Water poverty in the Northeastern Hill region (India) : potential alleviation through multiple-use water systems : cross-learnings from nepal hills

The northeast region of India being highly rich in water resources potential, has not benefitted much from such a natural wealth. The region, endowed with an enormous water potential of about 34 percent of the country’s total water resources, represents only 7.9 percent of the total Indian landmass. The per capita and per hectare availability of water in India is highest in this region. However, the societal (both productive and consumptive) water use is less than 5 per cent of the existing potential. The unutilised and excessive water supplies during the rainy season create a mayhem of devastations almost every year with ravaging floods, land slides, soil erosion and other infrastructural failures and miseries and unrest in large parts. Extreme water scarcity during the post-rainy season seriously constrains the farmers’ access to a reliable water source and to a meaningful economic activity
at the farm and extreme hardships for the household. This aptly presents a ‘water poverty’ scenario in an otherwise ‘water-abundant’ region. [authors abstract]