Watershed Management

23 Dec 2014

watershed-management-24122014

The Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India has initiated a discussion forum on “Improving community participation in Watershed Management” for which there has been an overwhelming response from the citizens of the country. We have received many useful suggestions and views on the subject.

The enthusiastic participation in the discussion has shown that people are concerned about the issue of water availability in the country. Very interesting views and ideas have been thrown in the discussion by some of which are being mentioned here.

Watershed management today is synonymous with poverty alleviation. A number of people have suggested the need for involving the community in watershed management. They have also said that all sections of the society should be involved in this work. There are also suggestions to provide incentives to people to implement water harvesting works on the principles of watershed management. There is almost unanimous view on implementing drip irrigation for efficient use of water in agriculture and horticulture. Some have reflected that aging water infrastructure, increasing demand, continued land use change, and increasingly extreme weather events are driving the costs of water management higher. Investing in integrated water management strategies that combine engineered solutions with “natural infrastructure” can reduce costs, enhance services, and provide a suite of co-benefits for communities and the environment.

More emphasis has to be given to in-situ soil moisture conservation practices and irrespective of the ownership of the land, contour bunds, gully plugging, stabilization of sloping land etc should be given more importance than mere check dam construction. There are also suggestions about recharging aquifers, storage of rain water in farm lands, building low cost structures for water harvesting and removing encroachments from kunds, talavs and other traditional water harvesting structures. There are also suggestions that good work done in watershed management must be shared.

A number of posts are also about other related issues of water management though not a part of watershed management, like the issue of rain water harvesting in the urban areas, collection and use of discharge water from cities and river linking in the country,

We have taken note of the posts and are working on bringing out a document on the key suggestions that have been made by the citizens. With time, these suggestions will definitely influence the program being implemented by the Department in a positive way.

The discussion forum has been active since September 2014 and has received more than two thousand posts and has served a very useful purpose. Therefore we will be closing this Discussion group shortly. We will subsequently come out with a Discussion group on another relevant aspect of water management in the country.

We hope that you shall keep up the participation and continue enriching us with your views and suggestions. We would also expect the participants to keep focused on the topic of the discussion so that the ideas, experiences and knowledge are shared in a useful manner.

Thanks to all who participated in a very meaningful way.

Watershed Management Team, Department of Land Resources

Total Comments - 75

Leave a Reply

  • Aaditya Badhan - 9 years ago

    If water harvesting is made compulsory in urban areas, for buildings having more than 1000 square feet roof area area, the shortage of water condition can be converted into water effluent conditions. This has already been experimented in case of Chennai city where the Honorable Collector has made it possible in transforming the water scarcity into water effluent city by making it compulsory BY LAW while giving permission to construct new buildings and implementing it on existing big buildings.

  • Manoj Kabre - 9 years ago

    Subject: Thought of the day : Save water

    The following states in India have only 20 % water of what they need : Rajasthan, Delhi, Hariyana, Punjab, Gujarat. As per the survey and analysis, by 2030, the water availability across the country will go down by 50 % – are we doing enough to safeguard ourselves against these facts ?

    any remedies and initiatives ?

    Thanks

    Manoj Kabre
    A citizen.

  • Abhishek Singh - 9 years ago

    keeping the need of community three types of watersheds should be constructed in a community ,one for harvesting rain water & pisciculture,another for community use ,other for the use of cattle .this will helpin recharging the ground water will reduce the cost of cleanliness will reduce harvesting of ground water ,will resolve the problem of water crisis.Facility of pump for rechargig the community pond.Community and cattle pond should be engineered in fashion that evacu of comm pond recharge c

  • Jay Chan - 9 years ago

    Regarding Land acquisition, to encourage farmers and Raise a slogan "Gaon bachao, kethi sudharo ,Yuva sashakth banao". Also open a Kisan centre for land aquisition mediation, settlement conferences, neutral evaluation, and arbitration. Also website, contact numbers 24×7 to hear to farmers local problems and to help with active consultation process.

  • Dilip Kumar Sane - 9 years ago

    Importance of ground water tanks, lakes, ponds and such water bodies in any development program. Unfortunately in none of the National Development Programs any serious consideration has been given to the Tanks, lakes and ponds etc. despite their importance in conservation of ecosystem and enhancement of environment. Every development project at all levels (village, town, city, Mega City or Smart City) must include plans for creation and/or restoration of tanks/ponds and large indigenous trees.

  • sathiya moorthy - 9 years ago

    Assume that there are 100 cores water bore well in India
    While they filling water tanks, Water overflows after exceed that capacity of tank then only people switch off their Water Bore well Motors
    Each time they fill u their tanks approx two bucket of water wasted when overflows. Let as assume people fill u their water tanks twice a day

    100 cores of bore well*2 times of usage=200cores times of usage in a single day
    200 crores of usage *2 bucket of wasted water = 400 cores of bucket water wasted

  • Bhaskar Polisetty - 9 years ago

    Learn from the past and Go Ahead. In Chennai, Govt implemented mandatory rain water harvesting for each household which drastically improved the ground water levels. Why can’t we implement this across the country and make it mandatory to have rain water harvesting for each household. We can help our farmers to handle the drought situation by increasing the ground water levels and sustain the water levels in the wells, canals and lakes and revers. Need to rush rather it is too late.

  • parmanand patel - 9 years ago

    in our area there is so much problem for agriculture purpose as well as drinking water but no one is trying to do any thing due to politics.my request to shri modiji to plzzz help us our farmers are doing sucide due to such sillyy reason plzzz help us our area mamache mohide taluka shahade district nandurbar plzzzz help us….

  • Neeraj Kohli - 9 years ago

    It is necessary to understand the anatomy and physiology of river system.
    It is possible by study of thematic maps, preparing the action plan and implement in each of the micro watersheds simultaneously which will rejuvenate ground water and in turn entire river system.

    We at International Association for Human Values founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have been successfully working on such projects over last 2yrs. Our experts team is much sought after.

    +9199713566
    neeraj.kohli@iahv.org