Rajasthan

This set of case studies is part of a book prepared by Lokayan in collaboration with the Planning Commission titled “Seeds of Hope", covers themes of agricultur

Desilting is becoming a major component of any Lake Conservation Project now a days. The basic reasons given for necessity of desilting are - increasing the storage capacity and checking eutrophic conditions.

As it is not practicable to reverse the slow process of silting in the bed of lakes through which only silt can be removed, there is no word like 'desilting' in any standard English dictionary. What we are doing in the name of 'desilting' is practically 'digging' or 'excavation' of lake bed. By so called desilting, the original lake bed is disturbed which has far reaching adverse effects on the performance of the lake. Most visible effect is the increase in percolation rate resulting in heavy seepage losses through the lake bed as observed after massive desilting at Pushkar lake in 2009.

We have adopted the metric system long back (1957) and there was a grace period of 10 years for transition from British units to metric units.

The Rajasthan State Water Policy 2010, describes the critical status of water in Rajasthan in terms of:

• The growing imbalance between demand and supply of water
• Uncertainty in availability of water
• Inequity in access to water
• Low operational efficiency of water resource development projects
• Depleting groundwater resources and deteriorating quality of water
• High cost of service, low cost recovery and low level of expenditure
• Lack of ownership among stakeholders

The policy has evolved out of the earlier policy documents and intends to function from the new perspective of Integrated Water Resources Management, which is holistic and includes a bottom up approach.

The study uses Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to simulate the flow and erosion processes in Sallopat watershed of Mahi river basin in Banswara, Rajasthan. The WEPP model is a distributed, continuous, small agricultural watershed erosion model. It can simulate the effects of management practices and land use changes on the spatial and temporal variability of the erosion processes within a watershed system. The major features of this model are the ability to –

• Delineate areas of detachment and deposition on a hill slope or along a channel reach
• Account for the effects of management and land use changes on the erosion process
• Account for the effects of backwater on detachment, transport and deposition processes within channels

In the present study, design flood estimation of Morel catchment of Rajasthan state is computed using the Synder approach, regional relationships as proposed by Central Water Commission, Clark's model, Soil Conservation Services (SCS) method and Geomorphological Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (GIUH) based approach. 

The study looks at the various processes and mechanisms of wind erosion as well as the factors that contribute to the increase or decrease of wind erosion in desert areas in the particular context of the Great Indian Desert. The method of estimation of soil loss in a desert area due to wind as suggested by Woodruff and Siddoway on the lines of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is explained.

The mutton bearing lands of the nation are in trouble.

Guest Post by: Kurush Canteenwala

It is the week after Holi and we are sitting in Netsinh, 8 kilometers from Ramgadh, 65 kilometres from Jaisalmer City, in Jaisalmer District. Derawar Singh is throwing a daavat for the new tractor that he has purchased, and bakra has been cut for the occasion. Netsinh has a population of 250 families, all of whom are pashupalans, ‘animal caretakers’ and they have been in this location for at least 12 generations. One Net Singh, a common ancestor to most of the village, settled here. Amidst the half day long festivities, the conversation revolves around the growing evidence that they are in the midst of both, an ‘akaal’ and a deadly outbreak of disease. The numbers of bhed-bakri that are dropping dead has not been seen by the elders amongst them in 30 years.

The Water Resources Department of the Government of Rajasthan, has made available, station-level, daily rainfall data from 1973-2008, for all districts of Rajasthan, on its website.

In order to make this data of better value to end-users, the India Water Portal has extracted and made this data available in a district-wise spreadsheet format, which you can download with a single click.

While extracting the data, we observed some discrepancies in the master data on the website. These notes can be viewed here.

In one year the small village of Gadrata, Rajasthan earned 0.15 Million US$

The secret: Rainwater Harvesting

Seekar, Rajasthan, India

This is the success story of the small village of Gadrata and its hamlets (overall about 50-55 families) in the Seekar district of Rajasthan and how water means gold!

A few years ago Smt. Amla Ruia, Chairperson of Aakar Charitable Trust and a resident of Mumbai, Maharashtra, motivated and supported the villagers of Gadrata to build a Check Dam to solve their water problems. Until that time groundwater levels in their wells were in serious decline.