One of the most urgent challenges facing the world today is ensuring local water security under rapid climate variability and change. This is of particular importance in a country like India, where over half of the people are involved in farming, and agricultural losses due to climate change are estimated to be as high as 30 per cent by 2080. This ethnography in the arid village of Bhiwadi, West Rajasthan empirically links the reintroduction of local water harvesting technologies with the building of sustainable social reproduction in subsistent communities.

We analyze tunnel wells (surangams), traditional water harvesting systems, which have been innovated and nurtured by farmers in the Enmakaje panchayat in the state of Kerala in South India for decades. We show how the genesis and design of the indigenous knowledge-based water harvesting systems are shaped by agro-ecological conditions. We also identify issues that affect the sustainability of tunnel wells in the changing agrarian context in this region.

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is situated in the Southeast of Bangladesh covering about 10 per cent of the total land. It is the native hoe of 13 tribal communities and these communities have their own traditional knowledge for natural resource managements. This paper provides 8 traditional knowledge namely, folk classification of landform, land use zoning, community reserve for common resource management, fuel wood selection for domestic use, water harvesting ditches, tree management in the jhum field by the Murang community, coppice management of Gmelina arborea Roxb.

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is situated in the Southeast of Bangladesh covering about 10 per cent of the total land. It is the native hoe of 13 tribal communities and these communities have their own traditional knowledge for natural resource managements. This paper provides 8 traditional knowledge namely, folk classification of landform, land use zoning, community reserve for common resource management, fuel wood selection for domestic use, water harvesting ditches, tree management in the jhum field by the Murang community, coppice management of Gmelina arborea Roxb.

In 2003, when Hungund taluk in the Bagalkot district of Karnataka was hit by a severe drought, farmers did not have to buy food grain from the market. Nearly 90 per cent of them had built bunds and conserved topsoil using traditional techniques of drought-proofing which have their roots in this district.

Villages in Jharkhand could go dry by March. The state is facing acute water crisis because of two consecutive drought years.

A radical shift in policy is unavoidable. Dams and pipelines have outlived their usefulness. It is now time for a water policy based on jal anushasan.