Seminar, April 2016
Water conservation: a dying wisdom
SUNITA NARAIN
WATER has been harvested in South Asia since antiquity. Evidence of this tradition can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions, local traditions and archeological remains. There is some evidence of advanced water harvesting systems even from pre historic times. ThePuranas, Mahabharata, Ramayanaand various Vedic, Buddhist and Jain texts contain references to canals, tanks, embankments and wells. Numerous treatises on agriculture and architecture provide detailed information.
The information contained in Kautilya’sArthashastrafinds corroboration in inscriptions and archeological remains. The terms used in the original text relating to water harvesting systems are several –setufor embankment or dam for storing water;parivahafor channel;tatakafor tank;nadyayatanafor water from a river;nandiniband-hayatanafor a structure dependent on a river such as a dam;nibadhayatanafor canals from a river dam andkhatafor a well.
When Europeans first arrived in South Asia in the 15th century, it was possibly the richest and most highly urbanized region in the world. The quest for the subcontinental wealth launched the age of discovery in Europe. With the setting up of the East India Company in 1600 AD, the looting and pauperization of the region began. This loot played a key financial role in providing the investment needed for Britain’s Industrial Revolution from 1760-1840. British administrators had their hearts set on increasing government revenues. They hardly noticed the native villages and, therefore their internal capacity to manage their natural resource base. To what extent they were internally oppressive is difficult to say, but these villages functioned like little republics which managed their own resources. The local governance structures varied from one part of the country to another. Agricultural prosperity was vital for the financial health of the pre-British kingdoms of South Asia. Water harvesting structures were left to the local community to manage and maintain, including the establishment of rules for sharing water, penalizing offenders and making payments to those who managed the water distribution.
The British destroyed the village-based water management systems by building state controlled bureaucracies and by raising land revenue. This was done to a point that in drought years it could mean handing over the entire crop in the form of taxes. Payments had to be made in cash, it meant that the peasantry could be manipulated even further. The village communities could no longer raise enough internal resources to manage their irrigation structures and thus agriculture and incomes declined to a point that undivided India became a nation chronically affected by famines and destitution. Much of the current crisis of water in the region goes back to these times when traditional systems were substituted for reasons of economic exploitation and the vital link of living in harmony with the environment was snapped.
One of the main hurdles in the development of South Asia’s irrigation system is that its management has been piecemeal due to the compartmentalization of the administrative structure. The subcontinent has been mining groundwater which may be as much as 7000 years old. Groundwater subsurface storage dams are small-scale options to conserve and efficiently tap it. Traditional water harvesting systems have passed the test of time and are suited to economic environments but a mere replication of the past may be counterproductive. There is an urgent need to review the region’s irrigation policies as they have been practiced over the last five decades. It is essential to rehabilitate the traditional systems that already exist. This activity should become part of employment guarantee programmes and other schemes of land and water improvement.
Several models exist for the development of community institutions to manage traditional water harvesting systems. The efforts to develop panipanchayats by the Gram GauravPratishthan in villages in Pune district of India, the brilliant cascading tank system of Sri Lanka, thekanaatsof Afghanistan finding replication in Kerala, the waterways of Colombo, the rice cultivation systems of Myanmar, on road water harvesting systems of Maldives are a few points of references among many that need wider recognition and understanding.
Local management systems will depend on the nature of water harvesting systems, historical traditions of the area, local sociopolitical realities and government policies. Since thousands of South Asian villages still do not have any local source of drinking water, water harvesting structures can play a useful role in meeting the survival needs of the people. The government is seen as a destroyer of these traditional systems. Hence, the burden of educating the people and spreading awareness among them falls on the voluntary sector. Local initiatives in this regard need to be supported.
In recent years, several efforts to revive small-scale water harvesting systems have been undertaken across the subcontinent. Successful field experiments are being carried out at the grassroots level. The need of the hour is to learn from these experiments of voluntary organizations and to encourage these pioneering efforts on a large scale.