WASTAGE OF UNDERGROUND WATER - STEPS TOWARDS A TRAP?

Underground water is used indiscriminately for the purposes like agriculture, serving purposes of urban people, cold drink and mineral water manufacturing etc. As a matter of policy, the rural areas are supplied with underground water in India without considering the factors like actual requirement of water in a particular area, season of scarcity of water etc. It is very common to see the ever open taps of water supplying lines in rural India thronging water continuously and nobody is there to use it. The discharge rate of underground water is far more than the charging rate. This may lead to a very serious condition of water scarcity in near future. Various steps like holding of rain water in the water bodies, selection of crop with requirement of lesser amount of water during the dry months as well as use of Forward Osmosis (FO) technology for Cold drinks or Bottled Drinking Water manufacturing from the sea water are advocated.