As a boy, who grew up amidst the rice, pulse, sugarcane fields, along the banks of Cauvery, in the semi-arid region, Tamil Nadu, south of India. All I could see around me was cultivation fields, where three cropping pattern was done in a year. Agriculture was the main occupation in this part of the country. Cauvery, despite the number of dams that stood across it through our its course, Krishna Raja Sagar Dam, Upper Anicut, Amaravthi Dam, Mettur Dam and Kallani Dam to name a few, gave sufficient amount of water for agricultural and domestic needs. But today the scenario has evidently changed from the green corridors on both sides of a road to the cracked, patched dry lands, from abundant water from Cauvery that met all are needs to only the traces of the river bed left and water scarcity all over. 

I pursued my bachelors in Civil Engineering where I was introduced to courses like Hydrology, Environmental Engineering and water resource Engineering. The changes in my surrounding was more evident to me when I started to understand the cause and reasons. In the year 2013-2015, I took a graduate program in Hydrology and Water Resource Engineering, where I learnt the real time problems in hydrology. This was instrumental in changing my perspectives towards various problems that the society faced. The changes that had happened during the course of time had greatly affected the ecological balance and the act of human participation is inseparable. 

In Tamil Nadu, the North east monsoon that lasts from October to December brings in most of its rains and it’s prone to flooding. In such cases the runoff drains into the Bay of Bengal, leaving behind only a small part for domestic, industrial and agricultural needs. The surface water sources such as open wells, ponds, lakes and tanks are badly affected by urbanization and industrialization. On the other hand, Tamil Nadu is 7th state only next to Rajasthan, in exploiting the ground water resources says a report on, ‘Dynamic groundwater resources of India’(2011). The annual replenishable ground water resource has decreased from 1.53 Billion Cubic Meter (bcm) to 20.65 bcm in a year from 2011. This rapid fall in this level along with the failure of monsoons has adversely affected agriculture and has caused an acute shortage of water for both drinking and other domestic supplies. 

The interdependency of human participation and hydrology is clearly evident. Water is one of the most essential natural resource that we enjoy from nature and yet today we live in a world we pay to get it. Humans have had a great influence on water quality and management and it also has political conflicts. Now it’s more important to reflect upon and perceive our natural environment, to restore it back and move towards a sustainable development.