Accepted Papers - 3.pdf - UNESCO

National Seminar on Rainwater Harvesting and Water Management 11-12 Nov. 2006, Nagpur
77. Rain Water Harvesting to Improve Socio-economic conditions
in Hilly Areas of Maharashtra
INTRODUCTION
The importance of water to the sustainable
habitat is enormous. It can be best emphasized by
acknowledging the fact that it is the prime mover
for the existence of living being on our planet Earth.
Realizing this importance, a large-scale
development of surface water resources through
major and minor projects has been taken up by the
government to ensure water supply for drinking as
well as for irrigation. The government has accorded
highest priority to rural drinking water supply as a
part of policy framework for ensuring universal
access to all and to achieve the goal of reaching the
unreached. For effective implementation of this
policy, a number of hand pumps and water supply
schemes are installed in villages, lacking water
source. Despite of all these initiatives, the water
supply system fails to sustain, thereby, leaving the
inhabitants to reel under acute water shortage. Their
life is full of poverty, deprivation and other miseries.
*Sourabh Gupta
Abstrct
Poverty, disease, low agriculture productivity and poor moral, exacerbated by lack of
water, are the common features of the hilly areas, which lead to hardship, deprivation for the
habitants. A large part of hilly areas
are generally found to be lacking suitable land for cultivation and adequate irrigation facilities,
thus remain denied of high cropping intensity. Although, at places they experience heavy rains
during monsoon but rainwater quickly runs away due to steep gradient & poor infiltration of
the under lying rock. However, the quick replenishment of wells has normally been observed
with the onset of monsoon but they start depleting quickly soon after the monsoon season, as the
significant movement of water occurs from higher level to lower level due to high water table
gradient which is well evident from the ground water monitoring structures such as dug wells
and bore wells. As a result, the acute water shortage becomes imminent during summer.
The diverse hydrogeological and rainfall conditions of these areas necessitate developing
varied measures to tackle the water scarcity situation. Site specific Rainwater harvesting schemes
like Tanks/ponds, Gully plugging, Contour bunding, bench terracing, Sub surface dams meant
for water and soil conservation have quite successfully produced the desired results.
There are many villages, which have remained either
with scarce water supply or without any source of
water. Some of these villages are categorized as
problem villages as the source of potable water is
beyond 1.0 kilometre.. The women have to walk a
distance of about 1.0 kms to reach up to the source
of water. The virtually dry and dead water resources
of hilly areas have led to acute water scarcity,
affecting the socio -economic conditions of these
villages. Such water scarcity conditions leads to
poor agriculture productivity and thereby poor
economic condition, which inevitably compels the
villagers to migrate to cities in search of livelihood.
Area Under Reference
The hilly areas of Maharashtra referred in the
context of above problem are (i) Western margin of
Maharashtra Deccan plateau, which is bordered by
elevated Sahyadri ranges (elevation from 600 to
1600m.amsl), extending from north to south. The
*Scientist “D”, CGWB, MSU, 247/11, Deccan College Road, Yerwada, Pune - 6
E-mail : archsaugupta@yahoo.com
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