Accepted Papers - 3.pdf - UNESCO

Infact, these are ‘lessons’ that cannot and must not
be confined only to farmers but to all communities
in all parts of the country – rural and urban because
the availability of potable water is becoming
increasingly scarce. In urban areas where people
depend mainly on the municipal supply, residents
of housing complexes shell out up to Rs. 1000/- per
tanker to meet their hygiene and sanitation needs
while educational institutions are often not able to
maintain desirable standards of hygiene because of
the lack of water. These are costly temporary
solutions to permanent problems. Hence the need
for Rain Water Harvesting which is not only much
cheaper but also far more effective . Infact, it is I
think, the only solution to present and future water
problems – a solution that has its roots in our
historical past. And this solution will not catch on
unless a concentrated effort is made to create
awareness of the benefits of the solution. Thus arises
the need for a nation-wide collaborative effort to
spread Public Awareness about Rain Water
Harvesting. “Change”, it is said “is inevitable. The
great question is whether it is by consent or by
coercion”. Through Public Awareness we can
ensure that it is by consent.
Having touched on the general need for Public
Awareness, the paper will focus on the modalities
of Public Awareness campaigning at the macro and
micro level. In an attempt to answer basic questions
like what about rainwater harvesting needs to be
publicized; to whom and how do we publicize, we
have divided this paper into the following segments:
a) The importance of public awareness.
b) A brief historical perspective of rainwater
harvesting from our ancient past to our present.
c) The causes of water depletion.
d) Methods of creating public awareness.
e) Public awareness measures adopted by Agnel
Seva Ashram (ASA) through its Save Electricity
and Water Abhiyan (SEWA) at the Agnel Technical
Education Complex, Vashi.
The importance of public awareness :
The Key component of rainwater harvesting
is storage. In a Monsoon country like India “where
on an average we get 100 hours of rain and then
nothing for the remaining 8660 hours in a year 1 ,
water has to be captured and stored in large
catchments using tanks and ponds or as groundwater
425
by facilitating percolation. The centre for Science
and Engineering (CSE) in its intensive study of
rainwater harvesting has gathered strong scientific
evidence to show “that village scale rainwater
harvesting will yield much water than big or medium
dams” 2. Due to loss through transmission for
instance, Michael Evenari has conclusively proved
that water collected from small watersheds per
hectare of watershed area was much more in
quantity than that collected from large watersheds.
A study conducted by the Central Soil and Water
Conservation Research Institute (CSWSRI) in
Dehradun shows that just increasing the size of the
catchment area from one hectare to two hectares
reduces the water yield per hectare by as much as
20%. Thus it is clear that rainwater harvesting in
small catchments is the effective solution to our
water problems. Such water structures call for a
social process of self-management in village
communities or co-operative housing societies and
individual organizations in urban areas. This
naturally implies social mobilization- creating
awareness and confidence among all sections of
the community that rainwater harvesting works.
Another reason for creating public awareness
is that the concerned community-rural or urban –
must be closely involved at every stage of the
decision making process regarding their rainwater
harvesting system , right from the choice of the site
and the technical and financial parameters of the
construction to the equitable distribution of the
collected water. This could go a long way not only
in ensuring adequate water supply but also in
generating a community spirit (- very essential in
these strife–ridden times) and building up what
economists call “ Social capital”.
Measures to create public awareness must
include Government bodies and political leaders.
Apart from funds which the concerned communities
can, by and large, generate for themselves as, for
example, they did in Jamnagar, Rajkot and Aizawal
in Chennai, Government support is essential in the
form of incentives for implementation of rainwater
harvesting schemes (The Municipal Corporation of
Thane, for instance, gives property tax deductions).
Even more significantly, Government assistance is
required in the form of flexible Government rules
that facilitate social mobilization. The Government
will have to “review and revise old British-time laws