Water Management

The state government's investments in supplying potable water under the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) scheme which envisaged a no tanker supply' end to the scheme is critiqued. The authors note that the project mainly concentrated on asset creation, neglecting operation and maintenance resulting in limited improvement in villages, with respect to water supply.

There is mention of the importance of water in daily life in various prayers in the Rigveda. The author states that the earliest evidence of water conservation goes back to 3000 B. C. when Gabarbands were built in Baluchisthan. The Harappans built tanks and wells and were pioneers of well-digging technology.

This website by the Yale University provides information on the global and countrywise ratings for environmental performance in the form of Environmental Performance Indices (EPI) for different countries. The site also provides details of EPI scores for India in comparison with the average scores globally.

This index was developed from the Pilot Environmental Performance Index, first published in 2002, and designed to supplement the environmental targets set forth in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Performance_Index)

The author looks at three ancient Kannada and Sanskrit texts - Lokoparam, Manasollasa, Shivatattvaratnakara. All these texts were written between the 12th and 18th century. These texts record hydrological data ranging from cloud formation to traditional methods of preserving potable water.

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 explores Surangas, which are an ancient water system based on tunnels bored horizontally on the slopes of hills to get drinking water. These structures are mainly found in the laterite soils of Dakshina Kannada region and some parts of Kerala and Goa.

This paper presents the status of lakes in Mysore. It gives emphasis to the Socio-Economic Natural Complex - Lake Ecosystems (SENCLE) model of lake preservation and management which includes socio-technical aspects of lake care.

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.

The author gives a brief history of tank irrigation in South India. The number of irrigation tanks in India were 208,000, of which 120,000 were in the three Southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. These tanks irrigated 1.8 million hectares. The author uses graphs to point out to the decline in tank irrigation.

The basic objectives of this study were -