Water Resources Summary Class 10 Social Science Chapter 3

Water

• Water is a renewable resource. 
• Although three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, only a small amount is freshwater suitable for use. 
• This freshwater primarily comes from surface runoff and groundwater, which are continuously renewed and recharged through the hydrological cycle.

Some Facts and Figures

• About 96.5 percent of the world’s water is found in oceans, while only 2.5 percent is freshwater.
• India receives nearly 4 percent of global precipitation and ranks 133rd in water availability per person per year.
• By 2025, many parts of India are expected to face absolute water scarcity.
• Overuse and poor management of water resources could lead to an ecological crisis affecting our lives significantly.

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Water Scarcity and need for water conservation and management

• The lack sufficient water as compared to its demand in a region is known as Water Scarcity.
• Causes of Water Scarcity are:
  • over-exploitation
  • excessive use and unequal access to water among different social groups.
  • Large population

Dams

• A dam is a barrier across flowing water that obstructs, directs or retards the flow, often creating a reservoir, lake or impoundment.

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Multi-Purpose River Projects

• These projects are large dams that serve various functions beyond just storing river water, such as irrigation.
• Examples include the Sutlej-Beas river basin and the Bhakra–Nangal project.

Advantages of multi-purpose river projects are:

• Electricity generation
• Irrigation
• Water supply for domestic and industrial uses
• Flood control
• Recreation
• Inland navigation 
• Fish breeding

Disadvantages of Multi-purpose river projects are:

• It affects the natural flow of river causing poor sediment flow and excessive sedimentation at the bottom of the reservoir.
• It destroys the habitats for the rivers’ aquatic life.
• It submerges the existing vegetation and soil if created on the floodplains.
• It displaces the local people of the place where it is created.
• These are unsuccessful in controlling floods at the time of excessive rainfall.
• These projects induced earthquakes, caused water- borne diseases and pests and pollution resulting from excessive use of water.

Movements against Mult-purpose river projects

• These projects cause of many new social movements like the ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ and the ‘Tehri Dam Andolan’ etc.
  • This is due to the large-scale displacement of local communities.
• Inter-state water disputes are also becoming common with regard to sharing the costs and benefits of the multi-purpose project.

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Rainwater Harvesting

• Rainwater Harvesting refers to the practice of storing and using of rainwater from the surface on which it falls.
• In hill and mountainous regions, people built diversion channels like the ‘guls’ or ‘kuls’ of the Western Himalayas for agriculture.
• In Rajasthan, ‘Rooftop rain water harvesting’ was commonly practised to store drinking water.
• In the flood plains of Bengal, people developed inundation channels to irrigate their fields. 
• In arid and semi-arid regions, agricultural fields were converted into rain fed storage structures that allowed the water to stand and moisten the soil.
• In the semi-arid and arid regions of Rajasthan, almost all the houses traditionally had underground tanks or tankas for storing drinking water.

How Tankas works:

• Tankas were connected to the sloping roofs of the houses through a pipe.
• Rain falling on the rooftops would travel down the pipe and was stored in these underground ‘tankas’.