Today, in a country where water and its perennial source, the river is worshipped as mother goddess , it has become a subject of crisis. Water, a free gift of nature is fast becoming a precious commodity for the common man. This rapidly depleting resource has turned out to be a matter of concern to all of us. The acute shortage of portable water in many parts of our count during the first summer of the new millennium has made us serious think and introspect on the potential problem of the future. We are surrounded by seas on three sides in the south, a huge ice covered mountain range in the north the himalayas, world's large fertile plains with abundant ground water resources, the indus gangestic brahmaputra plains and countless rivers flowing down to the mighty seas, but still the dependency ratio is a meagre 34 percent. We regained our freedom from our colonial rulers in 1947 and the planners under the able guidance of jawaharlal nehru had a monumental job in hand. Nehru quoted dams are the temples of modern india'' the country had to plan and formulate a policy of managing the vas water resources, which was at its command.

Considering the vastness of our rivers and the dream of harvesting a good agriculture produce and blending the upcoming technology with nature, our planners opted for mega investments big dams, many multipurpose projects with huge investments for a country that had just emerged from the clutches of economic drain. Dam building grew to be equated with nation building the result is that india now boasts of being the world's third largest dam builder, with 3,600 dams big and small. One aspect, which our planners did not take into consideration, was 'what are the benefits for the future generations with these mega projects. Though these mega projects promised to be saviors capable of quenching the thirst of millions of hectares of land but the associated drawbacks surfaced as the clock ticked. 3 environmental controversies many projects were planned in areas with rich flora and fauna and these areas with rich flora and fauna and these areas had to be inundated to accommodate large body of water. Often the disputes were blown up and politicised by opportune political parties and used as election issues. Likewise many projects, which were envisaged as lifeline of a state, soon turned out to become white elephants as they were trapped in the web of endless problems.

Many projects such as upper krishna project of karnataka, sardar sarovar valley project of gujarat, tehri project in the hills of uttar pradesh, which were drafted in early 70s, are today the live examples of failed vision and policies. These projects which were originally planned with an investment of just a few hundred crores, have today snowballed to thousand of crores for completion. The inability of the dams of feed the targeted population has turned out to be the bane and issue of controversy.

Many dams that were built as joint partnership between the states, which share the rivers, have used the water management as a tool to settle their scores. The krishnaraja sagar dam built on the cauvery at the exit point of karnataka into tamil nadu has always been an issue of controversy fuelling the narrow and parochial sentiments of people on both the sides. Like this, our water management policy has also taken a beating with the ever rising demand for potable water. In the background of all these maladies, a silent killer which has taken its toll is the depleting water table in many parts of the country thanks to excessive use of technology of drilling tube wells, in many parts of the country where the benefits of dams could not be reached, people resorted to a easy way out i.e. In many areas the water table has gone to such a low level that it may take ages to restore the level of the early 50s. Incidentally india has the second largest irrigated area in the world, but due to the rapid expansion of irrigation with its emphasis on new construction, irrigation performance and the sector's increasing management needs have not received adequate attention. Here are some eye openers, which will certainly make us give a hard and serious look at water management and the crisis: 1 only 36 percent of average runoff in the river system in the country has been utilised.

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2 per capita availability of water has reduced from about 5277m3 in the year 1955 to the present level of 1970m3. 3 according to an estimate by central ground water board, 32 percent of available ground water resources have so far been developed. 4 out of4272 blocks in the country, ground water resources in nearly 500 blocks have been declared as over exploited or dark i.e. The state of ground water exploitation exceeds the annual replenish able recharge. 5 out of about 142 million hectares of net sown area in the country, 92.6 million hectares is rain fed.

6 every alternate town/city in our country faces acute shortage of drinking water. 10 chherapunji, the place that gets the highest rainfall in the would faces an acute shortage of potable water in summer. 11 the only state which has passed legislation exclusively for farmer participation in the management of irrigation systems is andhra pradesh this shows the lack of government initiative in actively involving people end users in water management. 12 the average overall water use efficiency in canal irrigation systems is estimated at 38 40 percent. 13 waterborne diseases have continued increasing over the yea in spite of government efforts to combat them. States such as punjab haryana, andhra pradesh and uttar pradesh have now become endemic for malaria on account of the high water table, water logging and seepage in the canal catchment area.

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What we need today is a radical change in our policy, a fresh look at the present status and a will to contribute to the nation's cause. Small is always beautiful the successful experiments of small check dams popularly called as barrages in ahmednagar district maharashtra is a live example of how small ideas can contribute toward revolutionising the way water can be managed. The co operative movement, which commenced in maharashtra under the leadership of anna hazare, is worth emulating. This is an effective mode to conserve rainwater in areas, which entirely depend on monsoon showers.

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States such as gujarat, rajasthan, madhya pradesh, karnataka, andhra pradesh and tamil nadu can certainly adopt the successful experiment of maharashtra. Some of it benefits are: 2 less shifting of population 4 strengthens cooperative movement 5 encourages better utilisation of available resources 6 states in the rich gangetic belt must adopt a systematic plan of linking and networking of rivers. This will reduce the burden on flooding rivers and ensure smooth flow in the lesser stressed, water deprived rivers though this plan appears to be challenging a systematic and planned approach will certainly yield results.