Application of ArcGIS for e-Governance of Rural Water Management

Water is one of the most important commodities. More than two third of India’s population, over a Billion, lives in rural and semi-rural areas. A large number of villages have over 50% deficit crop yield, jeopardizing the lives of millions of people. For the lack of water, it is feared that 50% of the livestock could be lost. Farmers are abandoning cattle and migrating to cities. So to stop this migration the need has arisen to make water available to them. Thus, key issues in the governance of rural water services in the country are lack of rural water access, high levels of poverty and poor management of water supply schemes that are under decentralization processes. In order to prioritize the need of the development of efficient water supply schemes several factors like demographic profile eg., population, number of households, literacy level and socioeconomic profile e.g., occupation, village area, land pattern, educational institution, health facility, power supply, social organizations, road connectivity, agriculture, drinking water system, sanitation, etc. were considered. As a pilot study a rural block was considered in the Maharashtra region. The spatial and non-spatial data was collected and was input to ArcGIS tool. The layered information was extracted further using various Boolean operations for analyzing Enhanced Water Point Needs (EWPN). Once all data of the block were fed, the behavioral pattern of each block could be visualized thereby easing the process of analysis. For example, it could be visualized that villagers give first preference to electric connections followed by the water supply connection while toilets are given less priority. Pockets could be identified where ground water exploitation was most. This had a direct relation with the cropping pattern. The proposed approach is a feasible solution for solving the issue of governance of rural water management at national level.

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