36. Integrated Water Management for Drought Miti-gation

Periodic droughts pose serious limitations to India's efforts for socio-economic development and agricultural self sufficiency. Drought management, to be effective, require reliable and time effective assessment and monitoring of drought conditions. In India so far there is no organised follow up on the complex subject of drought. It is high time that this subject is given serious attention on a long-term basis because of its notorious crippling potential. With the increasing scarcity of water, the severity of the impact of droughts is bound to grow and hence the need for increased attention to this phenomenon. The strategies for integrated water management are presented in this article, emphasizing the need of increased efforts for water harvesting, reuse and recycling and accelerated construction of water storage projects. Water storages capacities have to be increased adequately in order to ward off the difficulties in the event of monsoon failure as well as to meet the demand during dry session particularly in drought prone areas.