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Solutions for Water Scarcity Management

Water scarcity is a growing challenge due to factors like climate change and population growth. Some solutions to address water scarcity include inter-linking rivers, maintaining unencroached water bodies, preventing river pollution, and harvesting rainwater. Inter-linking rivers requires cooperation between states and sustained political will to complete expensive, long-term projects. Watershed management through multiple uses of water projects can help with agriculture, drinking water and power generation, but many water bodies are encroached or silted. India has a long history of water harvesting through structures like stepwells, but more prudent planning is needed to design and maintain water systems for future population needs.

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450 views2 pages

Solutions for Water Scarcity Management

Water scarcity is a growing challenge due to factors like climate change and population growth. Some solutions to address water scarcity include inter-linking rivers, maintaining unencroached water bodies, preventing river pollution, and harvesting rainwater. Inter-linking rivers requires cooperation between states and sustained political will to complete expensive, long-term projects. Watershed management through multiple uses of water projects can help with agriculture, drinking water and power generation, but many water bodies are encroached or silted. India has a long history of water harvesting through structures like stepwells, but more prudent planning is needed to design and maintain water systems for future population needs.

Uploaded by

ramesh r
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Solution for Water Scarcity

Water is elixir of life, goes the proverb. Given the rise in global warming, the scarcity of living spaces and
need to provide for people remains a challenge to the planners. Lesser or more rainfall always causes
damage to the environs. Therefore, a solution for managing water resources wisely remains a constant
problem for the Water managers. Earlier in water scarce regions such as Chettinadu region, water
bodies were fed by the rains that fell on the region, earmarking each water body in the village for a
specific purpose such as drinking, washing and bathing.

There are several ways that can be thought for the solution of water scarcity such as:

1. Inter-linking of rivers
2. Maintaining encroachment free water bodies.
3. Pollution free rivers
4. Harvesting rain water

The first and foremost one, the inter-linking of rivers calls for an overall agreement of sharing water
between the States and the political will to finish projects within stipulated period and budget. Projects
have been dragging for years together. One example to cite is the Periyar link canal which provides
water from Thekkady in Kerala to the water starved districts Sivagangai and Ramnad in Tamilnadu. This
project was overseen by a team of engineers and funded by the World Bank. Several studies regarding
the inter-linking of major rivers in India, geographically have been done over the years and few of them
implemented such as Godavari-Krishna link and Krishna-Pennar link in the final stages. Given the cost
over runs and the change of course of rivers, the inter-links may not work after a century.

The watershed management is crucial with focus on multiple use of the projects-mainly agriculture and
drinking water with ancillary power generation. Water bodies are often encroached by private and
government for want of land space and during heavy rains get flooded and contaminated for no further
use. Dams built during the second half of the last century or earlier have been greatly silted and water
storage is lesser to the extent of 10% lesser. However continuous usage of these water bodies makes it
nearly impossible to de-silt them. Most of the urban water bodies have been converted into building
spaces and the aftermath of rains have witnessed major flooding such as the Chennai floods, a few years
ago.

Water harvesting is not a new thing to India. The world-famous Rani-Ki-Vav is a very good example of
storing water in stepwells in the parched State of Gujarat. Among several structures excavated our
Capital New Delhi had several stepwells in its area. For long, India’s cultural and social history has been
along water courses, in which our forefathers had designed water harvesting structures. Several rulers
have constructed dams, water bodies and stepwells and many of them are still in use, even after a 2000-
year period. Given the vagaries of the monsoons which the Indian sub-continent largely depends on for
water, there is a need for more prudent planning in designing new waterways and maintaining them,
with the population raise in mind.
Stringent enforcement to keep our rivers clean- water despite the fact that people know that rivers are
the lifeline sources of water, pollution levels in rivers remain constantly high. The most venerated river
in India, aptly called Maa Ganga, remains the most abused river too. A dam in Tirupur district remained
unopened for several years, because the downstream villages of the River Noyyal objected to the
opening and the residue had polluted groundwater tables around the dam- reason the dyeing industry
had not treated its effluents.

To conclude, managing water resources should be the prime focus of the planners in the current
scenario and for the future. It calls for a multi-pronged approach in employing the factors involved in the
four topics given above. If we fail to manage the water resources, the future may not be bright. Hence,
we should respect what nature has given us, then abuse it.

Ramesh Rajagopalan

Assistant/ Devakottai

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