Conservation of Water

Don’t take the curse : Conserve water and we can do it…

Day by day water is becoming a scarce resource which is needed for everyday life. All the civilizations started and flourished along the water resources like rivers.
Our country has farm based economy with predominant number of villages. Now the erstwhile villages have become towns and the towns have become cities. Villages had well in their houses, community wells and lakes in every village. Because of all these things water shortage was very less. These were also responsible for the maintenance of the water table.
But now in the cities we have apartments everywhere and now no wells or much lakes. The existing ones have been encroached to make that place for an apartment.
Now consider coastal Karnataka, this has a rainfall of about 4000 mm. Irrespective of this; the region is going to be perched for water during the summer.
In 2011, I was travelling with a renowned person of Cambodia by road from Goa to Mangalore and by looking at the hills, rivers, islands he quipped “Prof. Pai, you have abundant opportunity for tourism and you may not be having any water scarcity any time”. I gave a pale smile to him, yes we have abundant resources for tourism but we are not utilizing it and we have water scarcity during summer because it is not conserved and managed properly.
In the coastal region the water table—the depth underground from where water may be extracted—in the month of September in this year is 5.06 meters as compared to 2.34 meters in September 2013. If this is the case the coastal region may have difficult days ahead and the solution for this problem is not a rocket science.
The solution is all the ‘lakes’, ‘madagas’, ‘community wells’ must be rejuvenated. During the rainy season these assets must be made to hold the water and these can be used to feed the water to fields and population alike. For this Government may need to take initiatives. But again there are lot of hurdles to obtain government approvals and funding. Many NGO’s work for education in other parts of our country and what we need now is NGO’s to help, educate about water conservation.
One can conserve water in their home itself as charity must begin from home. I have my house constructed in the year 2007 and we did not have Municipality water in our area and I had a well and in that year itself in April first week no water in the well and I had to get water from the neighbours. So during that rainy season I made a pit of around 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep at distance of about 6 feet from the well and there were two more such pits in which coconut plants were planted. The water from the roof of my house and from the compound of my house was made to get accumulated in these 3 pits.
I had a great result next year itself and the water level in my well had risen by about 6 to 8 inches and did not face any water shortage that year onwards. This accumulation of water is continued and in the major portion around my house I have not put concrete and still have the mud floor so the water gets soaked in the ground.
So now everyone can try this in their house or in their apartments so that the water should be conserved and the water table gets enhanced. Consider the case of Dr. Rajendra Singh the “water man of India” who bought back water to more than 1000 villages in Rajasthan by conserving water by utilizing the traditional systems.
If we do not act now without waiting for the bureaucracy we will be responsible for ourselves to take the curse of the future generation and environment.