan ks (tanka) that
were tradi t ionally buil t in each house to harvest
roof-top rainwater and is planning a campaign to
revive th em 25 Care Today, an organisation set up the
magazine India Today, has announced that i t has
identified two pro jects, one each in Rajasth an and
Gujarat, to h elp villagers des ilt th eir trad itional water
harvesting structures.26 The Supreme Court, hear ing acase on water shortage in Delhi , has ordered the
Delhi Developmen t Author ity (DDA) t o h arves t r ain
water sta rting off with th e wate r-thirs ty DDA colonies
of Vasant Kun j in New Delhi.27
These developments show that commu nity-ba sed
ra inwa ter harves t ing may w el l become a w ide ly
adop ted pa radigm in the years to come b oth in the
urba n and rural a reas. But the quest ion is: Will
this a ll lead to effective results, esp ecially in the
rura l context?
6. Structures with a social process
Building w ater ha rvesting structures is a very easy
task any contractor endo w ed w ith a bit of money
can do so. But building an effective structure w hich
sta rts o ff a proces s of self-ma nagement in village
communities is a much more difficult task . This is
poss ible only if each structu re is the result of a cooper-
ative social process-the ab ility of a comm unity to work
in coopera tion. Water is a s trange nat ural resour ce: It
can unite a community as easily as it can divide it.
Therefore, it is essent ial that a str ong social proce ss
precede each structure to build what economists call
the social cap ital. This is an a rea w here the track-
record of government a gencies is literally non-exis-
tent and inflexible government rules mil i tate
against the very p rinciple of social mo bilisation .
In other words, the above statements b y state and
Central officials are as much a caus e of worry as of
app lause. Fixed an nual targets will prove to be a total
13
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
Social mobilisation is a prerequisite for effective water harvesting
activity
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disas ter : mon ey liter ally going down th e dr ain. At least
the first t wo years of any water h arvesting programme
will have t o b e s pent on social mobilisation. This will
mean, firstly, creating awareness and confidence in thepeople that water harvesting works. Once this is
achieved, it mean s sitting with t he p eople to create vil-
lage institutions which will decide whe re, when and
how the water ha rvesting structur es will be built, who
will build the structures, how much the villagers will
provide to share the cost o f the structu res, and once
the struc ture is built, how will its benefit, that is, water,
will be shared amongst the villagers, especially in the
early years when wate r is scar ce, and h ow will its use
be r egulated. Every part of the comm unity will have to
be involved b y making each s ection from t he landed
to the landless and womens group s appr eciate the
ben efits it will derive from the exercise. And b y makingefforts to ensure that benefits do indeed flow to each
section of the comm unity.
It is for th is reason t hat water harvesting works best
when comb ined with waters hed development. It is in
the nat ure of structures to bene fit mainly those who
have land leaving the landless without any benefits
and there fore alienated from the exercise. But d evel-
opment of watershed s to conserve both water and
soil not o nly increase s so il and water conser vation
and leaf and grass prod uction on what are usually
common lands, which can greatly benefit landlesshouse holds, but also increases the life and effective-
ness of the structures that benefi t the landed by
reducing siltation. Contractors must be totally kept
out and all wage benefits should go to the landless.
Nothing works bet ter than when villagers see a ll this in
actual pract ice. For th is purpo se, it is important t o
have funds to take interested villagers to see villages
where such principles are being observed and how
water harvesting has changed their lives. Under the
Madhya Pradesh Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Develop-
ment Mission (RGWDM), busloads of tribals from
Jhabua were taken t o se e Ralegan Siddhi. Tarun Bharat
Sangh (TBS) also r egularly organise s Paani Yatras in
neighbo uring areas so that villagers who h ave done it
can talk face to face with thos e who h ave not.
All this means that the progress in the first few years
will be s low. This was the cas e b oth with RGWDM and
TBS. But th e exper ience of bot h also sh ows th at rep li-
cation comes very rapidly once the idea catches on.
As R Gopalakrishnan, who oversees RGWDM in
Madh ya Prad esh , puts it, In th e first two year s of the
programme, the res ults were so slow that we kept
wonder ing wheth er we a re getting it right. In oth erwords, governments must be prepared to accept that
the ir first year s effort will bring noth ing, seco nd and
third year maybe something, and fourth and fifth
years hop efully a lot. It is a gradua l exercise. The
number of villages par ticipating in the water h arvest-ing progra mme of TBS also grew slowly at first and
then very rapidly in th e later years a s th e villagers
became more and more confident of the value of
what they were doing (see graph 3: Promoting
environmental self-reliance).
Social mobilisat ion is essen tial for th e succes s of water
harvest ing for s everal other reason s. Firstly, the com -
munity must b e closely involved in the c onstr uction of
the water harvesting structures to ensure that they are
built with techn ical compet ence; that is, the s ite is
chosen properly, the technical parameters are
correct, etc. Badly built structures will not deliverwater an d ca n get ea sily washed away. Secondly, even
in proper ly built structur es which de liver water, once
the water starts getting available either as increasing
levels of groundwater or as surface water in a tank, the
commun ity will have t o st art managing the available
water which in the earlier years m ay not be eno ugh to
irrigate lands of all the farmers. In those years, the
farmers will have to share the water and use it on
crops that dont use t oo much water. This will happen
if there is already a commu nity process as sociated
with the water har vesting structure. Otherwise a few
people will grab the water leading the rest of thecommun ity alienated.
14
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
Graph 3: Promoting environmental self-reliance
In the first three years, few villages got involved in the waterharvesting programme of Tarun Bharat Sangh. With passage oftime, the numbers, however, grew rapidly as villagers gainedconfidence in the programme and were able to see a positiveoutcome of their efforts.
45
97
500
550
650
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
1986
1987
1988
1989
1994
1996
1998
Numberofvillages
181
YearSource: Tarun Bharat Sangh, Alwar.
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The government will also have to review and revise
old British-time laws like the Indian Easement Act
which prevent public participation in water mana ge-
ment. Management expe rts point ou t, God is in the
details.Patw a, Thakur a nd Chandra bab u Naidu
and others l ike them wil l have to ma ke sure the
culture of rigid and inflexible government rules is
changed to fit the task of social mo bilisation . And
as govern ment officials are n ot s ocial workers, all this
will hap pen only if th ey ha nd o ver wor k to NGOs with
a track recor d, howsoever few they might be, and
wait patiently for results to come. But if they want agovernment programme , it can s till be done, but then
they th emselves will have to overs ee the implemen-
tation of the p rogramm e to keep the ir warring and
err ant officials in place. Inter -dep art ment al coord ina-
tion between the d epartm ents o f revenue, soil con-
servation, irrigation, forests and agriculture is
essential for water harvest ing-watershed develop-
ment programme s to succeed . The direct supervision
of the Madh ya Prad esh chief ministe r o f the RGWDM
was a key element of the p rogrammes success . It is
not surprising that despite the drought this year ,
newspaper rep orts from western Madhya Pradeshwere few. Other wise the r esu lt will be a lot o f waste d
mud, bricks and mor tar and alienated peop le, with
water h arvesting getting a b ad name. Already, news-
paper report s are showing that there has been con-
siderable corruption in the check dams sponsored by
the govern ment o f Gujarat. 28 We mus t make sure
that water harves t ing does not become money
harvesting.
7. Reviving systems which have gone into disuse
I t is not enough to build new water harvest ing
struct ures. Efforts m ust b e made also to revive the
vast t reasure th at already exists but has gone into
disuse . Accor ding to o fficial estimate s, the re wer e
15.13 lakh tanks in India in 1986-87 95 per cent of
which were in eight s tates, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. But
becaus e of silting and poo r maintenance, the gross
area irrigated by th em h ad come down from 4.78 mil-
lion h ect are s in 1962-63 to 3.07 million h ect are s in
1985-86 though many new tanks were constructed in
this pe riod. This repr esen ts a ca pital loss o f Rs. 5,000
crore .29 It is obvious that efforts must be ma de to
restor e these s tructur es to th eir full potent ial.
8. Rainwater harvesting can eradicate rural poverty
If wa ter ha rves t ing-w aters hed d eve lopment
programmes a re hand led w ell , the experience of
v i l lages l ike Sukhomajr i , Ralegan Siddhi and
several v i l lages in Alwar d is t r ic t has c lear lyshow n that ra inwa ter harves t ing i s not jus t the
sta rt ing point for meeting drinking wa ter needs
but the s ta r t ing point of an ef for t to era dicate
rural pover ty i t se l f , generate mass ive rural
employment and red uce distress migration from
rural areas to urban a reas. Increased and assured
water availability means increased and stable agricul-
tural production and improved animal husbandry
both of which together form th e fulcrum of the rura l
econo my. Rainwater har vesting has h elped Ralegan
Siddhi to transform itself from one of the most desti-
tute villages of the coun try in the 1970s to one o f therichest villages today. In all villages which have
regenerated t heir local economy with the h elp of
good management of their natural resourc es, distres s
rural-urban migration has been greatly reduced or
has been totally eliminated.
Another interesting dimension of community-based
rainwater harves ting is that it helps the genera te a
comm unity spirit within the village som eth ing tha t
is get t ing lost ac ross the country and b uild up
what economists call the social capital. In fact, we
can ar gue tha t if we want Panchayati Raj to work, then
the first thing thatpanchayats should be as ked to take
up is water har vesting har gaon ka apna talaab (a
tank in every village).
If it all makes so much sense then why is this para-
digm not accepted b y the government and sp read
acros s th e count ry? President K R Narayanan e ven
called for a nat ional movement for water harvest ing
in his last Republic Day address to the nat ion.
15
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONM ENT
In Indian context, rainwater harvesting is indispensable for
fortifying food security, as rainfed land constitutes the bulk of the
cultivated land
Proficient water harvesting along with political wisdom and
community accountability can help solve rural poverty
8/9/2019 DROUGHT: TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
16/16
16
DROUGHT? TRY CAPTURING THE RAIN
The prob lem is really mind-sets . Rainw ater ha r-
ves t ing demands a new a pproach to governance
itself a pa rticipatory form of governance ra ther
than a top-dow n burea ucratic one . Unfortun ately,our po litical leaders have cre ated a c ulture of depe n-
dence on th e government and love to make promises,
howsoever hollow they may be, th at t hey will provide
everything to the people through government
largesse. Given this political mind-set, the water
bureau cracy, too, has developed a culture of provid-
ing services, howsoever poor and abysmal they may
be, rather t han one o f empowering people to develop
the ir own water sup plies. And it is st ill locked into the
big dam, pumps, p ipes and borewell paradigm. Water
resour ces minister, C P Thakur, today does n ot hes i-
tate in accepting the importance of rainwater har-
vesting but when push comes t o a sh ove, as it did, forexample, at the recent World Water Forum in the
Hague, he and t he en tire Indian de legation could do
nothing but talk about b ig dams. We are not h ere
going into th e merits of the s mall versus large dam
debat e in certain situations large dams could be
needed but there can be no d oubt that the small
has an e xtremely important r ole to play and th is is
being totally neglected. A balance b etween t he b ig
and t he s mall is essential.
But, nonetheless, there h as been a remarkable changein the pub lic discourse on the relevance of the cou n-
trys rainwater harvesting traditions in the last few
years , espec ially since Centre for Science and Environ-
ment (CSE) published Dying Wisdom: The rise, fall and
potential of Indias traditional water harvesting system s in
1997, a compelling accou nt of how th ese t rad itions still
work in many part s of the cou ntry even in the face of all
odds. The recent statements by the Central and state
ministers a re encouraging but th e government needs t o
go beyond th em. It sh ould heed the p residents advice
and pr epare a concrete p lan of action to de velop a
mass m ovement for water harvesting.
(The author w as a member of the World Water Commission
and is the director of the Centre for Science and Environment,
New Delhi)
Note:
If any member of parliament or state legislature is interested in
understanding this issue further, please do not hesitate to get in
touch with the author or w ith Indira Khurana, CSEs coordinator
for its Campaign to Make Water Everybo dys Business.
1. Anon 1999, Water an Overview Issues and Concerns, National
Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan,
Nationa l Commiss ion for IWRDP, New Delhi, pp 6-7.
2. Anon 1999, Development and Management Issues Irrigation, Flood
Control, Hydropower and Navigation , National Commission for
Integrated Water Resources Development Plan, National
Commiss ion for IWRDP, New Delhi, p p 9-10.
3 . Anon 1999, Water Availabil ity and Requirements , National
Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan,
Nationa l Commiss ion for IWRDP, New Delhi, p 36.
4 . Anon 1999, Water Availabil ity and Requirements , National
Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan,
Nationa l Commiss ion for IWRDP, New Delhi, p 38.
5. Wor ld Bank/ Cen t r al Gr oundwa t e r Boa r d 1999, India: Water
Resources Management Groundwater Regulation and
Management, World Bank/Allied Publishers, Washington DC/New
Delhi, p 15.
6. J S Samra 2000, Central Soil and Water Conservation Research andTraining Institut e, Dehra dun, personal correspondence.
7. Anon 2000, Flood Of Promises To Deal With Lack of Water, Times
of India, New Delhi, April 20, p.12.
8. The Hindu, New Delhi, April 22, p.7.
9. Anon 2000, PM Calls for Moratorium on Bickerings, The Hindustan
Times, April 26.
10. Anon 2000, Water Harvesting may Become the Law, The Hindustan
Times, New Delhi, May 6.
11. Sonu Jain 2000, Water in India is Like Draup adi, There Are Five
Ministries That Deal With It , The Indian Express, New Delhi,
April 30.
12. H S Bartwal 2000, Centre Readies Rs. 550 Crore Plan To Recharge
Water Level, The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, May 5, p.12.
13. Anon 2000, Andhra Forms Conservation Panel, The Indian Express,
New Delhi, April 28.
14. Anon 2000, Water Conservation Mission Launched, The Hindu,
New Delhi, May 1.
15. S Ramakrishna 2000, AP Set to Revamp Watershed Project, Th eIndian Express, April 30.
16. Anon 2000, AP Government to Spend Rs 4,000 Crore to Conserve
Rainwater, The Pioneer, New Delhi, April 30.
17. Anon 2000, Depleting Water Table is Now a Capital Woe, Th e
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 29.
18. Anon 2000, Drafting of Bill on Harvesting Rainwater Begins, Th e
Indian Express, May 8.
19. Arati Bhargava 2000, Harvesting of Water: NDMC Gives Approval,
The Hindustan Times, May 5.
20. Anon 2000, Work on 10,000 Check Dams Begins, Times of India,
Ahmed abad , April 28.
21. Darshan Desai 2000, Drought and Deja vu, The Indian Express, New
Delhi, May 2.
22. Anon 2000, Ministers Call to Support Water Conservation
Scheme, Central Chronicle, Bhopa l, Apr il 30.
23. Rathin Das 2000, Jamnagar Cleans up Lakhota Lake, The Hindustan
Times, New Delhi, April 29.
24. Anon 2000, More Check Dam Projects take off in Amreli District,
Time s of India, Ahmedabad, April 18.
25. Tanvir Siddiqui 2000, Ahmedaba d Falls Back on Old Way of
Conserving Rainwater, Indian Express, New Delhi, May 2.
26. Anon 2000, Fight the Drought: New Innings, India Today, New
Delhi, May 15.
27. Anon 2000, Harvest Rainwater, SC orders DJB, The Hindustan
Times, New Delhi, May 11.
28. Anon 2000, Damning evidence against Junagadh check dams sites,
Times of India, New Delhi, May 17.
29. Anon 1999, Local Water Resources Development and
Management, National Commission for Integrated Water
Resources Development Plan, National Commission for IWRDP,
New Delhi, p 2.
R E F E R E N C E S