WATERBODY CENSUS

1. Context 

2. About Water Body

• The Water Bodies: First Census Report considers "all natural or man-made units bounded on all sides with some or no masonry work used for storing water for irrigation or other purposes (e.g. industrial, pisciculture, domestic/drinking, recreation, religious, groundwater recharge etc.)" as water bodies.
• The Water bodies are usually of various types known by different names like tanks, reservoirs, ponds etc.
• According to the report," A structure where water from ice-melt, streams, springs, rain or drainage of water from residential or other areas is accumulated or water is stored by diversion from a stream, Nala or river will also be treated as a water body".
• As per the report, West Bengal's South 24 Pargana has been ranked as the district having the highest (3.55 lakh) number of water bodies across the country.
• The district is followed by Andhra Pradesh's Ananthapur (50, 537) and West Bengal's Howrah (37, 301).

3. The excluded water bodies for the Census

1. Oceans and lagoons
2. Rivers, streams, springs, waterfalls, canals, etc. which are free-flowing, without any bounded storage of water
3. Swimming pools
4. Covered water tanks created for a specific purpose by a family or household for their consumption
5. A water tank constructed by a factory owner for the consumption of water as raw material or consumable
6. Temporary water bodies created by digging for mining, brick kilns and construction activities, which may get filled during the rainy season and
7. Pucca open water tanks were created only for cattle to drink water.

4. The need for water bodies census

• The Centre earlier maintained a database of water bodies that were getting central assistance under the Scheme of Repair, Renovation and Restoration (RRR) of water bodies.
• In 2016, a Standing Committee of Parliament pointed to the need to carry out a separate census of water bodies.
• The government then commissioned the first census of water bodies in 2018-19 along with the sixth Minor Irrigation (MI) Census.
• The objective was to collect information on all important aspects of the subject including their size, condition, status of encroachments, use, storage capacity, status of filling up of storage etc.

5. The Methodology of  Data Collection

• The Traditional methodology, i.e., paper-based schedules, was canvassed both for rural and urban areas.
• A village schedule, urban schedule and water body schedule were canvassed and a smartphone was used to capture latitude, longitude and photo of water bodies.

6. The encroachment of water bodies

• The census found that 1.6 per cent of enumerated water bodies 38, 496 out of 24, 24, 540 had been encroached upon.
• More than 95 per cent of these were in rural areas which is logical because more than 97 per cent of the water bodies covered by the census were in rural areas.
• In almost 63 per cent of encroached water bodies, less than a quarter of the area was under encroachment; in about 12 per cent of water bodies, more than three-quarters of the area was under encroachment.
• Uttar Pradesh accounted for almost 40 per cent (15, 301) of water bodies under encroachment, followed by Tamil Nadu (8, 366) and Andhra Pradesh (3, 920).
• No encroachment was reported from West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.