Most ground nearly everywhere is sloping in various degrees. Much more so in the hills. One way to easily and repeatedly catch rain water run off is to dig staggered contour trenches wherever possible. In forests, in grasslands, on marginal lands both government and private. The forest departments could do this in a big way instead of mindlessly growing plantations after plantations which in most cases fail anyway. This strategy will also help so much of the root stock in the soil to come up, we would need very little plantation after that. Grasses would come up in a big way too. even if a fraction of the billions of cubic meters of rainwater percolates into the ground, we could be sitting on a water boom!