INDIA’S FIRST WATER BODY CENSUS
WHY IN NEWS ?
- Recently ,The Ministry of Jal Shakti has released the report of India’s first water bodies census.
MORE ABOUT THE NEWS
- The Ministry of Jal Shakti has released the report of India’s first water bodies census, a comprehensive data base of ponds, tanks, lakes, and reservoirs in the country.
- The census was conducted in 2018-19, and enumerated more than 2.4 million water bodies across all states and Union Territories.
ABOUT WATER CENSUS
- The census provides a comprehensive inventory of India’s water resources, including natural and man-made water bodies like ponds, tanks, lakes, and more, and to collect data on the encroachment of water bodies.
- The Census also highlighted disparities between rural and urban areas and varying levels of encroachment and revealed crucial insights into the country’s water resources.
- The census was launched under the centrally sponsored scheme, “Irrigation Census” in convergence with the 6th Minor Irrigation Census in order to have a comprehensive national database of all water bodies.
- The information on all important aspects of the water bodies including their type, condition, status of encroachments, use, storage capacity, status of filling up of storage, etc was collected.
- It covered all the water bodies located in rural as well as urban areas that are in-use or not in-use.
- The census also took into account all type of uses of water bodies like irrigation, industry, pisciculture, domestic/ drinking, recreation, religious, ground water recharge etc.
- Census has been successfully completed and the All India and State-wise reports have been published.
SOURCES OF WATER BODY CENSUS:
- The Water Bodies: First Census Report considers “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 as water bodies.
- The water bodies “are usually of various types known by different names like tank, reservoirs, ponds etc.”
- According to the report, “A structure 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, nala or river will also be treated as water body.”
- Seven specific types of water bodies were excluded from the count.
They were:
- oceans and lagoons;
- rivers, streams, springs, waterfalls, canals, etc. which are free flowing, without any bounded storage of water;
- swimming pools;
- covered water tanks created for a specific purpose by a family or household for their own consumption;
- a water tank constructed by a factory owner for consumption of water as raw material or consumable;
- temporary water bodies created by digging for mining, brick kilns, and construction activities, which may get filled during the rainy season; and
- pucca open water tanks created only for cattle to drink water.
FINDINGS OF THE CENSUS:
- As per the report, West Bengal’s South 24 Pargana has been ranked as the district having the highest (3.55 lakh) number of water bodies across the country.
- The district is followed by Andhra Pradesh’s Ananthapur (50,537) and West Bengal’s Howrah (37,301).
- 24,24,540 water bodies have been enumerated in the country, out of which 97.1% (23,55,055) are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) are in urban areas.
- Top 05 States in terms of number of water bodies are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Assam which constitute around 63% of the total water bodies in the country.
- Top 05 States in terms of number of water bodies in urban areas are West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Tripura, whereas in rural areas, top 05 States are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Assam.
- 5% of water bodies are ponds, followed by tanks (15.7%), reservoirs (12.1%), Water conservation schemes/percolation tanks/check dams (9.3%), lakes (0.9%) and others (2.5%).
- 2% of water bodies are owned by private entities whereas 44.8% of water bodies are in the domain of public ownership.
- Out of all public owned water bodies, maximum water bodies are owned by Panchayats, followed by State Irrigation/State WRD.
- Out of all private owned water bodies, maximum water bodies are in hands of Individual owner/farmer followed by group of individuals and other private bodies.
- Top 05 States which lead in the private owned water bodies are West Bengal, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand.
- Out of all ‘in use’ water bodies, major water bodies are reported to be used in pisciculture followed by Irrigation.
- Top 05 States wherein major use of water bodies is in pisciculture are West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh;
- Top 05 States wherein major use of water bodies is in irrigation are Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Gujarat.
- 78% water bodies are man-made water bodies whereas 22% are natural water bodies.
- 6% (38,496) water bodies out of all the enumerated water bodies are reported to be encroached out of which 95.4% are in rural areas and remaining 4.6% in urban areas.
- The information on water spread area was reported in respect of 23,37,638 water bodies.
- Out of these water bodies, 72.4% have water spread area less than 0.5 hectare, 13.4% have water spread area between 0.5-1 hectare, 11.1% have water spread area between 1-5 hectares and remaining 3.1% of water bodies have water spread area more than 5 hectares.
METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
- According to the report, “traditional methodology, i.e., paper-based schedules, were canvassed both for rural and urban areas.
- A “village schedule”, “urban schedule” and “water body schedule” were canvassed, and a smart phone was used to “capture latitude, longitude and photo of water bodies”, the report says.
NEED OF WATER BODY CENSUS:
- The Centre earlier maintained a database of water bodies that were getting central assistance under the scheme of Repair, Renovation and Restoration (RRR) of water bodies.
- In 2016, a Standing Committee of Parliament pointed to the need to carry out a separate census of water bodies.
- The government then commissioned the first census of water bodies in 2018-19 along with the sixth Minor Irrigation (MI) census.
- The objective was to collect information “on all important aspects of the subject including their size, condition, status of encroachments, use, storage capacity, status of filling up of storage etc.”, according to the census report.
SYLLABUS: MAINS, GS-3, ENVIRONMENT
SOURCE: PIB, THE INDIAN EXPRESS
