Water Management Plan : For central semi-arid region Maharashtra

Abstract

“Water, energy and food are freely available for all of kind, if we don´t follow the laws of capital but the logic of nature.” - Dieter Duhm India being an agrarian country highly depends upon the water availability from agriculture to any other life sustaining activity. The water which we majorly draw from south west monsoon in the months of June to September varies throughout the country .With the rapid change in global climate the rate of rainfall has also become an issue as some parts of the country are flooded with water and somewhere else it is drought for consecutive years. Central region of the state of Maharashtra is one such case which has a status of water scarcity and drought prone area over the years. Though the region is surrounded by rich western ghats on its western edge which receives an average rainfall of 1200mm ,the central region of state receives a scanty rainfall of 300 to 400mm annually. The one reason being the geography of the region as it lies on the leeward side of western ghats but the other reasons are human interfered activities such as over exploitation through bore wells, pumps, agriculture, over grazing, deforestation, industries and wrong cultivation methods . The recent times have seen the region being declared as drought prone area several times in last two decades. This has led to the governments and private NGOs in taking actions against the problem as it is also affecting the economy adversely. The report by CGWB, Nagpur has termed the over exploitation of water as „‟water mining‟‟ which needs to be addressed immediately. The positive rays of hopes were seen when some village communities show the desirable changes in the landscape. Few examples such as Hiware bazar, Ralegan siddhi, Pirewadi ,Purushwadi etc emerged out of the problem with simple and sustainable water solutions for the entire community. Thus as a landscape architect my effort was to work upon this problem and search for more sustainable and planned solutions based upon my field of knowledge and to cater the solutions to the affected community. The proposal site was one similar example which could be replicated anywhere in the similar geographical and climatic conditions. Located in the district of Ahmednagar ,the site taken for study was a macro watershed with several micro watersheds into it. Efforts were made to understand the taken landscape with its Water Management plan for central semi-arid region, Maharashtra issues and suitable solution on planning level were made. Three examples of micro watershed were taken and studied for runoff calculations before and after the proposal condition. Conclusion drawn out is that the simple and economical solutions can easily tackle the large problem of water crisis on the surface and ground level. Another major aspect of the project was the participatory governance. People of local village need to take voluntary participation in such projects as they are the first one to get the benefits. A mass awareness with demonstrating sites can be helpful for this purpose.