Hyderabad, Jul 9: Telangana Governor Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan Today called upon the people to take up rainwater harvesting activities as a movement.

‘Though our country is receiving copious rains, we are lagging behind in conserving the rainwater thus staring at a major water crisis,’ she said.

The Governor was addressing the Vice-Chancellors of different universities of Telangana and Puducherry and the Indian Red Cross Society functionaries through a video conference on the theme of ‘Catch the Rain, where it falls when it falls,’ from Raj Bhavan, here, a Raj Bhavan communique said.

Dr Soundararajan stated that though India accounts for 18 percent of the world’s population, and 20 percent of the livestock of the world, it has only four percent of the water resources of the world.

‘Most of the rainwater is going unused. It is high time that we create rainwater harvesting structures to conserve and use them. We must reduce the indiscriminate and over-exploitation of the precious groundwater. We must accelerate the groundwater recharge. We need to achieve water use efficiency by 20 percent. Water is critical for development,’ she added.

The Governor expressed concern that 256 out of 700 districts have been identified as ‘critical’ or ‘overexploited groundwater levels’ in our country.

India has been categorised as the ‘water-stressed country in terms of per capita water availability, at the same time per capita water requirement is rapidly increasing.

‘It is paradoxical that we witness floods due to plenty of rains, on the other hand, we experience water scarcity. This is just a result of our failure to harvest the rainwater in an effective manner and on a massive scale,’ she said. (UNI)