There is a popular saying, ‘It takes a lot of blues to stay green.’ If you can relate to this saying, we need to conserve water at every level, so that we can move towards a greener environment. In the newspapers and areas around us, we regularly come across issues of water scarcity, especially during summers. Rapid urbanization, modernization, and development around us have widened the gap between the water that is available for usage and the water that cannot be used. This situation is putting enormous pressure on the quality of surface and groundwater bodies. Clean water is destined to become one of the rarest commodities soon, if the general public, especially the students, are not educated about the significance of storing, recycling, and reusing water.

Thus, what is important now is to inculcate a habit of conservation and learn the importance of the same and it should start from today. The need of the hour is to educate ourselves about water conservation. When you, being the future leader, start practicing this at home or schools, to save and use water economically, you can help in reducing water wastage now and in the future. You will be able to do more daily activities with less amount of water, and these good habits will become a way of your life.

Let us start with knowing a few traditional methods of water conservation. They are common methods from around the country that can be used around the country to conserve the water, depending on the topography of the land and climatic conditions.

• Kuhl is a very ancient technique of water conservation carried out in Himachal and Jammu and Kashmir. They are surface water channels that carry glacial waters from rivers and streams to the fields. You all must have heard of the Kangra valley in Himachal. It is famous for Kuhls, which amounts to approximately 715 major ones and 2500 minor ones. It helps in irrigating 30,000 hectares of land in the valley. In earlier times, these Kuhls were either built through public donations or by royal rulers. The maintenance of the Kuhl was carried out through a Kohli,  who was designated as the master of the Kuhl.

• Another water conservation technique from Rajasthan is water soak pits which are called Madaras in Karnataka, Pemghara in Odisha, and Johads in Rajasthan.  These are also the oldest techniques of water conservation, especially in water-scarce regions. It is like a bigger version of a well with soil excavated to create a storage area and raised from three sides. The soil is used to create a wall on the fourth side to hold water. They are used to collect monsoon water which slowly seeps in to recharge groundwater and maintains soil moisture. These simple structures are cost-efficient. Water from Johads is still widely used by farmers to irrigate fields in many parts of India. In fact, the arid state of Rajasthan has seen a drastic improvement in water conservation due to the efforts of Rajendra Singh of Tarun Bharat Sangh to revive Johads.

• Now let us move our focus to a traditional water harvesting technique in Maharashtra's area of Rumtek called the Rumtek model. It is a network of surface and groundwater bodies. It helps in the conservation of water runoff. In this system, tanks connected by underground and surface canals form a chain that extends from the foothills to the plains. Once tanks located close to the hills are filled to capacity, the water flows down to fill successive tanks, generally through interconnecting channels. 

• Going towards the southern states, we have a very famous conservation technique of the Eri (tank) system prevalent in Tamil Nadu, as one of the oldest water management systems in India. Eris acts as a flood-control system that prevents soil erosion and wastage of runoff during periods of heavy rainfall and also recharges the groundwater. The tanks are interconnected in order to enable access to the farthest village and to balance the water level in case of excess supply. The system enables the complete use of river water for irrigation and without them, paddy cultivation would have been impossible in Tamil Nadu.

• Now let us move relatively towards the north, in the state of Bihar, where we have Ahar Pynes, the traditional floodwater harvesting systems indigenous to South Bihar. Ahars are reservoirs with embankments on three sides that are built at the end of diversion channels like pynes. Pynes are artificial rivulets led off from rivers to collect water in the ahars for irrigation in the dry months. Paddy cultivation in this relatively low rainfall area depends mostly on ahar pynes.

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