Introduction

India is not a water poor country, but due to increasing human population,
technological advancement, lost traditional values and over-exploitation of
this resource, water is becoming a scarce commodity. India is more
vulnerable because of the growing population and in-disciplined lifestyle.
This calls for immediate attention by the stakeholders to preserve the water
for future and make sustainable use of the available water resources.
Water Availability Statistics:
Earth is known as blue planet because 70% of the earth surface is covered
with water. But the availability of the fresh water is only 3% and can be used
by human beings, remaining 97% of this water is sea water and it is salty.
Out of the total fresh water, 69.7% is frozen in ice caps, 30% is stored
underground and only 0.3% water is available on the surface of the earth.
Out of the surface water, 87% is stored in lakes, 11% in swamp and 2% in
rivers.
Root causes of Indias water crisis
Indias water crisis is rooted in three causes:
1) Insufficient water per person as a result of population growth.
2) Poor water quality resulting from insufficient and delayed investment in
urban water-treatment facilities. Water in most rivers in India is largely
not fit for drinking, and in many stretches not even fit for bathing.
3) Dwindling groundwater supplies due to over-extraction of water. This is
because groundwater is an open-access resource and anyone can
pump water from under his or her own land.
Indias eleventh five-year plan (200712) covered some 15 mh with
watershed development, and many NGO-led efforts have shown the
programs success.
For example,

Anna Hazare has transformed the village of Ralegan Siddhi in

Maharashtra into a model sustainable village through water harvesting
and cooperation.
Another example is Rajendra Singh, whose NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh
has transformed the Alwar District of Rajasthan through communitybased efforts in water harvesting and water management. Singh is
known as the waterman of India and was awarded the Ramon
Magsaysay Award in 2001.
Similarly, with the support of the government, NGOs, community
groups, and other civil society organizations, the state of Gujarat has
built over 100,000 check dams. Some economists have attributed

Gujarats 8%-plus growth rate of agricultural GDP to these efforts.

The Environmental management concepts that we are going to look into are:

Pareto Optimal Path: Taking Environment along with development

Role of Institutions in developing rain water harvesting Structure in
both rural and urban areas
How the problem of partial property rights and the tragedy of
commons faced by ground water is solved by the market based
institutions
How you can achieve sustainability if you convert common pool
resources to common property resources.

We have done secondary research on best practices and model developed

for rain water harvesting in rural and urban areas. Finally we have
recommended our suggestion for the sustainable growth and improvement in
current situation.
Case Studies
1) Rural Case Study, Rain water harvesting in Alwar, Rajasthan:
This case study has a specific importance because of two main reason
Alwar was the place where rain water harvesting structure were
implemented in such a large scale in very short period of time and
become famous for its best practices.
Second reason was Rajendra Singh who has taken the initiative to
develop rain water structure in rajasthan. He has recently won
Stockholm Water Prize, an award known as "the Nobel Prize for
water", in 2015. Also his name was published in UK newspaper The
Guardian among top 50 people who can save the world.
Characteristics of district Alwar:
Recurring drought had been the big issue before 1984 in alwar, there were
60% arid region and 40% semi-arid region. Average rainfall was only 600mm
and 90% rain used to occur in monsoon season between July to September.
78% people were dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Below are the
figure mentioning livelihood and rainfall pattern of alwar.

Livelihood pattern

Rainfall pattern (Between 1984 to

2000)

Problem faced by common

public

Recurring drought
Scarcity of water
resources
Scarcity of food
Scarcity of fodder
Scarcity of water for
livestock
Erosion & Silting during
rainfall

Consequences

Women spending around 4 8 hrs to fetch

water
Malnutrition & Sickness
Low agriculture production in dearth of
water for irrigation
Distress Migration of youths from villages
to cities in search of employment
Girl child doesnt able to go to school as
they have to do household chores in
absence of their mothers
Increase in cattle's death

Methodology of rain water harvesting

Rain water harvesting structure (Johad)

Working methodology
Johads are simple, usually
semicircular, mud barriers built
across the hill slopes to arrest
the monsoon runoff.
During the rainy season, excess
water is stored in the well and
during summer season, stored
water is johad recharges
groundwater and water level in
well is maintained.

Rain water harvesting Structure

ANICUTS: It is built on common land,
Generally made of cement and stone
or concrete, impacts largely on local
groundwater

JOHADS: It is small earthen dams

shaped like a crescent moon and
the purposes are for livestock
drinking and bathing

MEDHBANDHIS: It is constructed in
cultivated fields. The lower sides of
the fields are raised to retain runoff to
increase retaining moisture for
agriculture

TANKAS: It is underground
structure for collecting rain water
for human drinking purpose

Benefits:
Groundwater level in 1985 &
1994

Direct Benefit

Indirect Benefit

Provides water
for drinking &
irrigation,
Increases
agriculture
production,
Controls erosion
and silting. There
are also many
domestic
purpose like
washing and
cooking.

Increase biomass
productivity,
Gives women more time
to child-care,
Encourages micro
entrepreneurship like
dairy, utensils or
sculpture business.
Increases milk and milk
products
And better impact on
health and hygiene.

Standard Practices:

Awareness in the community: Set up the traditional value among

community through promoting Awareness of various aspects of water
management, retain respect for culture and historical practices.
Determination to work together for communitys common goal.

Working Strategy: Traditional methods of building rain water harvesting

structure has to be restored along with technological equipment. All
decisions including technical, sitedecision, materials, design will be
taken by Village Councils. All decisions by consensus, and not majority.
Minimum 30% of total cost contribution by community rest from
support agencies through TBS.

Operation & maintenance: Community will be responsible to maintain

rain water structure.

Water-Abstraction and use management: River based organizations will

be promoted which will be responsible for planning & enforcing
sustainable use of water.

2) Rural Case Study, Model of Ralegan Siddhi

The village in 1975 was a below poverty line area where illicit liquor
trading flourished. The per capita Income was unbelievably low at Rs 271.
To improve the condition Anna Hazare made the use of the most
widespread informal institution religion to bind people in to
working for water harvesting and stop environment hampering
practices like overgrazing. He built a temple and baptized the people and
made them take 5 vows:
Prohibition
Family planning
Ban on open grazing
Ban on felling trees
Voluntary labor
Voluntary labor was one of the vows, to reduce dependence on other
formal institutions like government for getting the work done. According
to Anna Hazare, It socialized the costs of the projects.
There was a dam (embankment) nearby which had cracks and leaked due
to which the village didnt get water and the 7 wells always remained
empty. People repaired it due to voluntary labor and for the first time in
villages history, the summer witnessed all 7 wells over-full of water.
When the people saw abundance of water, their trust in the system
grew, and this trust helped to create social capital which penalizes
those who misuse the resources and helped everybody to have access to
the resources and hence saving the water from the tragedy of commons.
The learning from this case study is that, how a common pool
resource was converted to a common property resource and by
using social costs, the people themselves were made to guard the
source for that small area.

Urban Rain Water Harvesting

In urban India, Roof Top Rain Water harvesting is the most common practice especially for
domestic purpose. The advantages of adopting this technique are the minimum requirement of
investment, applicability at small scale as well as large scale and minimum requirement of
expertise. The water collected on the roof top can be used in multifold ways, it could either be
used for ground water recharging or for direct consumption. The given picture illustrates the
procedure of roof top rain water harvesting.

Bangalore case study

The southern part of Karnataka incorporates Bangalore which is one of the regions under normal
rain fall. The annual rain fall in Bangalore is 970mm which occurs from April to November.
From 1984 till present day the annual rain fall has remained consistent but with the increase in
population every year Bangalore has started facing water scarcity issues.
The following graph shows the average rain fall in Bangalore.
It was observed that population grew up to 1000000 in 2007 from 290000 in 1980. This
tremendous increment resulted in devastating effect on water availability in the city and the per
capita availability of water dropped down to 1000 meter cubic in 2010 from 2000 meter cubic in
1991. This resulted in an annual demand supply gap of 49.28 billion liters of water. Rain water
harvesting project in Bangalore was proposed in the year 2011. The following chart describes the
details of the project.

Chennai
study

case

Chennai receives an annual

rain fall of 1200-1300mm
during north-east and southwest monsoon. The following
graph shows the average
rainfall in Chennai.

This is higher as compared to the average rainfall in India. But alike every
metro it also faces the scarcity of water. In order to resolve this issue, Tamil
Nadu government launched The rain water harvesting scheme in 2001. The
following calculation gives brief idea about the amount of water collected
through rain water harvesting in Chennai.

For a building with a flat terrace area of 100 sq.m.,

Average annual rainfall
= 1,300 mm = 1.3 m
Total volume of water which falls on this area during a year
= 100 sq.m. x 1.30 m
= 130 m3 = 130 x 1000
= 130,000 liters
Assuming that 60% of this water can be harvested
effectively, the volume harvested in a year
= 60/100 x 130,000 liters
= 78,000 liters
or 78,000 liters /365 = 214 liters /day per house
Following the implementation of RWH systems, the city in 2005, saw a record annual rainfall of
250 cm. When surveys were carried out, they showed that the water table had gone up by 20 feet.

References
1) http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=356
2) http://gwadi.org/sites/gwadi.org/files/CaseAlwar2.pdf

3) http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/iwmi-tata_html/PartnersMeet/pdf/001Abhi.pdf
4) http://schools.indiawaterportal.org/sites/default/files/water-harvestingsystem.pdf
5) http://web.undp.org/drylands/docs/drought/ADAF4/2.5.Singh.pdf