Ecological Benefits of Growing Fisheries: Ground Water Recharge at Purba Medinipur District, West Bengal

About 69% of the Indian populations are living in rural area where the source of drinking water is ground water. Presently a major portion of the rural peoples are also using ground water for their domestic and agricultural uses either by own pumping system or by public water supplying systems. Though the megacity water management systems use river or lake water for domestic or industrial uses however, small towns and municipalities are mainly depending on ground water as they don’t have any water purification systems. As a result, the ground water level is decreasing very fast in most of the sates in India. Therefore, ground water recharge is necessary for sustainable ground water management with social development. Presently fish firming is a very fast-growing business at Purba Medinipur district in the state of West Bengal. Considering the economic benefits of fish firming in comparison to agricultural products, peoples are converting their lands to wetlands. These fisheries wetlands benefitted the sustainable ground water management systems by improving the ground water recharge process mainly for the four reasons: (i) high perimeter to volume ratio, (ii) long time water reserves though out the year (iii) ground soil permeability improvement in each year and (iv) water pressure (about 3 mitre height) on soil.

Chandra Sekhar Das and Raju Singha* Click here to download file

General Article | Published online : 08-Nov-2020