Talk About Water: A Desert Speaks

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Talk About Water: A Desert Speaks

Arati Kumar-Rao sheds light on how ancient rainwater harvesting methods help the most remote villages in India despite the lack of rains.

Arati is an environmental journalist who has been documenting riverine ecologies, making long trips to the Sunderbans, following the course of the Ganga, travelling down the Cauvery to the Bay of Bengal, and recording the stories of the people and landscape sustained by these rivers. 

What if people prepared to collect every drop of rain?

Source: TEDx Talks

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  3. Ms Arati Kumar-Rao has described very well the ancient rainwater harvesting methods which has helped most remote villages in India in spite of the lack of rains specially the desert area in Rajasthan.

    I am a water engineer and was connected with the Rajasthan Canal area for 13 years from 1968 to 1981. I was in the Planning Commission when the Rajasthan Canal was under construction from Ganga Nagar to Bikaner to help the local engineers and the people in solving their problems. In 1975, I was working with the National Commission on Agriculture for the future of agriculture in India in which the special report was prepared for the desert area in Western part of the country upto the Pakistan border in which the Rajasthan Canal was under construction and the small canals near Ganga Nagar were given water for irrigation. The plan of development for agriculture under those conditions for Rajasthan, mostly under rainfed, were indicated for the next 50 years. For one year in 1975-76, I was working with the government consulting firm called WAPCOS. When I was given the task of topographical survey, soil surveys and agronomic studies for defining optimum cropping patterns and livestock development, and Economic evaluation for the Rajasthan Canal Project Stage II. Some of the optimization work was done on computers (a rare study in those days). The recommendations of the report indicated that the canal water should be given towards the eastern side of the canal, where the land and soil was of better quality rather than on the Western side which was approved in the earlier projects. This was accepted by the government but the politician of Rajasthan decided otherwise and implemented this project almost 10 years later. When I was working with the Ford Foundation, I did study of community management of small irrigation system all over India. In Rajasthan, Mr. Rajindar Singh had done a very good work near Alwar (Rajasthan) where he brought the communities together to build small tanks and planted trees all around for water harvesting and saving the water for domestic use and growing crops. This was very much appreciated and he was given the Magsaysay Award by the Philippines government. This how the community work got started in those days on a bigger scale.

  4. la terre est un énorme ECO SYSTEME dont chaque élément permet aux autres de fonctionner. Déstabiliser un élément, c’est déstabiliser tout le système. Chaque élément interfère sur le suivant. La pluie ravine le sol, nettoie le sol et nourrit les étendues d’eau de surface de limon. C’est un éternel recommencement. La désalinisation des mers et océans est aussi une grave erreur. On va diminuer d’un coté du milieu hydraulique de l’eau salée, puis on va rejeter dans ce milieu mais ailleurs une forte quantité de sel qui va tout bruler et dans le même temps la population va produire plus d’eaux usées, qui elles aussi à son tour, va être rejetées dans ce milieu hydraulique naturel augmentant son taux d'acidité par un défaut de traitement réel de ces eaux usées .. Le monde marche sur la tête

    The earth is a huge ECO system with each element allowing others to function. Destabilizing an element is destabilizing the entire system.
    Each element interferes with the next. The rain that ravines the soil, cleans the soil, it feeds the expanse of silt surface water.
    It's an eternal restarting. The desalinization of the seas and oceans is also a serious mistake. We will decrease on one side of the water environment of the saltwater, then we will reject in this environment but elsewhere a large amount of salt that will burn everything and at the same time the population will produce more wastewater which they also in turn will be rejected in this m Natural hydraulic Ilieu, increasing its acidity rate by a real treatment defect of these wastewaters. The world walks on the head

  5. IAS guys had their planning executed. Ministries and their Political Masters have more faith either in their own faculties or the Foreign Companies to help them plan and splurge moneys. Local Community/ Panchayats are ill equipped and in-funded/ taxed with doles here and there to increase their dependence on government. It is not that we don't have engineers and techno-crates who could revolutionise Irrigation and water management. Our ancient/ historical surface water bearing ponds/ lakes have diminished while our population has grown over six folds.So, ideally rain/ surface water storage should have grown six folds too. And do we not know how to recharge our ground waters. Civil Engineers have no clues and even residential and commercial complexed are designed as Concrete jungles and we allow , even in planned cities , rain water or storm waters to flow into seasonal rivers to find its way into the sea. We have never planned even to put even a fraction of sweat waters to any recirculation or use well before good water gets into the sea and only Nature or Desal Plants can extract sweet water from oceans and seas. We can sure do much better job in utilisation and conservation of surface water and ground water but Govt. and the empowered ministries has NO ears and flexibility in creating any team work of hard core professionals who have ideas and technical expertise..and time with devotion to any cause.

    2 Comment replies

    2. French English

      Bonjour cher Lokesh

      Comme je vous admire d'avoir une telle pensée, juste, vraie, réelle. En quelques mots vous soulevez le MAL de notre époque. Un élément à ajouter dans votre post: Toutes les eaux usées domesmtiques ne subissent aucun traitement d'épuration REEL. Elles sont rejetées tel qu'elles dans l'environnement, poluant toutes les milieux hydrauliques naturels de surface et bien entendu les réserves d'eaux souterrainnes  

      Hello dear Lokesh

      As I admire you for having such a thought, just, true, real. In a few words you raise the evil of our time. One element to add in your post: All domestic wastewater does not undergo any REEL treatment. They are rejected as they are in the environment, polluting all natural surface water environments and of course underground water reserves.