India's first water body census enumerates 2.4 million of them
Around 55% of India’s water bodies are privately owned, with most lying in the states of West Bengal, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand.
In all, the country has 2.4 million water bodies, according to the first-ever exercise to enumerate them carried out in 2018-19.
India’s first water census report (pdf) defines a water body as a structure where “water from ice-melt, streams, springs, rain or drainage of water from residential or other areas is accumulated, or water is stored by diversion from a stream or a river.”
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Of all water bodies in India, 97.1% are in rural areas; 2.9% in urban areas. The functional or “in-use” water bodies are used for pisciculture, irrigation, and groundwater recharge, the report said. Moreover, 78% of them are man-made, and the rest are natural.
The Indian Express reported that seven types were excluded from the count:
The availability of safe drinking water has been a major challenge in the world’s most populous nation. Contamination and a lack of access to piped supply, together with the effects of climate change, have caused acute water stress in the country.
“Two-thirds of India’s 718 districts are affected by extreme water depletion,” according to Unicef. “Close to 54% of rural women—as well as some adolescent girls—spend an estimated 35 minutes getting water every day, equivalent to the loss of 27 days’ wages over a year.”
Roughly 6% of India’s population, which is more than 91 million people, lacks access to safe water, according to the global non-profit Water.org.
In drought-prone states like Maharashtra, which have only 7.2% of India’s water bodies in all, governments have had to transport water by train. Agriculture has suffered, too, due to water scarcity, especially since India’s crops are often water-intensive, be it sugarcane, paddy, or cotton.
