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Water is a prime national resource, a basic human need and a precious asset. The U.N. report published in 2003 at the time of the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto says that water reserves are drying up fast, and booming population, and global warming will combine to cut the average person’s supply by a third by 2020. The report also ranked 122 countries on the quality of their water provision. India was placed at the bottom of the list.
The agricultural output depends on monsoon as nearly 60 per cent of the area sown is dependent on rainfall. In the areas of rain-fed agriculture, watershed harvesting has great economic and ecological significance. The greater parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, western Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra, northern Andhra Pradesh, western Karnataka, parts of Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh frequently suffer from droughts. These regions face two critical issues:
(i) They have severe droughts in summer with an acute scarcity of water and a declining water-table, resultingin the loss of crop productivity for major and minor crops.
(ii) Heavy and intensive rainfall and surface run off leads to soil erosion and sedimentation in the lower courses of tire rivers, resulting in the formation of ravines and gulleys across the region.
These are the areas which are economically poor, struggling around the vicious cycle of underdevelopment. These areas require appraisal of land and soil resources based on micro watersheds (within an area of 10 to 1000 hectares), and macro watersheds (area over 1000 hectares) to draw plans for in-situ water harvesting and conservation through conjunctive uses, and thus monitor the development mode in a harmonised manner. The entire watershed management involves innovation in group decisions followed by action involving joint decisions. Thus, starting with a watershed (which is a manageable hydrological unit) as a land unit, it takes up water as the most important resource for development. It aims at containing the deterioration of land and its approach to development is not confined just to agricultural land alone, but covers the watershed area, starting from the highest point of the area to the outlet or the natural drainage line. This involves the implementation of ameliorative measures for barren hill slopes, marginal lands, agricultural lands, gullies and ravines.
Optimal sustainable development can occur only with the maintenance of quality and efficient use of the country’s water resources to match the growing demands on this precious natural resource with the active involvement of all in order to achieve accelerated, equitable economic development of the country.
It is rightly said that water resources hold the key to the socio-economic development of any country, and India is not an exception to this. It is a fact that water, a fragile and finite resource, is fast becoming scarce day by day. A recent study by the world bank indicates that per capita availability of water in India, which was to the order of 5000 cubic metres per year at the time of independence, has drastically come down to 2000 cubic metre per year at present. The average annual rainfall of 110 cm in the country, though fairly high, is marked by wide variations, both spatial and temporal. About 67 per cent of the water resources are reported to be available in the Indo-Gangetic alluvial basins covering 33 per cent of the geographical area of the country, as against 33 per cent of the potential in the hard rock regions, occupying 67 per cent of the geographical area. Looking at the existing scenario of water availability in the country, there is an urgent need for propagating water harvestring and transforming it into a mass movement. With regard to the water resource, the main challenges that need to be addressed are:
(a) ground water depletion, (b) water quality deterioration, (c) low water use efficiency, (d) expensive new water resources, (e) resource degradation, (f) development of new water resources (g) reformed price incentives, (h) appropriate technology, (i) tradable water rights, and (j) international cooperation.