Water Conservation and Rainwater Harvesting: Notes and PYQs

The correct answer is A, of traditional water conservation techniques. A tanka is a covered underground tank, usually sunk in a courtyard or beneath a house in western Rajasthan, into which rain falling on the paved courtyard or the roof is led through a filter and stored for drinking right through the dry months. A khadin, worked out by the Paliwal Brahmins of Jaisalmer in the fifteenth century, is a long earthen embankment thrown across the lower slope of a rocky catchment; runoff collects behind it, soaks the soil, and a crop is raised on the moist bed after the standing water has drained away. Both therefore belong to the family of traditional water harvesting works of the desert, along with the kund, the johad and the baori. Option B is wrong because neither word carries any military sense. Option C is wrong because the folk dances of Rajasthan are Ghoomar, Kalbelia, Terah Taali and Chari. Option D is wrong because, although a khadin supports cropping, the structure itself is a water harvesting work and tanka has no farming meaning at all.

The correct answer is B, Nagaland. Zabo, a word that means impounding runoff, is practised around Kikruma village in the Phek district of Nagaland. Rain falling on a protected forest patch at the top of the hill is caught in ponds on the middle terrace, passed through cattle yards where it picks up manure, and then led to paddy fields lower down that also rear fish, so forest, water, livestock and crops are managed as one linked system. Option A is wrong because the harvesting practice of Meghalaya is bamboo drip irrigation, in which split bamboo pipes carry spring water drop by drop to betel vine and black pepper in the Khasi and Jaintia hills. Option C is wrong because Mizoram is known for its bamboo forests and jhum cultivation rather than for a named harvesting system of this kind. Option D is wrong because Manipur is identified in this topic with the Loktak lake and its floating phumdis, not with zabo.

The correct answer is A, Meghalaya. In the Khasi and Jaintia hills, spring and stream water on a hill slope is tapped and carried through a network of split bamboo pipes, channels and diversion sticks that step the flow down the slope and finally release it drop by drop at the root of each betel vine or pepper plant. The system needs no cement, no pump and no power, and is one of the oldest micro-irrigation methods in the world. Option B is wrong because the traditional work of Kerala in this topic is the surangam, a horizontal tunnel cut into a laterite hill to tap seepage, besides the wooden-cylinder panam keni wells of Wayanad. Option C is wrong because Ladakh is associated with zing, the small tank that collects glacier melt water. Option D is wrong because south Bihar is the home of the ahar-pyne system of channels and embanked reservoirs.

The correct answer is B, a diversion channel that carries water from a river. In the old Magadh region of south Bihar the land slopes gently and the soil holds water poorly, so farmers cut long channels, the pynes, from the flood flow of rivers such as the Phalgu, Sakri and Morhar and led the water across the fields. Option A is wrong because the embanked catchment basin at the tail of a pyne is the ahar, a three-sided reservoir whose fourth side is the natural slope; mixing up ahar and pyne is the standard trap in this question. Option C is wrong because the covered underground drinking water tank is the tanka of western Rajasthan. Option D is wrong because the stepped well reaching down to the water table is the baori or vav of Rajasthan and Gujarat, of which Rani ki Vav at Patan is the best known. The ahar-pyne pair therefore works as channel plus reservoir together.

The correct answer is C, Ladakh. In the cold desert of Ladakh there is very little rain, so the water that matters is glacier melt. Guiding channels bring the melt water down from the snout of a glacier to a zing, a small tank near the fields, where it is held until the afternoon when the melt is strong enough to irrigate. A village water official, the churpun, divides the supply among the households. Option A is wrong because the gravity channel of Himachal Pradesh, in the Kangra region, is the kuhl, which carries glacier and stream water straight to terraced fields rather than storing it in a tank; swapping zing and kuhl is the commonest error here. Option B is wrong because Uttarakhand is associated with the guhl channels and the chal-khal ponds of the hills. Option D is wrong because Sikkim has a very heavy rainfall and is not identified with a named melt water tank of this kind.

The correct answer is A, the laterite country of Kasaragod in Kerala. A surangam is a tunnel about two metres high cut nearly level into the side of a laterite hill until it meets a seepage zone; the water that oozes out of the rock trickles along the floor of the tunnel and is collected in a pit outside, so the structure taps groundwater without any pumping. The same idea appears in the thurangam of the adjoining Dakshina Kannada area. Option B is wrong because the Banni grassland of Kutch has virdas, shallow wells dug by Maldhari herders in a depression to reach the thin layer of sweet water lying above the saline water. Option C is wrong because the Tapi basin has the phad system of diversion bandharas. Option D is wrong because Alwar is famous for johads, the small earthen check dams revived by Rajendra Singh and Tarun Bharat Sangh.

The correct answer is B. In 2019 the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation was merged with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation to create a single Ministry of Jal Shakti, so that irrigation, river basins, groundwater, drinking water supply and sanitation would be handled by one ministry. It works through two departments, the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation and the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, and runs Jal Jeevan Mission, the Jal Shakti Abhiyan and Atal Bhujal Yojana. Option A is wrong because agriculture and rural development remain separate ministries, although watershed work is done under rural development. Option C is wrong because the environment and earth sciences ministries were not merged and deal with forests, pollution and weather services. Option D is wrong because urban water supply reaches cities through the urban affairs ministry but no such merger took place.

The correct answer is B, the World Bank. Atal Bhujal Yojana, launched in 2019 under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is a central sector scheme part funded by the World Bank. It works in water-stressed blocks of seven states, namely Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and its distinguishing feature is that gram panchayats prepare water security plans and money flows to them as an incentive for measured improvement in groundwater behaviour rather than for construction alone. Option A is wrong because the Asian Development Bank funds many Indian irrigation and urban water projects but not this scheme. Option C is wrong because the New Development Bank, set up by the BRICS countries with its headquarters at Shanghai, is not the partner here. Option D is wrong because the International Monetary Fund lends for balance of payments support and does not fund development schemes of this kind at all.

The correct answer is C, 75. Mission Amrit Sarovar was launched on 24 April 2022, National Panchayati Raj Day, as part of the celebration of seventy-five years of independence, and the number 75 in the target of seventy-five ponds in every district of the country comes from that anniversary. Each amrit sarovar is planned to hold about ten thousand cubic metres of water, and the work is done by converging funds already available under schemes such as the rural employment guarantee programme and the watershed component of the rural development programmes. Option A, option B and option D are wrong simply because they are not the announced figure; twenty-five, fifty and one hundred are the usual distractors for a target of this kind. Remembering the link between the number 75 and the anniversary of independence is the quickest way to hold this fact.

The correct answer is A, the National Action Plan on Climate Change. The plan, released in 2008, set up eight national missions, among them the National Solar Mission, the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, the National Water Mission, the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, the National Mission for a Green India, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat and the National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change. The water mission aims at integrated water resources management and at raising water use efficiency by twenty per cent. Option B is wrong because the National Water Policy is a statement of principles, not a parent of missions, though it also stresses efficiency. Option C is wrong because Namami Gange is a river cleaning programme for the Ganga basin. Option D is wrong because the rural drinking water programme supplied village water and was later folded into Jal Jeevan Mission.

The correct answer is B, Tamil Nadu. Faced with a steep fall in the water table around Chennai, the state amended its building rules in 2003 to require a rainwater harvesting structure in buildings, and it is cited as the first state in the country to make such harvesting compulsory. Other states and the model building bye-laws later carried similar provisions, and many municipal corporations now link building plan approval to a harvesting structure. Option A is wrong because Maharashtra, though an early mover on watershed work through the Pani Panchayat and Jalyukt Shivar efforts, was not first with this building rule. Option C is wrong because Gujarat is linked in this topic with the Sardar Sarovar canal network and the revival of stepwells and virdas. Option D is wrong because Rajasthan is the home of the traditional desert structures such as the tanka, the kund and the johad rather than of the first legal mandate.