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WATER WISE
Lessons from the past
S. VISHWANATH
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Wells dug over 100 years ago still yield water in many rural areas
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Precious: Saving wells is a crucial task in this age
One of the important lessons to emerge in the recent past in India has been the continuing relevance of traditional water systems. Be it the open wells all across the country, the tanks in the Bundelkhand and Southern India, the springs in the hills of the Western Ghats and the North-Eastern States, the ponds in Kerala and Manipur, the Naolas in Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh, the Beris and Kua in Rajasthan and the Virdas of Kutch all represent a tradition of water smar
tness picked up over the ages and still relevant today.
In Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan, Ramgarh taluk has the least rainfall, averaging less than 120 mm. Yet here the well in Isawal, dug over 100 years ago, provides water for more than 6000 sheep, camels and goats daily. The institution Sambhaav helped the community access materials to restore and repair the ‘Kua’ and it continues to yield sweet water. In Abdasa Taluk of Bhuj, piped water supply through deep borewells simply failed to function beyond a few years; but the traditional shallow well, when adequately silted and recharged, provides lifeline water to the community.
What is it that keeps these systems performing over the ages? It surely must be an understanding that people and society developed through a continuous process of trial and error which eventually saw the survival of the fittest technology in a way.
Tough job
Chattar Singh from Ramgarh speaks of the lives lost in the digging of a well in the sand dunes of the Thar. When such was the price paid for a structure, society took good care of it. There was no other choice. Contrast that with the state of open wells: where there are alternatives, they just become garbage dumps.
In rural areas traditional water systems provided for drinking and domestic needs, water for cattle and water for irrigation. The onset of modern canals and deep tubewells put paid to many of the systems. The revival of the traditional water systems is happening when the ecological sustainability of the new technologies has been found wanting. Borewells dried up pretty quickly or started spewing fluoride and nitrates.
In West Bengal arsenic emerged as a problem. This is not to say that the traditional systems had no problem. The guinea worm was endemic in the step wells and ponds and perhaps it is the shift to hand pumps which was the major reason for eradicating its prevalence. This had also to be aggressively approached with the closing of access to the traditional systems as people preferred the taste of the old waters and were culturally and socially accustomed to accessing it in a particular way.
In Bangalore city itself, as in Hyderabad, the many tanks built by the ancients harvested rainwater primarily for irrigation purpose. These tanks also charged the ground water and this became available through the wells for domestic purpose. As these cities urbanised, the role of the tanks as irrigation water providers disappeared. The “achkut” or irrigated area was converted to urban use. Once piped water supply came in, cities saw no use for these tanks but as recipient of waste water and solid waste.
The revival and preservation of the tanks and lakes has been an old war cry of the ecologist and the bird watcher in the name of the ecological and livelihood services they render. However we have not yet found a paradigm and a meaning to the tanks’ economic and financial sustainability and therefore have no answer to their disappearance.
Unless at a point of time the true value of water and the true price of water is recognised and paid for by society the role of the tanks and lakes will remain unsupported and they will always be under threat.
As a neighbour to the tank if it represents my only source of drinking water I will have more of a stake in preserving it, than if it represents only a water body enhancing the micro-climate.
Knowledge lost
A brick aqueduct from Hessarghatta reservoir was built in 1896 to bring water to Bangalore by gravity. A marvellous feat of engineering and an exercise in design and construction skill lies in ruins now, providing bricks for compound walls.
We have lost the ability to recognise and acknowledge the skills of our forefathers and pass on a tradition of design and aesthetics of water. Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
What does this mean to you and me? If a large area is being bought and it has a well, recognise the role it has played over centuries in providing water. If these wells can be preserved and made functional they will not only provide water to the land but also provide hydraulic links to the past.
They represent the distillation of knowledge accumulated over centuries. As we progress we need to find means of integration of the traditional with the modern. A well talks to us continuously.
It tells us that summer is approaching and that we have to be careful with water use or that it has been a year of drought and we have to do with less. In plentiful times, it overflows. A borewell but talks only twice. Once when it says “I have water,” then when it says “I am dead.”
Water wisdom lies in listening to voices — from nature, from the past and from traditional systems.
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Property Plus
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