As many as 177 districts amounting to almost half of the country are said to be drought hit and the distress of farmers has increased. Notwithstanding the monsoon prospects in the coming weeks, drought means productivity of land has fallen.
This falling down of productivity has to be combated by putting in place a system of effective medium and long term rain water management at the micro level. This will immunise our agricultural economy substantially against the observed vagaries of Indian monsoons.
Not only is agriculture vulnerable in our country but also the availability of potable water in our cities, towns and villages; in all the regions per capita availability of potable water is quite limited and declining. The problem is sure to aggravate with increased population, urbanisation and diversified use of water in industry. Also the costs of providing water will continuously increase. The high costs of bottled drinking water and its increased recourse and inevitability are an evidence.
In this context, the need and the plans to upgrade the health and capacities of water bodies everywhere are of high priority. In urban areas the ever increasing greed for land has almost annihilated water bodies and their entire lake and catchment areas have nearly been gobbled up by construction leading to all kinds of reckless and unperspectival economic activities. This has led to lowered ground water levels and flooding of rivers and low lying areas.
On the other hand, in rural areas with the advent of the tradition of large and macro irrigation projects, local village level tanks have all become almost defunct and destroyed with the entire lake area getting distributed among vested interests for private and often non-agricultural activities.
Demand for irrigation water from huge dams has increased and the poor people are left high and dry with regard to their need for water for humans as well as cattle and other livestock. And productive assets like grazing land and fuel yielding vegetation; even burial grounds have become scarce and misused.
Serious and firm plans have to be implemented to halt further deterioration of urban and rural water bodies; in fact they have to be upgraded by repairing tank bunds and desilting. For this, the first step is to prepare or rather revise micro topographic survey records in micro water sheds.
On the basis of these surveys, plans have to be drawn up to let water into tanks through run off drains whether natural or constructed. And these drains have to be desilted and wherever necessary culverts and bridges have to be constructed.
At the next stage, micro topographic water sheds have to be connected to the suitable adjacent water shed. Tanks and their excess flow channels have to be duly connected to the next tanks. Traditionally these tanks are so built as to ensure that rain water is serially stored and conserved.
Existing drains in urban areas, huger cities as well as other towns, will have to be carefully connected hierarchically and serially to tanks in the neighbourhood. This connecting needs a lot of planning and investment. Spending on these programmes can indeed be a part of urban renewal as well as rural development and NREGP. Perhaps a new type of training will be necessary both for the serving engineers and for the new recruitees.
Waste water management
Complementary to rainwater management, its conservation as well as distributive justice in its use, there is the issue of waste water disposal and management. A lot of it can perhaps be biological treated, detoxified and absorbed into the soil.
A methodical approach to construct disposal drains or canals in peri-urban areas leading to neighbouring rivulets and water bodies has to be properly shaped and lined by stone and dry mud masonry facilitating absorption into the neighbouring ground and also periodic desilting and manure disposal.
On both sides of these relatively larger disposal drains, trees and shrubs may be raised suitably so that toxicity of drain contents can be mitigated; these trees can as well become the habitat of wild birds. This requires biotechnological innovations and implementation.
Additionally, industries that generate waste getting into these disposal streams, have to be obliged to treat the effluents duly and then only let them out. This should be ensured by the executive controls of environmental and such other departments endowed with empowered technical personnel committed to the cause of ecological upgradation the health and proliferation of flora and fauna.
The regions adjoining these rainwater and waste disposal canals will surely witness improved levels of groundwater further enriching the tubewells in the region. If in addition, economical methods like drip and sprinkler irrigation are put in place, more fields can become productive.