Assessment of the sustainability of water use in the catchment area of the Man Dam in Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Sustainability of water use has assumed paramount importance presently due to the serious mismatch between supply and demand of water that is increasingly manifesting itself. Following the World Environment Conference in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 there is an increasing consensus that water resources should be studied and managed holistically to tackle this emerging problem of unsustainability. The study of such integrated water resource management in river basins is, however, still in its infancy and so micro level studies are necessary to build knowledge in this area. Thus, presently there are no standard research designs and survey methodologies for conducting such a study. Therefore, the present study of the sustainability of water resource use in the Man River basin of Madhya Pradesh is of an exploratory nature intended to add to the body of knowledge in this field and provide directions for future research. This thesis details the currently accepted broad study framework of Integrated Water Resource Management, the status of the Bhil Adivasis and Panchayati Raj and the gender situation in the Man River Basin, the reasons for the choice of the basin, its characteristics, the problems in the estimation of water use and its sustainability, the final methodology of estimation of water use developed to suit the characteristics of the basin, the results of applying this methodology, the results of an experiment to make water resource utilisation for agriculture more sustainable in the basin and the results of a household sample survey of the perceptions of the people regarding the factors affecting the sustainability of water use in the basin. The main conclusion is that there is a lack of sustainability of water use in the basin due to the adoption of wrong agricultural policies and this needs to be rectified. newline