Water Resources — RBSE Class 10 (Geography)
Three-quarters of the Earth is covered in water, yet a woman in a Rajasthan village may walk kilometres for a single pot of it. Water is renewable — the hydrological cycle keeps refilling it — and still it is running scarce. This chapter explains that paradox, weighs the giant dams built to solve it, and recovers an old, humble answer hiding in the rooftops and fields of India: harvesting the rain.
1. Water scarcity — why, despite abundance?
About 96.5% of the world's water is in oceans (saline); only a tiny fraction is usable freshwater. Even where water exists, scarcity can arise from:
- Over-exploitation and over-use — large and growing population, more farms and industries.
- Falling groundwater — energised by tube wells for irrigation; cities and industries draw heavily.
- Unequal access — water may be available but not to everyone, or it may be too polluted to use.
- Pollution — domestic and industrial waste and farm chemicals make water hazardous.
So scarcity is caused not just by a shortage of water, but by how we use, distribute and pollute it. Ensuring water security for all is the challenge.
2. Multi-purpose river projects and dams
A dam is a barrier across flowing water that holds it in a reservoir. Multi-purpose projects use the stored water for many things at once: irrigation, electricity (hydropower), water supply, flood control, recreation, inland navigation and fish breeding.
Jawaharlal Nehru proudly called dams the "temples of modern India" — they would integrate development of agriculture and industry. Examples: the Bhakra-Nangal, Hirakud and Sardar Sarovar projects.
The criticism — why dams became controversial
Over time, large dams drew strong objections:
- Ecological: they fragment rivers, block fish movement, cause excessive sedimentation in the reservoir, and submerge forests and natural vegetation.
- Social: they displace large numbers of people — often poor villagers and tribal communities — from their land and livelihoods, frequently without proper rehabilitation.
- Economic/equity: benefits (irrigation, power) often flow to large farmers and industries, while the costs fall on the displaced. Irrigation also changed cropping patterns toward water-intensive crops, and excessive use caused salinisation and waterlogging.
- They have even induced earthquakes, and inter-state water disputes (e.g. over the Krishna-Godavari, Cauvery) have grown.
These concerns sparked movements such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
3. Rainwater harvesting — the people's alternative
Because big dams have big costs, attention has returned to rainwater harvesting — a low-cost, community-based, sustainable way to store water where it falls. India has a rich tradition of it:
- In the hills of the western Himalayas, guls/kuls (diversion channels) carried river water to fields.
- Rooftop rainwater harvesting was common across Rajasthan to store drinking water.
- In Bengal's flood plains, people built inundation channels to irrigate fields.
- In arid/semi-arid areas, rainwater was stored in tankas within homes for drinking.
Rajasthan's contribution is central here:
- In Rajasthan, especially Bikaner, Phalodi and Barmer, underground tankas (kund) built in courtyards or near homes collected and stored rooftop rainwater for drinking through the dry months — often the only source of sweet water in the saline desert.
- In Gendathur (Karnataka) and Shillong (Meghalaya), rooftop harvesting still meets a large share of household water needs.
- In Meghalaya, an ingenious 200-year-old bamboo drip irrigation system channels stream and spring water to plants.
- Tamil Nadu was the first state to make rooftop rainwater harvesting structures compulsory for all houses.
4. Closing thought
The arc of this chapter is a quiet course-correction. India bet big on dams as "temples of modern India" — and they did deliver irrigation and power — but the ecological and human costs turned out to be heavy and unevenly shared, provoking movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The answer the chapter leaves you with is not "no water management" but decentralised, community-driven harvesting — the tankas of Rajasthan and the bamboo drips of Meghalaya — that store water sustainably and put control back in local hands.
For the RBSE board, be ready to argue both sides of the dam debate and to describe traditional rainwater-harvesting methods (with the Rajasthan tanka example) — these are the two long-answer mainstays of this chapter.
