Adraft Ganga Act has reportedly been submitted to the Central Water Resources Ministry.
Uma Bharati, Union Minister, has directed to constitute a high-level committee to go through the report and submit observations.
Government has also formed a committee to look into problems of depleting ground water and intends to introduce a model law to address the issue of rain water conservation.
Incidentally, river and rains, both Nature’s gifts, are corelated as far as their management is concerned.
Rains, falling on lands, are drained into rivers running through the lengths of catchments and finally discharged into seas in natural drainage arrangements that keep the lands dry and habitable.
Out of total rain in catchments, a part is absorbed in land and the balance reaches the rivers, the quantum being dependent on a factor called “run off coefficient” that differs from catchment to catchment depending on their land characteristics, like soil, slope, shape, topography, surface vegetation and forest cover and in addition, on nature’s phenomena like temperature, wind and intensity of rain during rainfall.
Loss of rain water, an annual gift of nature for sustenance of life on earth, is at the root of water woes to people and has to be stopped.
Also, control of rivers through dams/barrages in order to use them as water storages which act as supply heads to man-made irrigation/river link canals, gradually dries them up at their downstream ends, two glaring examples being the present condition of Damodar and Teesta rivers.
Induction of breach-resistant side embankments in rivers is a technique that can prevent discharge of land rains and pollutants into them and along with it a ‘no obstruction across the river channels policy’ by law, will ensure protection to their geophysical characteristics.
Apart from saving rain water, man’s only source of sweet water, from losses to enable its harvesting as well as protecting a channel’s geophysical characteristics for their survival, the other benefits accrued from induction of breach resistant embankments are (a) flood prevention to alleviate people’s distress and save public money wasted in flood relief; (b) maintaining purity of river flows to ensure source of good water supply to river valleys; (c) stoppage of entry and deposit of eroded land surface soil that affects stable drafts, necessary for inland water transport; (d) less erosion and bank protection as the rivers flow in their natural courses; (e) improved ground water quality with regard to its arsenic/fluride contents by recharging them with conserved rain water and (f) end of disputes amongst states over sharing of water of national rivers flowing through them.