Rainwater Harvesting

Tanks are rainwater harvesting techniques which capture water during monsoons for later use. Mention of tanks in colonial texts is made and the authors infer from ancient texts like Tamil Purananuru on the importance of tanks and the locations for their construction, as well detailing their geographical spread.

The authors study three tanks; one each in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and find that almost all tanks in Southern India face similar problems that include farmers in command area being deprived of water, siltation, lack of proper maintenance of such structures, lack of political will to decentralise authority to tank institutions etc.

This paper uses secondary data to showcase the water bodies that were built in the Vijayanagar Empire. The author states that there were 88 such water bodies and these were used for irrigation purposes and also for consumption.

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

Guest Post by: Parineeta Dandekar

At the first sight, Daarche Paani (‘water at the doors’) appears unreal.. on a small flat plateau called ‘Sadaa’ in konkan, an elegant cobbled walkway leads a puzzled visitor to stairs carved in stone, which go down to an ancient grove, and here is an intricate system of tanks, channels and falls which supplies water to the Panderi village and goes down as a free flowing stream, to irrigate a plantation of arecanut, pepper and mangoes in a village called Gudaghe. When I visited the place, I could see three eminent visitors, a silent lady washing her load of clothes, a fairy bluebird splashing at a tank and a huge moonmoth in one of the trees.

Stone walkway and ancient mango trees leading to Daarche Paani.
Photo: Parineeta Dandekar

How SGWISS could support the Rainwater Harvesting? 

The main source of sweet water is Rain, but the water available from the rain is not regular and uniformly spread throughout year. So the rainwater could be stored by any method in rain. When the rainwater is stored on the surface but there would not be sufficient capacities of structures developed for the rainwater harvesting. Little quantity of the rainwater is recharged in the subsurface and underground.

These Articles analyse and detail the issues of rainwater harvesting and river pollution

The three booklets discuss the issues of water quality, river pollution, and rainwater harvesting, in detail.

Organizer: Rain Water Concepts (I) Pvt Ltd

Venue: ACC Limited, Gauribidanur, Karnataka

Description:

The entire project was designed and executed by Rain Water Concepts (I) Pvt Ltd, Bangalore. Mr. Ayyappa Masagi is the Founder Director of the company who was a Mechanical Engineer with L&T Komatsu, Bangalore prior to this stint.

Article and Image Courtesy: Acumen Fund
Author: James Wu

The judges votes are in, and we’re excited to announce the winners for the Search for the Obvious Sanitation is Sexy challenge.