The Centre plans to tap rural employment guarantee funds to recharge remnants of ancient rivers — including the mythical Saraswati — in a bid to boost groundwater reserves.
Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti told The Hindu in an interview last week that a committee of secretaries — from the Water, Environment and Rural Development Ministries — had been constituted to see how the ₹48,000 crore MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) funds could be harnessed. “Reviving such palaeo-channels may not be useful for irrigation but it could improve groundwater storage,” she said.
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Paleo-channels
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Palaeo-channels are old rivers that have dried up and filled with sediment. Last October, a committee of hydrologists, geologists and archaeologists — as part of a study commissioned by the Water Resources Ministry — reported evidence on the course of the Saraswati, mentioned in the Rigveda and Hindu mythology.
K.S. Valdiya of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), who led the team, concluded that the Sutlej river “represented the western branch of the Saraswati.”
The Markanda and the Sarsuti (now called the Ton-Yamuna rivers) watered the eastern branch of the river.
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The branches met in Shatrana, 25 km south of Patiala, and “flowed as a large river” emptying into the Rann of Kutch, the report said.
Across the country
Building on this, a committee was tasked with scouting palaeo-channels across the country. Wherever these channels were located, the soil was generally soft and therefore, it was easy to direct surface waters towards them and raise the water table, Ms. Bharti said.
K.B. Biswas, Chairman, Central Groundwater Board, said his department was proposing the use of MGNREGA funds for aquifer recharge. . “There is greater interest to build percolation tanks and ponds that will contribute to groundwater recharge,” he said.