Abstract
Rivers and river-valleys had been centres of development of civilisation. The importance of water as a precious resource had been realised by all civilisations to sustain life on earth. In ancient texts of India, it has been said, “where there is water, there is food; where there is food, there is life”. What was once a ubiquitous resource has become scarce and even in places where water is everywhere, it had become scarcer because of quality deterioration. The causes for the present state of affairs are: population increase, industrialisation, urbanisation, poor governance and management and peoples’ apathy and ignorance.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Ms. Shruti and Ms. Chanchal for helping in the preparation of maps. This work is undertaken as a part of UGC SAP DRS Programme of the Department of Geography.
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Raju, K.N.P., Bhatt, D. (2015). Water in Ancient Indian Perspective and Ponds of Varanasi as Water Harvesting Structures. In: Raju, N., Gossel, W., Ramanathan, A., Sudhakar, M. (eds) Management of Water, Energy and Bio-resources in the Era of Climate Change: Emerging Issues and Challenges. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05969-3_6
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