Water scarcity, a third world war over water – these ideas are doing the rounds to stress just how critical India’s water crisis is. For a country so well endowed with water, with the world’s richest tradition of local community-level water management systems, it’s strange to have come to this pass.

India gets the most rainfall per square unit of land area of any country in the world. If we walled the country and didn’t let any rain escape into the sea, each year we would have water one metre deep on the ground. That’s a lot of water. It’s enough to comfortably meet every Indian’s need for water – drinking, washing, bathing, manufacturing, farming and wasting. But we do not have that imaginary wall, and are not about to stop rivers in their tracks. So we do not have much water to play with.

It wasn’t always like this. India believe in self-help, which is why we are such entrepreneurs and trend-setters abroad. At home, lethargy strikes, bringing the ‘let the government do it’ attitude. Amnesia strikes. The same Indians that pine for ‘the good ole days’ when abroad find nothing to cheer about once in their country. They forget 5,000 years of traditional knowledge that stands behind them, which made India the richest countries in the world in not-to-distant past – just before the British invasion, India accounted for some 27 per cent of the global economy and trade.

OK, I am not about to bemoan our long lost past. But I am about to make a case for respecting, learning from and incorporating our traditional knowledge, especially about water, the basic resource.

I’ve humbly learnt – that was what I set out to do without too much baggage – that our ancestors understood how to handle water, leaving the smallest ecological footprint. In simple words, they knew how to make the most of what nature provided.

We used local material, the topography, labour and money from our rulers to build an amazing variety of systems. These range from water harvesting and storage to distribution mechanisms. Every one of them evolved in situ and underwent organic modifications and improvements – more like farmers using selective breeding to improve their crops. In this, they were supported by the wealthy as well – 10 percent of profits made by businessmen and traders went towards community water works, and privatization was not on the agenda then.

Each region had a variety of mechanisms for different end-uses. It was never one-mechanism-suits-all-uses. So you had covered wells for drinking water in Rajasthan and open, deep talaabs for bathing, washing and watering animals, sheltered by trees from the sun to reduce evaporation. Agriculture was mostly rain-fed save for some places along rivers or where sub-soil water was easily available and could be lifted using Persian wheels or bullock-drawn systems. Social norms governed the use of water. These were not equitable, given our caste hierarchy, but still ensured that everybody had some sort of access to water. Groundwater was hard to get and scarcely exploited.

The local people – villagers and townspeople – helped to build most of these structures. It was contributory – labour from the people and money from the wealthy. Cash never covered the whole cost of the work, usually accounting for between half and three-fourths of the total. This gave the locals a sense of ownership over the structures. They protected and repaired them as needed to the extent that money was not involved. If money was needed, to pour fresh mortar, for example, the headman would raise it from the ruler or other source.

This system worked fine for many centuries. Once the structure was built, its maintenance was assured. The ruler could get on with other business. It was impossible given the country’s diversity and spread to attend to each and every well, tank and pond. If a structure was large, several communities shared the responsibility for its upkeep. Most structures carried edicts from the builders detailing the sharing of water and their preservation. People respected these and there were penalties for violators.

The map below gives an idea of the diversity of these systems. In the book, I have highlighted examples from eight locations but there are many more that remain to be explored. The areas are Uttarakhand, Delhi, Sekhawati (Western Rajasthan), Chambal, Bundelkhand, Meghalaya, Goa and Tamil Nadu. Mouse over these areas on the map to read more.