Water Management Systems in South Asia, The Indus Valley Civilization Ancient

Abstract

Water management in ancient South Asian was one of the most outstanding pillars of urban life of the region. The Indus valley Civilisation (c. 2600-1900 BCE) was among the first civilisation that had developed water supply, drainage, storage and sanitation facilities. The archeological evidence of large cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Dholavira demonstrates that water management was not an accidental feature of life in the city but one of the primary principles of urban settlement organization. This paper will examine the environmental conditions that impacted these systems and the main aspects of the Indus water management including the wells, drainage systems, reservoirs, agriculture of the flood based and the ritual water usage. It also talks about the social and political implications of these systems particularly the contribution of civic cooperation and decentralized governance. Unlike most other early civilizations that relied on central sources of irrigation and were controlled by the royal administration, the Indus Valley appear to have promoted significantly widespread access to water both through infrastructure at the community level and also through neighborhood participation. It is also the reflections in the article to whether the ancient South Asian water management traditions are still relevant in contemporary water problems like the decline of groundwater, urban flooding, and water scarcity. This article will argue that the ancient South-Asian societies have worked out ecologically feasible and socially acceptable answers to the environmental skepticism through reviewing the concept of water regimes in the Indus Valley Civilization. These systems reflect an amazing combination of technical capability, environmental and social responsiveness that can be applied to contemporary water governance discourses.