**4.1 Indian water bodies: a precious estate**

India is endowed with extraordinarily diverse and distinctive traditional waterbodies known by their different names in different parts of the country, such as Khadin and Baolis [Rajasthan], Dung or Jumpois [Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal] Bhandaras [Maharashtra], Vavdi [Gujarat], AharPynes [Bihar] and Zing [Ladakh, Kashmir]. These water bodies are vital for sustenance to Indian agriculture and have been playing important role in the overall management of water resources of the country. Religious significance are also adhered with the water bodies. Several Indian lakes such as Gurudongmar in Sikkim and Pushkar in Rajasthan are renowned for their religious magnitude. These lakes provide an adequate water in the form of large storage tanks to the monsoon-dependent areas of the country where there exist quite a short spell of rainfall and a long dry period with very high deviation of annual rainfall. The small storage tanks are called ponds or locally bundhis which, as a rule, are community owned, while on the other, the large storage tanks with command areas from 20 to 2000 hectares were usually built by the regional rulers. These water bodies reflect the regional style of construction and typically were based on the provincial demand of water. Some key examples of classical water bodies are presented as follow:


is still in use [22]. The dam has been built with uneven stones and is 329 m long and 20 m wide (**Figure 1**). The purpose of the dam was to divert the waters of the Kaveri across the fertile Thanjavur delta region for irrigation via canals.

After independence, the government has taken control over these water bodies and making structural changes as needed. However, since last few decades, water bodies have been under continuous and unrelenting stress, caused primarily by unplanned growth and rapid urbanization.
