Usher in Jala Prabha this monsoon

With water woes plaguing many parts of the country, various governmental and non-governmental agencies have decided to take up various measures, including strict implementation of the provision of water harvesting in every house.

With the onset of monsoon, it is apt to take up rainwater harvesting to mitigate the water problem and ensure water security in the future. Rainwater harvesting is a technology used for collecting and storing rainwater from rooftops, the land surface or rock catchments using simple techniques such as jars and pots as well as more complex techniques such as underground check dams.

The techniques usually found in various villages across the nation arise from practices employed by ancient civilizations within these regions and still serve as a major source of drinking water supply in the rural areas.

In the most basic form of this technology, rainwater is collected in simple vessels at the edge of the roof. Variations on this basic approach include collection of rainwater in gutters which drain to the collection vessel through down-pipes constructed for this purpose, or the diversion of rainwater from the gutters to containers for settling particulates before being conveyed to the storage container for the domestic use.

In Kerala, the land of paradoxes, rainfall exceeds 3 metres a year and yet there is a drought every summer. Thrissur district in the central part of Kerala has hills on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. Each summer, wells dry up and people call in tankers. In the coastal areas, the groundwater is saline, as seawater enters the aquifers.

In the mid-altitudes, water quality is compromised by untreated sewage from towns and villages as well as leachates from pit toilets. In rural areas, households are far apart, making piped water schemes costly. People use their wells as the water source.

Concerned by recurrent droughts from March to May every year, the administration of the Thrissur district decided to do something different. The state government has thought of rainwater-linked well recharge scheme.

A government order in February specified the institutional structure for running the project. The cost was Rs 5,000 per household for the pipes and other material. Householders do the work themselves... It takes less than a week to set up a system.

This approach integrates water security with livelihoods. In Delhi, the water problem is so harsh that the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) has recently decided to “strictly” implement the provision of water harvesting in every plot measuring 100 square metres or more. “The problem of water is worsening with water level going down which has necessitated water harvesting. We will strictly follow related rules for equipping buildings and other plots,” said an NDMC official.

It is interesting to note that a unique rainwater harvesting plan by a tiny village in Madhya Pradesh has revived a dry pond. In 2008, children played cricket on the dry bed of the big pond (bada talab) at the outskirts of Jhabua town in MP each summer. With rainwater quickly draining off the rocky soil and hilly terrain, the rain-fed dry pond was a symbol of the rapidly depleting groundwater level in this tribal-dominated region.

The pond is full again because of a unique community rainwater harvesting initiative by the tribals living around it. They have dug up contour trenches on hillocks around the lake at regular intervals to allow rainwater to percolate underground to raise the water table.

Now people living in a cluster of eight to ten settlements in villages neighbouring Hathipawa hillock, where the trenches were dug over a 2 square km area, are getting water in hand pumps and tube wells around the year.

Before the trenches, the terrain and the underlying geological structure led to most of the average annual rainfall of 850 mm draining away, leaving the soil dry and the groundwater availability low, showed a study by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) in Jhabua.

Recently, the Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) has decided to set up rainwater harvesting systems in residential areas and residential/ commercial schemes in the city. The trust has warned the residents of severe action if they failed to set up rainwater harvesting mechanisms at their buildings, including forfeiting of the security deposit.

Even at home in Hyderabad, Telangana DGP Anurag Sharma has asked all policemen in the State to take up water harvesting at all police stations, complexes and surroundings.

Participating in a programme for building water harvesting pits in DGP’s office, he said that saving every drop of water by controlling water usage and through water harvesting techniques was essential in view of water scarcity across the State. “The police should consider it as a social responsibility act to conserve water for the sake of future generations,” he said.