Conservation, policy and the water missions

Detail

1. From old tanks to big dams to missions: the long view

• Ancient hydraulic structures (NCERT Class 10):
• Sringaverapura, near Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh), had a large water-harvesting system fed by the Ganga's floodwater. It dates to the 1st century BC.
• Sudarshana lake was a reservoir in Gujarat, built in the time of Chandragupta Maurya.
• Bhopal Lake was built in the 11th century. It was one of the largest artificial lakes of its time.

• Hauz Khas in Delhi was a 14th-century tank. Iltutmish built it to supply water to the Siri Fort area.

• Multipurpose projects: a single dam built to do several jobs at once (irrigation, hydro-power, flood control, drinking water, fisheries, navigation). Jawaharlal Nehru called these dams the "temples of modern India".

• Today's approach: the focus has moved from building big structures to missions. These are time-bound national campaigns with community participation, for example tap water, groundwater, rainwater harvesting and ponds.

2. Why conservation is urgent

• Water supply is falling, but demand is rising:
• Population, irrigation, industry and cities all need more water every year.
• The amount of usable water per person keeps going down.

• Making new fresh water is costly. Desalination uses a lot of energy, so it cannot be the main answer.

• Groundwater carries most of the load. It meets about 62% of irrigation needs, 85% of rural water use and 50% of urban demand (2026) [5].

• Why groundwater is under stress:
• Cheap drilling and pumps let even small farmers sink private tube wells.
• So much water is pumped out that water tables fall across large areas.
• Arsenic and fluoride from the rocks, plus mining waste, factory waste and farm chemicals, spoil groundwater quality [5].

3. The toolkit for water conservation and management

Water conservation and management means using less water, keeping it clean and sharing it fairly, so that today's needs are met without harming future supply. NCERT (Class 12) lists these tools:

Tool	What it means (simple words)	Example
Water-saving technology	Get more crop or work from each drop	Drip and sprinkler irrigation (micro-irrigation)
Pollution prevention	Stop dirty water from reaching rivers and aquifers	Sewage treatment, treating factory waste water
Watershed development	Manage the whole area that drains into one stream: soil, water and plants together	Check dams, contour bunds, tree planting
Rainwater harvesting	Collect rain where it falls and store it or send it underground	Rooftop tanks, recharge pits
Recycling and reuse	Clean used water and use it again for lower-grade jobs	Treated sewage for cooling factories
Conjunctive use	Use surface water and groundwater together in a planned way	Canal water in wet years, wells in dry years
Inter-basin transfer	Move water from a basin with extra water to one with too little	River-linking proposals
Water pricing	Charge for water so people value it and waste less	NCERT calls this the most important tool

• Why pricing matters most:
• Water that is free or very cheap gets wasted, for example through flood irrigation and pumping on free electricity.
• A price makes people use it carefully.
• The money raised pays for running and repairing water schemes.

4. Water quality and pollution

• CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) checks water quality at 507 stations (NCERT figure).
• Main pollutants: organic and bacterial pollution is the most common. It comes mainly from untreated sewage.
• Most polluted stretch: the Yamuna between Delhi and Etawah (Uttar Pradesh).
• Other badly polluted stretches:

River / stretch	State
Sabarmati at Ahmedabad	Gujarat
Gomti at Lucknow	Uttar Pradesh
Kali	Uttar Pradesh
Adyar and Cooum (Chennai)	Tamil Nadu
Vaigai at Madurai	Tamil Nadu
Musi at Hyderabad	Telangana
Ganga at Kanpur and Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh

• Laws: the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Both were weakly enforced. Many cities and factories still let out untreated waste water.

5. Recycling, reuse and desalination

• Recycling and reuse of water: used water is cleaned or sorted, then used again for a job that does not need drinking-quality water.
• Treated waste water can cool factories and fight fires.
• Water from bathing, washing utensils or washing cars can water gardens.

• Result: more clean fresh water is left for drinking.

• Desalination: removing salt from seawater (or salty groundwater) to make fresh water.

• Method: mostly reverse osmosis (RO). High pressure pushes seawater through a very fine membrane that lets water pass but holds back the salt.
• Where in India: Chennai's Minjur and Nemmeli plants on the Coromandel Coast (Bay of Bengal, Tamil Nadu) are India's largest, and more are being built.
• Problems:
  • It uses a lot of electricity, so the water is costly.
  • It leaves brine (very salty waste water). Brine harms marine life when it is pumped back into the sea.
• Where it fits best: coastal cities short of water. Around the world, West Asia relies on it heavily.

6. National Water Policy 2012

• Earlier policies: 1987 and 2002. The 2012 policy came from the Ministry of Water Resources.
• Main points:
• A national water framework law: a general law that sets basic principles for all states. It also calls for complete laws to manage inter-state rivers.
• Water as an economic good: water is priced to encourage saving, but only after "pre-emptive needs" are met. These are drinking water, sanitation, food security, the needs of the poor who depend on farming, and minimum ecosystem flows (the least amount of water a river needs to stay alive).
• Climate adaptation: water projects must be designed to cope with more floods and droughts.
• Benchmarks, water footprints and water audits:
  • A water footprint is the total water used to make a product or run an activity.
  • A water audit checks where water is used and where it is lost.
• Smaller urban-rural gap in how much water each person is promised.

• Community management of water projects, with users sharing control.

• Ministry of Jal Shakti (formed May 2019): created by merging the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. It now runs most water missions.

• Draft new policy: a committee led by Mihir Shah drafted a new National Water Policy (2020-21). It has not yet been adopted.
• Model Groundwater (Regulation and Control of Development and Management) Bill: a central model law that states can copy to control groundwater use. 21 States/UTs have adopted it, including Bihar, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh (January 2026) [5].

7. Jal Kranti Abhiyan (2015-16)

• Aim: make water conservation a people's movement and link water security with jobs and food security.
• Parts:
• Jal Gram: one water-short village chosen in each of 672 districts and developed as a model of water management.
• Model command areas of about 1,000 ha. A command area is the farmland watered by a canal or irrigation project.
• Pollution abatement: water conservation, artificial recharge (deliberately sending surface water underground) and arsenic-free wells.
• Mass awareness campaigns.

8. Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM)

• Launched: 15 August 2019.
• Aim: a Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) for every rural home, supplying 55 litres per person per day (lpcd) of safe drinking water on a regular basis.
• Progress:
• 2019 baseline: 3.23 crore rural homes (about 17%) had tap water [2].
• Since then, more than 12.56 crore more homes have been connected [2].
• Coverage rose from 16.7% to over 82% in seven years (2019-2026) [3].

• About 15.80 crore of 19.36 crore rural homes (81.61%) have tap connections [2].

• Extension and JJM 2.0:

• The Union Cabinet extended JJM to December 2028 [2]. (NCERT: deadline extended to 2028.)
• JJM 2.0 focuses on structural reforms: schemes that keep working over time, citizen-friendly services, and "Har Ghar Jal" certification of every gram panchayat, meaning every home in the panchayat has tap water [2].

• The total outlay was raised to ₹8.69 lakh crore. Central help rose to ₹3.59 lakh crore, up from ₹2.08 lakh crore approved in 2019-20 [2].

• Link to groundwater: tap water only lasts if the source lasts. That is why the Atal Bhujal Yojana supports source sustainability for JJM [5].

9. Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal)

• Launched: 25 December 2019, with World Bank support [5].
• Coverage: 8,213 water-stressed gram panchayats in 80 districts of 7 states [4]. (NCERT: 8,220 gram panchayats in 229 blocks.)
• The 7 states: Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Together they have about 37% of India's water-stressed blocks.
• Money: ₹6,000 crore over five years [5]:
• Component A: ₹1,400 crore to strengthen institutions, data and skills.

• Component B: ₹4,600 crore as incentives. States are rewarded for results, not for spending.

• How it works:

• Villages make community water budgets: they measure how much water comes in and how much is used.
• They then make water security plans.
• They shift to crops and methods that use less water.

• In short, the scheme moves people "from consumption to conservation".

• Results (as on 20 January 2026) [5]:

• The rate of groundwater decline improved in 108 places across the 7 states.
• About 6.69 lakh ha came under efficient water use.

• 6,271 Digital Water Level Recorders (DWLRs) and 7,419 water level indicators were installed.

• Monitoring backbone: CGWB runs about 43,228 groundwater level monitoring stations (January 2026). Its main network is the National Hydrograph Network Stations (dug wells and piezometers, which are narrow wells built to measure water level) [5].

10. Jal Shakti Abhiyan and "Catch the Rain"

• Jal Shakti Abhiyan 2019 worked in 1,592 water-stressed blocks of 256 districts. It promoted rainwater harvesting, recharge, watershed works, water-body revival and tree planting as a Jan Andolan (people's movement) [6].
• Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain (JSA: CTR):
• Launched on World Water Day, 22 March 2021, with the slogan "Catch the Rain, where it falls, when it falls" [6][5].
• It has run every year since 2021.

• Five focus areas [5]:

  1. Water conservation and rainwater harvesting.
  2. Listing and geo-tagging all water bodies (marking each one on a digital map).
  3. Jal Shakti Kendras in every district.
  4. Concentrated afforestation.
  5. Awareness.

• Yearly themes [6]:

Year	Theme or focus
2021	Catch the Rain, where it falls, when it falls
2022	Traditional water bodies, springshed (the area that feeds a spring) and wetland revival
2023	Source Sustainability for Drinking Water (150 water-stressed districts)
2024	Nari Shakti se Jal Shakti (water conservation led by women)
2025	Sixth edition, launched in Panchkula (Haryana), with special focus on 148 districts [7]

• Achievements (March 2021 to January 2026) [5]:
• 19.19 lakh water conservation and rainwater harvesting structures.
• 3.61 lakh traditional water bodies restored.
• 10.35 lakh reuse and recharge structures.
• 20.33 lakh watershed works.

• 712 Jal Shakti Kendras working (December 2025).

• Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari (JSJB):

• Launched on 6 September 2024 at Surat (Gujarat) [6].
• It runs on the "3Cs": Community, CSR and Cost. CSR means Corporate Social Responsibility funds from companies [6].
• JSJB 1.0 (April 2024 to May 2025) had a target of 10 lakh recharge structures. More than 27 lakh were reported [6].
• JSJB 2.0 began on 1 June 2025. It focused on over-exploited and critical districts, where more groundwater is pumped out than rain puts back. Against a target of 1 crore structures by 31 May 2026, more than 1.5 crore were reported, and these are being checked on the ground [6].

• JSJB: Catch the Rain (launched 1 June 2026) merges JSJB with JSA: CTR. It uses money from other schemes such as Per Drop More Crop and the repair, renovation and restoration of water bodies under PMKSY, as well as CAMPA and Finance Commission grants [6].

• Master Plan for Artificial Recharge to Groundwater 2020:

• Plans about 1.42 crore rainwater harvesting and recharge structures to send about 185 BCM (billion cubic metres) of water underground [5].
• Rural areas use surface spreading (letting runoff soak into the ground). Cities, hills and coasts focus on rooftop harvesting [5].

11. Mission Amrit Sarovar

• Launched: 24 April 2022 [5].
• Target: at least 75 Amrit Sarovars (ponds) in every district. Each pond covers at least one acre (0.4 ha) and holds about 10,000 cubic metres of water [5].
• Purpose: store rainwater, recharge groundwater, expand irrigation and revive village water bodies.
• Progress:
• The first target was 50,000 ponds by 15 August 2023. 59,492 were done by May 2023, ahead of time [8].
• Phase 1 (April 2022 to August 2023): 68,827 sarovars completed [5].
• Phase 2 (September 2023 onwards): 16,091 identified and work started on 1,994 (as on 22 January 2026) [5].

12. Synthesis: where India's water policy is heading

Old approach (supply augmentation)	New approach (demand management and governance)
Big dams and canals	Micro-irrigation, water-wise crop choice
River-linking, desalination	Water pricing, recycling and reuse
Run by government engineers	Community water budgets (Atal Jal), panchayat control
Success = number of structures built	Success = outcomes: water table levels, river flows, water quality

Prelims Hooks

• Jal Jeevan Mission: launched 15 August 2019. It promises 55 lpcd through a household tap. It was extended to December 2028 under JJM 2.0.
• Atal Bhujal Yojana: launched 25 December 2019 with World Bank support. It covers 7 states: Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, MP, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, UP. Trap: Punjab and Tamil Nadu are not included.
• Catch the Rain was launched on World Water Day (22 March 2021). The slogan is "where it falls, when it falls".
• Mission Amrit Sarovar (24 April 2022): 75 ponds per district, each 1 acre (0.4 ha), holding about 10,000 m³.
• Ministry of Jal Shakti was formed in May 2019. The National Water Policies came in 1987, 2002 and 2012.
• Most polluted river stretch (NCERT): the Yamuna between Delhi and Etawah.
• River–city pairs: Musi–Hyderabad, Sabarmati–Ahmedabad, Gomti–Lucknow, Adyar and Cooum–Chennai, Vaigai–Madurai.
• Conjunctive use means using surface water and groundwater together. It is not the same as inter-basin transfer.
• Desalination plants Minjur and Nemmeli are near Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and use reverse osmosis.
• Jal Kranti Abhiyan (2015-16): one "Jal Gram" per district in 672 districts, and model command areas of about 1,000 ha.

Mains Points

• From supply to demand (GS-III): dams, river links and desalination cannot keep pace with rising demand.
• Micro-irrigation, crop choice, water pricing (as NWP 2012 says) and reuse of treated waste water are cheaper and last longer.

• These steps matter most in agriculture, which uses the most water.

• Groundwater governance: groundwater meets about 62% of irrigation and 85% of rural needs [5]. Atal Jal's model is worth scaling up:

• community water budgets;
• incentives paid for results;
• data from DWLRs.

• The Model Groundwater Bill (21 States/UTs) still needs strong enforcement.

• Taps need sources: JJM's rise from 16.7% to over 82% coverage [3] will only last if the water sources last.

• JSA: CTR, JSJB and Amrit Sarovar recharge aquifers.

• Field checks are needed to confirm that the crores of reported structures really work.

• Pollution is the other side of scarcity: the 1974 and 1986 Acts were weakly enforced, and stretches such as the Yamuna (Delhi–Etawah) and Musi carry untreated sewage. Treating and reusing waste water fixes pollution and adds water supply at the same time.