Inventory of water bodies

The first ever census of the water bodies of country has led to compilation of a comprehensive inventory of natural and man-made water bodies such as lakes, ponds, tanks etc. Knowing the actual status of the ecosystem of these water bodies will be useful for drawing perspective planning for addressing the issue of freshwater availability in the country. One of the key findings of the survey is that of the total 24.24 lakh water bodies, 97.1% are in rural areas and only 2.9% are in urban areas. This indicates the challenges of water availability in urban areas and why water conservation and measures like rain water harvesting in cities and towns need to be prioritized by municipal corporations/local bodies apart from policy push by the central and state governments. The Census report highlights that from being a water abundant country India is gradually progressing towards water scarcity due to increasing population pressure and urbanization which is a cause for concern. The Census defines all natural or man-made units bounded on all sides with some or no masonry work used for storing water for irrigation or other purposes (e.g. industrial, pisciculture, domestic/drinking, recreation, religious, ground water recharge etc.) as well as structures where water from ice-melt, streams, springs, rain or drainage of water from residential or other areas is accumulated or water is stored by diversion from a stream, or river as water bodies. About 78% of water bodies are man-made and 22% are natural water bodies. Majority of man-made water bodies are earthen in nature and have original cost of construction up to Rs. 1 lakh which point towards huge investments involved. Ponds account for 59.5% of water bodies is ponds, tanks account for 15.7% whereas 12.1%, 9.3% and 0.9% water bodies are reservoirs, water conservation schemes/ checkdams/ percolation tanks, and lakes. About 55.9% water bodies in rural areas across the country are used for pisciculture, 16.8% for Irrigation, 12.1% for ground water recharges, 9.9% for domestic use/ drinking water, and remaining for recreation, industrial, religious and other purposes. The Census figures present interesting facts about Assam. The state figures among top five states in number of water bodies and account for 7.1% the country’s water bodies with West Bengal leading that chart with 30%. Of the total 1.72 lakh water bodies in Assam 95.3% are privately owned and remaining 4.7% are under public ownership. This is in sharp contrast to the overall scenario in the country of 55.2% (13,38,735) water bodies being owned by private entities and 44.8% (10,85,805) are under public ownership. Of the water bodies in use in the state, 90% account for pisciculture, 7.95% for domestic/drinking, and only 0.31% for irrigation. Increasing fish productivity in ponds is crucial to make the state become self-sufficient fish production and end dependence on procurement of fish from other states to meet its demand. The state continues to procure about 78 MT of fish daily from other states despite 90% of water bodies used for pisciculture. The data from the Census will be useful in projecting realistic fish production goals and increasing income of fisher folk. Dominance of private ownership of the water bodies in Assam is a crucial input for policy planners. It also indicates that schemes and projects which are primarily aimed at water bodies under public ownership will essentially leave out major stakeholders of water bodies in the state. Therefore, instead of a top down approach, the bottom up approach with enthusiastic participation of private pond owners is needed in policy planning. Out of all water bodies in the state, 4% (6,983) are covered in District Irrigation Plan/State Irrigation Plan. Among these 97.1% (6,779) are ponds and the remaining 2.9% (204) are tanks, lakes, reservoirs etc. Facilitating private pond owners to give feedback in respect of various policies on water bodies in the state will help policy planner articulate robust plans and policies. For domain experts too, feedback of private owners is vital for coming up with pragmatic policy prescription or evaluation of government schemes, projects and policies. Reaching out to every single private pond owners is critical to building awareness on management of water bodies across the state. Facilitating a network among pond owners can help sharing of management issues and solutions provided by experts will help build resilience of pond owners in the state against climate change impact on their primary livelihood of fish farming. Census data shows that 3,140 water bodies are not in use on account of drying up, siltation, salinity, destroyed beyond repair and other reasons while 13 water bodies including 12 are under encroachment. Easy accessibility of disaggregated census data of enumerated water bodies at the village level will be crucial in decentralized policy planning. Updating the data by conducting periodic census of water bodies will make the inventory resourceful.