Guidelines for different uses of water e.g., irrigation, drinking, industrial etc particularly in context of basin wise situations

With ever increasing population to support food requirement of more than 1.2 billion people, irrigation water demand is increasing. The concomitant rapid urbanisation and industrialisation are also taking a heavy toll on the overall water demand scenario. As the result, the gap between water demand and availability has been progressively increasing.The silver lining is that in the bulk consumer sector i.e. irrigation sector consuming roughly about 80 percent, there lies tremendous opportunity of water savings. The prevailing water use efficiency in surface water resources schemes are typically low which can be substantially improved and water can be saved for the other purposes including the additional irrigation.In the domestic water sector, the loss of water on account of leakages in mains, communication and service pipes and valves is approximately 30 to 40% of the total flow in the distribution system. By reducing these leakages, the wastages could be brought down to 10-12% of the supply.There is an urgent need and scope to make the systems more efficient and operate with optimal efficiency. Effective legislations needs to be brought out and enforced for treatment of domestic waste and industrial effluent discharge and its reuse so as to achieve high level of efficiencies in water use in these sectors also.