All these decades from early twentieth century, storm water and artificial recharge of aquifers have seldom been an area of consideration for planners and policy makers. The country appeared to be oblivious to the fact that these too are integral part of the resources that we need to take care of before it starts hitting back at us in our daily lives! But then, such has been the case with every other resource base in India, which starts with "abundance" , runs into "shortage" and then graduates to being "scarce" and finally the "crisis" sets in.
I have to admit here that I have never been to a conference where storm water management and artificial recharge methods were discussed and deliberated upon. I have never known any urban planner or town planning agency which has put forth these considerations while developing water resource management strategies.
He proposes that in designing rainwater-harvesting system, rainfall run off from the roads should be captured and through an artificial connectivity, it should be channelised to sub surface water. This approach will be effective because:
The plans are included in his presentation, which can be downloaded from here (pdf, 6.7mb)
Policy and regulatory guidelines have remained unelaborated in water harvesting and management.
Dr.S.K Sharma in conversation
Traditional water harvesting in India dates back to IndusValley Civilizationand Mughal Period. Rooftop Rain Water Harvesting has been adopted by several government buildings, with Shram Shakti Bhawan in New Delhi being one of the earliest. Here is a slide from Dr. Sharma's presentation.
Credit: Dr.S.K Sharma
The status of legal provisions made in Rain Water Harvesting and Ground Water Recharge is:
His presentation can be downloaded from here (pdf,1.3mb)