Recently the Ministry of Jal Shakti released the report of the first census of waterbodies in which Bengal topped the report. Read here in detail about India’s first ever census on water bodies. This is an important topic for the IAS exam.
First Water Body Census:
- The water bodies census was conducted along with the Minor Irrigation Census for 2017-18.
- According to the water census water bodies are either natural or man-made units bounded on all sides with some or no masonry work used for storing water for irrigation or other purposes such as industrial, pisciculture, domestic/drinking, recreation, religious, groundwater recharge etc.
- Further, the report stated that Water Bodies are known by different names like tanks, reservoirs, ponds and bundhies etc
- The report also treats structures that receive water from ice-melt, streams, springs, rain or drainage of water from residential or water stored due to diversion from a stream, Nala or river as a waterbody.
Details of Report:
- India has a total of 24.24 lakh water bodies such as ponds, lakes and tanks etc
- West Bengal is the topmost state with 7.47 lakh water bodies and with only 134 waterbodies Sikkim consists of the least number of waterbodies.
- Of the total 24,24,540 water bodies recorded in the country, 97.1% (23,55,055) are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) are in urban areas.
- The total composition of different types of water bodies is as follows:
- Ponds – 59.5 per cent (14,42,993)
- Tanks – 15.7 per cent (3,81,805)
- Reservoirs – 12.1 per cent (2,92,280)
- Water conservation schemes/percolation tanks/check dams – 9.3% (2,26,217)
- Lakes – 0.9% (22,361)
- Others – 2.5% (58,884)”.
- The report also mentions states with the highest number of different types of waterbodies as follows.
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- West Bengal has the highest number of ponds and reservoirs
- Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of tanks
- Tamil Nadu has the highest number of lakes
- Maharashtra is the leading state with water conservation schemes
- South 24 Parganas of West Bengal emerged as the top district having the highest (3.55 lakh) number of water bodies across the country.
- Data on encroachment of water bodies were also collected for the first time whose data are as follows:
- 1.6% of the total enumerated water bodies were reported to be encroached with predominant encroachment occurring in rural areas (95.4%) and remaining in urban areas.
- 62.8% of the encroached water bodies have less than 25% area under encroachment while 11.8% of encroached water bodies have more than 75% area under encroachment.
Source: Indian Express
India’s First Water Body Census (UPSC Notes):- Download PDF Here
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