Water body census: It is a welcome initiative
In a first-ever count of its kind, a census has recorded an overwhelming disparity between rural and urban areas in terms of water bodies. The report highlights that cities and towns have less than 3 per cent of these reservoirs. Conducted by the Jal Shakti ministry, the survey included natural and human-made water repositories like ponds, tanks, and lakes. With nearly 7,50,00 water bodies, West Bengal tops the list. The country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is a distant second with about 2,50,000 repositories. At a time when stressed aquifers pose difficult ecological, economic and policy challenges — including for the government’s flagship scheme of providing drinking water to every household — the significance of this database cannot be overstated. With details on the size, encroachment status and storage capacity of the water bodies, the report could help policymakers arrive at informed decisions on matters as diverse as urban planning and rural employment generation schemes.
The Centre has been conducting a census of minor irrigation structures every five years since 1986. Much of the data indirectly compiled from the population Census by government agencies has also focused on minor irrigation works. The irrigation-centred approach was, to an extent, a fallout of the inclination of successive governments to view tanks, ponds and canals as economic utilities, rather than critical resources for human and ecological well-being. In the past two decades, there have been some attempts at course correction. The UPA government, for instance, launched the Repair, Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies scheme in 2005 and MGNREGA works have focussed on reviving traditional water bodies. But the lack of a comprehensive database has meant that these projects have not done sufficient justice to their objectives. The significance of the current study is underscored by the fact that it counted nearly five times the number of repositories enumerated by the last minor irrigation survey in 2013-14. The past studies did not have much data on urban centres. The enumeration of tanks, lakes and other water sources in cities and towns was left, largely, to civil society outfits and academic institutions. Such endeavours did provide valuable insights into the depletion of lakes in cities such as Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Srinagar and Bengaluru. The government’s entry into the field is sure to make the data richer.
That said, such enumeration initiatives will not do adequate justice to their objectives if they remain top-down affairs. Making panchayats, municipalities and other local bodies the nodal points for future water body surveys as well as roping in civil society groups in the endeavour could help policymakers arrive at a better picture of the water crisis, and frame solutions