Droughts and Floods

Tarun Bharat Sangh and Rajendar Singh started a massive campaign to spread awareness of traditional water harvesting structures in order to restore the water resources of arid Rajasthan. The aim was to popularize the use of such traditional structures across the country.

This map shows the regions in the country that are regularly affected by floods.

The major flood prone regions are Punjab, Haryana, most of the Gangetic plains including Uttar Pradesh, North Bihar and West Bengal, the Brahmaputra valley, coastal Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, and South Gujarat.

On a scale of 5, from lowest to highest, this map shows the vulnerability of various districts of the country to climate change. The map shows many of these regions are doubly exposed to the risk of climate change.

The total flood prone region in the country is 40 million Ha, of which about 32 million Ha, can be given protection. Until 1954, only 3 million Ha were protected, while as of 2004, about 15.8 million Ha has been protected. The average annual damage due to floods is estimated at Rs.

District-wise report of habitations covered for water supply, hand pumps, irrigation, flood control and command area development

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This study by the Subhash B Bhagwat, the Visiting Fulbright Scholar to ACWADAM deals with economic issues in the management of water resources in the drought prone Pune district of Maharashtra. The situation in Pune city is intimately connected to the situation in Pune district. Likewise, the state and national policies and conditions ultimately determine what happens in individual districts or towns. Even then there is plenty of room for cities and districts to influence their own fate with respect to water and the related issues. Therefore, this report focuses on the district of Pune and Pune City but only in the context of and in conjunction with the state of Maharashtra and to some extent India itself.

The availability of water, water requirement versus supply, water requirements for some major crops, groundwater exploitation, growth of population, and declining per capita water in the state of West Bengal are presented.

These images from the UNOSAT site, are an example of flood detection based on satellite maps of the affected state of Bihar, both in 2007 and 2008. These maps are based on preliminary analysis and not validated in the field.

This image from the UNOSAT site is an example of satellite-based flood detection and illustrates satellite detected flood water over the affected state of Assam in 2007, and shows areas that are likely to be covered with flood water, based on pre-flood water level data.

This paper on Bundelkhand from their Water and Sanitation Perspective series of WaterAid presents how ecological degradation and faulty policies make drinking water scarce and less accessible.