JAMMU: Of the 9,700 water bodies identified across Jammu & Kashmir in India's first-ever national census of water bodies, nearly a quarter have already been destroyed or rendered permanently non-functional.
More than 9,200 have never once been repaired. Just 78 lie within urban areas where institutional oversight might offer some protection. The remaining 9,687, in villages, on hillsides, across the Valley, have been left largely to their fate.
The figures emerge from the First Census of Water Bodies, conducted by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in convergence with the 6th Minor Irrigation Census, with reference year 2017–18. The census was the first systematic national audit of India's water infrastructure, and for J&K, its findings amount to a quiet indictment of decades of neglect.
Three years since its release, far from this map of water bodies guiding policy, there are no conversations about it.
103 encroachments have been recorded on water bodies across the Union Territory. An overwhelming majority of all water bodies identified, 9209 to be precise, have never been maintained, renovated, or repaired at any point in recorded history. The year-by-year discovery of new water bodies, tallied below, shows how slowly and incompletely even the basic work of identification has proceeded:
Year Water Bodies Identified
Before 2009 115
2009 11
2010 51
2011 20
2012 34
2013 71
2014 38
2015 59
2016 24
2017 54
2018 34
After 2018 45
The destruction of these water bodies carries consequences that extend well beyond the loss of water storage. In Jammu and Kashmir, natural water bodies — wetlands, springs, mountain lakes, and seasonal pools regulate groundwater recharge, support biodiversity, moderate local temperatures, and sustain the agricultural and pastoral practices that underpin rural livelihoods across the region.
A National Pattern of Neglect
J&K's figures, while stark, are consistent with a national pattern that the census has now made impossible to deny. Across India, 45.2% of all water bodies have never been repaired. A further 15.7% were last maintained before 2009. Only 3.6% have seen any repair work after 2018. Of those water bodies that have been repaired at some point, 62.9% had a last repair cost of no more than Rs. 50,000 — a sum that reflects the minimal and often cosmetic nature of the interventions made.
Of the 21,39,439 water bodies for which storage capacity data was collected, 6.9% (1,48,367) had nil or negligible storage capacity at the time of enumeration. These were effectively defunct, but not yet counted among the formally destroyed. A further 28.5% were filled only to the three-quarter level. Only 41.4% were fully functional in terms of storage.
Nationally, the census enumerated 24,24,540 water bodies, of which 83.7% (20,30,040) remain in use and 16.3% (3,94,500) are non-functional, lost to drying up, siltation, construction, salinity, or industrial effluents. In J&K, the destruction rate of 23% is higher than the national average, and the repair rate is among the lowest in the country.
Of all water bodies enumerated nationally, 97.1% (23,55,055) are in rural areas and 2.9% (69,485) in urban areas. In J&K, the rural concentration is even more pronounced: 99.2% (9,687) are rural, with just 78 in urban areas. Rural water bodies are structurally more exposed — further from institutional attention, less likely to be covered by District Irrigation Plans, and more dependent on community maintenance that has, in most cases, not materialised.
By type, ponds account for the largest share nationally at 59.5% (14,42,993), followed by tanks at 15.7% (3,81,805), reservoirs at 12.1% (2,92,280), water conservation schemes and check dams at 9.3% (2,26,217), and lakes at 0.9% (22,361). 78% of all water bodies are man-made; 22% are natural. It is the natural water bodies — springs, lakes, wetlands — that are both the hardest to restore and, in a region like Kashmir, the most ecologically significant.
Encroachment: Measured for the First Time
The census collected encroachment data for the first time in Indian history. Nationally, 1.6% (38,496) of all water bodies are reported as encroached, of which 95.4% are in rural areas. In J&K, 103 encroachments have been formally recorded — a figure that experts caution is likely an undercount, given the difficulties of on-the-ground verification in remote and high-altitude areas.
Of all encroached water bodies nationally where area assessment was possible:
62.8% have less than 25% of their area encroached
17.8% have between 25% and 50% encroached
7.6% have between 50% and 75% encroached
11.8% have more than 75% of their area encroached — effectively consumed
By type, 67.6% of encroached water bodies are ponds, 21% are tanks, and 4.5% are water conservation schemes or check dams. Water User Associations, where they exist, have demonstrated a measurable capacity to resist encroachment. But WUAs have been formed for only 3.1% (42,237) of the 13,64,349 non-individually owned water bodies across the country, leaving the overwhelming majority without organised community protection.
Who Loses More
90.1% of all functional water bodies serve communities of up to 100 people. 88.6% benefit a single village, town, or city. These are not large infrastructure assets serving metropolitan populations. They are the quiet, unglamorous underpinning of rural life - the pond that waters the fields, the spring that feeds the household, the wetland that holds the hillside in place during the monsoon.
Their loss falls hardest on those with the least capacity to absorb it. Water bodies are disproportionately concentrated in the country's most vulnerable zones: 9.6% in tribal areas, 8.8% in flood-prone areas, 7.2% under the Drought Prone Areas Programme, and 2% in Naxal-affected areas. In J&K, the mountain ecology means that the loss of a single spring or wetland can destabilise an entire micro-watershed.
Of the 3,35,768 water bodies used for irrigation nationally, 68.8% are publicly owned and 31.2% privately owned. Among private water bodies used for irrigation, 97.5% have a Culturable Command Area of between 0 and 20 hectares — confirming that it is small and marginal farmers who depend most directly on these resources, and who have the least recourse when they disappear.
What the Census Demands
The census was recommended by a Parliamentary Standing Committee that had flagged the absence of any reliable central database of water bodies and the unchecked advance of encroachment. Released in 2023, six years after the exercise began, itself a measure of how slowly the institutional machinery moves on a question of documented urgency.
For J&K, the data provides the baseline for interventions under the Restoration, Renovation, and Rejuvenation scheme. But less than 10% of water bodies nationally are covered under District Irrigation Plans or State Irrigation Plans, and most of those in J&K are not.
They exist outside the formal planning framework, without guaranteed maintenance budgets, without Water User Association protection, and without the institutional visibility that might bring repair before destruction becomes irreversible.
The census named the scale of the problem in 2023. Two years on, the question of whether that has compelled a response proportionate to it remains open.
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