“10 India is endowed with extraordinarily diverse and distinctive traditional water bodies found in different parts of the country, commonly known as ponds, tanks, lakes, vayalgam, ahars, bawdis, talabs and others. They play an important role in maintaining and restoring the ecological balance. They act as sources of drinking water, recharge groundwater, control floods, support biodiversity, and provide livelihood opportunities to a large number of people. Currently, a major water crisis is being faced by India, where 100 million people are on the frontlines of a nationwide water crisis and many major cities facing an acute water shortage. The situation will worsen as United Nations and NitiAyog reports say that the demand for water will reach twice the available supply, and 40 per cent of India’s population will not have access to clean drinking water by 2030. One of the reasons is our increasing negligence and lack of conservation of waterbodies. Since independence, the government has taken control over the waterbodies and water supply. With a colonial mindset, authorities move further and further away in the quest of water supply, emphasing more on networks, infrastructure and construction of dams. This, over time, has led to the neglect of waterbodies and catchments areas. As a result, we have started valuing land more than water. In the last few decades, waterbodies have been under continuous and unrelenting stress, caused primarily by rapid urbanisation and unplanned growth. Encroachment of waterbodies has been identified as a major cause of flash floods in Mumbai (2005), Uttarakhand (2013), Jammu and Kashmir (2014) and Chennai (2015). Further, waterbodies are being polluted by untreated effluents and sewage that are continuously being dumped into them. Across the country, 86 waterbodies are critically polluted, having a chemical oxygen demand or COD concentration of more than 250 mg/l, which is the discharge standard for a polluting source such as sewage treatment plants and industrial effluent treatment plants. In urban India, the number of water bodies is declining rapidly. For example, in the 1960s Bangalore had 262 lakes. Now, only 10 hold water.
