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 Rainfall accounts for 68 per cent recharge to groundwater, and the share of other resources, such as canal seepage, retu flow from irrigation, flow measurement Suppliers recharge from tanks, ponds and water conservation structures taken together is 32 per cent.The country’s outdated water management infrastructure is too rickety to cope with the burgeoning population. We have procrastinated on real reforms by using band-aids and never looked at the issue with a far-sighted vision. Water is in every sense a multi-dimensional resource requiring an understanding of many other disciplines for its sustainable management. So we have to take farmers and agronomists on board so that farmers can work out an approach to manage their water in an equitable and sustainable manner. Indian utilities compound the problem by callously losing an estimated 40 to 60 per cent of the water produced. This is in contrast to cities like Tokyo which loses 3.7 per cent, Singapore 4.9 per cent and Phnom Penh 6.5 per cent.India is not a water-scarce country. Apart from the major rivers, it receives an average annual rainfall of 1,170 millimetres. It boasts renewable water reserves of 1,608 billion cubic metres a year.

 Given this robust back-up and with the world’s ninth largest freshwater reserves, India’s water woes reflect inefficient management, and not scarcity. Most parts of the country receive a more than adequate amount of rainfall. Many of the areas that are prone to flooding are usually the same ones that face drought months later.Successive Indian govements have done little to conserve water for off-season use. Despite constructing 4,525 large and small dams, the country has managed to create per capita storage of only 213 cubic metres, a relatively small achievement when compared to Russia’s 6,103 cubic metres, Australia’s 4,733, and China’s 1,111.Israel has been a role model for the world in matters of water management with its innovation of drip irrigation. The country has also set the template for reusing wastewater in irrigation. It treats 80 per cent of its domestic wastewater, which is recycled and constitutes nearly 50 per cent of the total water used for agriculture. Israel now saves as candlelight for countries like India.The Asian Development Bank has forecast that by 2030, India will have a water deficit of 50 per cent.

 The Union ministry of water resources has estimated the country’s current water requirements to be around 1,100 billion cubic metres per year, which is estimated to be around 1,200 billion cubic metres for the year 2025 and 1,447 billion cubic metres for 2050. The average Indian had access to 5,200 cubic metres of water a year in 1951, when the population was 350 million. By 2010, that had dropped to 1,600 cubic metres, a level regarded as "water-stressed" by inteational organisations. Today it is at about 1,400 cubic metres and analysts say it is likely to fall below the 1,000 cubic metre "water scarcity" limit in the next two to three decades.India’s rivers are drying and are symptomatic of the dire state of water crisis. The per capita water availability in 1951 was 5,177 cubic metres. By 2011, this had fallen to 1,545 cubic metres. Further, according to the National Institute of Hydrology, most of this water is not suitable for human use. It estimates that the per capita availability of usable water was a mere 938 cubic metres.