Water Management

Water is becoming more and more scare with time both in the rural areas as well as the urban areas. This is largely because of bad management and wrong exploitation of water resources. Drinking water is a problem even in urban areas and so is the case in rural areas including water for irrigation. India has enough rains. Most of that water flows down into the sea taking with it the fertile top soil. It does not percolate down and as a result the ground water is also depleting fast, the water table going down and down almost everywhere. There are technologies available, both in the modern sector as well as in the traditional sector for better water management.

Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. It is a sub-set of water cycle management. Ideally, water resource management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. Water is an essential resource for all life on the planet. Of the water resources on Earth only three percent of it is fresh and two-thirds of the freshwater is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. Of the remaining one percent, a fifth is in remote, inaccessible areas and much seasonal rainfall in monsoonal deluges and floods cannot easily be used. As time advances, water is becoming scarcer and having access to clean, safe, drinking water is limited among countries. At present only about 0.08 percent of all the world’s fresh water is exploited by mankind in ever increasing demand for sanitation, drinking, manufacturing, leisure and agriculture. Due to the small percentage of water remaining, optimizing the fresh water we have left from natural resources has been a continuous difficulty in several locations worldwide.

Much effort in water resource management is directed at optimizing the use of water and in minimizing the environmental impact of water use on the natural environment. The observation of water as an integral part of the ecosystem is based on integrated water resource management, where the quantity and quality of the ecosystem help to determine the nature of the natural resources.

Successful management of any resources requires accurate knowledge of the resource available, the uses to which it may be put, the competing demands for the resource, measures to and processes to evaluate the significance and worth of competing demands and mechanisms to translate policy decisions into actions on the ground.

Advantages

वर्षा जल संग्रह से पेयजल एवं कृषि सिंचाई के लिए एक सम्पूर्ण एवं विश्वसनीय व्यवस्था स्थापित की जा सकती हैI अनेक ऐसी बीमारियाँ हैं जो अशुद्ध जल के कारण फैलती हैं जिनमे बड़ी कमी आयेगी और पुनः दवाइयों एवं अस्पतालों पर होने वाले खर्चों में कमी आयेगीI कृषि सिंचाई की विश्वसनीय व्यवस्था होने से खेती की पैदावार बढ़ेगी और एक बड़ा आर्थिक लाभ किसानों को होगाI साथ में गांवों में गंदे पानी की निकासी एवं जलोपचार से पुनः बीमारियाँ फैलने से रुकेंगी एवं पानी को सिंचाई आदि के लिए पुनर्चक्रण किया जा सकता है और ताजा जल की मांग में कमी आयेगी इससे भी एक बड़ा आर्थिक लाभ होगाI

Related Subject Expert Groups (SEGs)

Subject Expert	Institute	Co-ordinator	Contact
Watershed Development and Management of Rural Water Resources	IIT, Kharagpur	Dr. Brajesh Kumar Dubey Dept. of Civil Engg C1-80, IIT Campus, Kharagpur 721302	bkdubey@civil.iitkgp.ernet.in 09800121884, 03222282874