Ancient Techniques of Water Storage in India

Long before modern dams and pipelines, communities across India had already solved one of civilization’s most pressing problems – where to store water when rain is scarce and the ground is dry. Driven by necessity and shaped by intimate knowledge of their local environment, people in different parts of the country developed remarkably effective water storage systems using nothing more than stone, earth, lime, and generations of accumulated wisdom. These weren’t temporary fixes. Many of these structures are still functional today. Understanding them is not just a history lesson – it is a guide to resilient, low-cost water management that remains deeply relevant.

A heritage born from necessity
Khadin: turning runoff into farmland
Kund and kuin: underground water treasures
Nadi: the village water reservoir
Anicut: river engineering for irrigation
Bandhara: Maharashtra’s community check dam
Indigenous knowledge as the common thread

A heritage born from necessity

India’s water story is one of extremes. Monsoon rains arrive in a rush and then disappear for months. Traditional water harvesting is simply defined as a method of inducing, collecting, storing, and conserving local surface runoff for future productive use – and it is one of the oldest water management approaches in India. Archaeological evidence confirms that the cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation had sophisticated water harvesting and drainage systems, with the settlement of Dholavira being a prime example of early water engineering. Chanakya’s Arthashashtra also references irrigation using water harvesting systems, confirming that this knowledge was formally documented over two thousand years ago.

India’s rich heritage of traditional water conservation produced region-specific systems – khadin, kund, kuin, nadi, anicut, and bandhara among them – each designed to work with local soils, rainfall patterns, and community structures. These were not isolated inventions. They were community institutions, built collectively and maintained through social cooperation.

Khadin: turning runoff into farmland

In the arid Thar Desert of western Rajasthan, where annual rainfall can drop to as little as 50 millimetres, a system called khadin (also called dhora) converts scarce rainfall into productive agriculture. Khadins are ingenious constructions designed to harvest surface runoff for agriculture, featuring a long earthen embankment built across the lower slopes of a catchment area. Sluices and spillways allow excess water to drain away once the soil is saturated, and the water-logged land is then used for crop cultivation.

This system was first developed in the 15th century, with a major expansion during the 14th and 15th centuries when communities from Pali and Marwar arrived in Jaisalmer. Today, there are over 650 khadeens in Jaisalmer district alone, though not all are currently functioning. Rabi (winter) crops like wheat, mustard, and gram are grown on khadin beds using residual soil moisture – with no additional irrigation required. There are still around 500 large and small khadins covering an area of 12,000 hectares, and the system bears close similarity to ancient irrigation methods used in Mesopotamia around 4,500 BC.

Kund and kuin: underground water treasures

Where khadins manage surface water for farming, the kund was designed to store clean drinking water underground. A kund is a saucer-shaped catchment area that gently slopes toward a central circular underground well, primarily used to harvest rainwater for drinking. Found across the sandier tracts of western Rajasthan and Gujarat, kunds were traditionally lined with disinfectant lime and ash to keep water clean and sweet. The opening at the top was kept deliberately narrow to reduce evaporation, while the chamber widened at the bottom to maximise storage. The earliest known kunds are attributed to Raja Sur Singh, built in the village of Vadi Ka Melan in 1607 AD.

Closely related is the kuin (also called beri), a pitcher-shaped percolation well that accesses subsurface water rather than directly collecting rainfall. Beris, popularly known as kui in Rajasthan, are pitcher-shaped shallow percolation wells that store rainwater, roughly half a metre wide at the top and three to four metres wide at the bottom, and can hold up to 500,000 litres of water. They are closely tied to the paar system – a common water harvesting practice in western Rajasthan where rainwater flows from a catchment area and percolates into the sandy soil, with 5-12 metre deep kuis dug to access the stored water. Six to ten kuis are typically constructed in a single paar, and in some large catchments, more than twenty operate together. Water harvested through the paar technique is locally known as patali paani.

Nadi: the village water reservoir

A nadi is an artificially constructed pond or village reservoir that captures and stores rainwater from a surrounding catchment. Nadis are shallow ponds that can store water for a few months to year-round, typically located in village grasslands known as orans and gauchars. Their location is selected carefully – a nadi must be at the lowest point of natural drainage to make full use of rainfall runoff. The first recorded masonry nadi was constructed in 1520 AD near Jodhpur during the reign of Rao Jodhaji.

In normal rainfall years, most nadis retain water for four to eight months, and a nadi covering 2.25 hectares with a storage capacity of 15,000 cubic metres can induce groundwater recharge of 10,000 cubic metres in a single rainy season. Water stored in a nadi serves both human drinking needs and livestock. However, poorly maintained nadis suffer from rapid siltation. Local organisations such as the Mewar Krishak Vikas Samiti (MKVS) have been retrofitting older nadis with spillways and silt traps while promoting afforestation of their drainage basins to slow siltation and extend their functional life.

Anicut: river engineering for irrigation

Moving south, the anicut represents a fundamentally different approach. Rather than collecting rainwater in a tank, an anicut is a low dam or weir constructed across a river to divert its flow into irrigation channels. The principle is simple but the engineering behind it is sophisticated – the weir raises the water level just enough to send water into canals leading to agricultural fields, while allowing excess flood water to pass over safely.

The most celebrated example is the Grand Anicut, known in Tamil as Kallanai. Kallanai is an ancient dam built by Karikala of the Chola dynasty in approximately 150 CE, across the Kaveri river in Tamil Nadu, and is the fourth oldest water-diversion structure in the world and the oldest in India that is still in use. The structure is 329 metres long, 20 metres wide, and 5.4 metres high – built entirely from interlocking unhewn granite blocks, without any mortar. Its main purpose was not to store water like a modern dam but to divert Kaveri’s flow into canals that distribute water to the delta region, transforming the Thanjavur delta into what became known as the “granary of Peninsular India”.

Kallanai initially irrigated about 69,000 acres; it now irrigates close to 1.3 million acres. In 2022, the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage recognised it as a World Heritage Irrigation Structure. The Chola period (985-1205 AD) also saw the construction of chain-tanks – a series of interconnected tanks with linking channels – further advancing the anicut-based irrigation model across South India. Rather than relying on mechanized floodgates, Kallanai uses passive hydrological features – its sloped crest, angled masonry, and irregular rear gradient – to gradually dissipate the energy of incoming water.

Bandhara: Maharashtra’s community check dam

In the Deccan plateau region of Maharashtra, the answer to seasonal water scarcity came in the form of the bandhara – a low diversion weir or check dam built in stone masonry across a river or seasonal stream. Bandharas are typically between one to five metres high, constructed to raise the water level in a stream so that water begins to flow naturally into off-taking irrigation canals, while excess supply passes downstream over the top of the weir. Historical records indicate that the earliest known bandhara on the Panzara River was constructed around 1409 AD, with the system evolving over the following centuries into what is now known as the phad irrigation system.

In the phad system, a bandhara diverts water through canals called kalvas into large blocks of agricultural land known as phads. Distributaries called charis carry water from the canal to different areas of the phad, and excess water drains back to the river through escape channels called sandams. The phad system is operated on three rivers in the Tapi basin – the Panjhra, Mosam, and Aram – in the Dhule and Nashik districts of Maharashtra. Village-level irrigators’ committees, called bhagayat committees, managed the equitable distribution of water, ensuring that no second phad received water until the first had been adequately supplied. This community governance model made the bandhara-phad system one of India’s most well-organised traditional irrigation institutions.

Indigenous knowledge as the common thread

What connects all these systems – khadin, kund, kuin, nadi, anicut, bandhara – is that each was built from local knowledge, local materials, and community labour. These practices are not only simple, replicable, and cheap but also efficient, sustainable, and adaptable, offering long-term advantages including improved soil fertility, reduced erosion, and recharged groundwater. They were not designed by outsiders or imposed by governments. They emerged organically from communities that understood their own landscapes deeply, and they were maintained through social systems that gave everyone a stake in their upkeep.

Today, many of these structures are in disrepair – victims of encroachment, neglect, and competition from canal irrigation. Many water management systems are in disrepair due to encroachment in their catchment areas or a lack of knowledge on how to run them. Yet revival efforts are underway across the country. Local organisations in Jaisalmer are reconstructing khadeens, government programs in Maharashtra are replicating the bandhara model in watershed development schemes, and Tamil Nadu has invested significantly in reviving its eri and tank systems. The revival of johads across 650 villages in Alwar district, Rajasthan, resulted in a general rise in the groundwater level by almost 6 metres and a 33 percent increase in forest cover – a powerful reminder of what these systems can still achieve.

India’s National Water Policy of 2012 explicitly encourages states to revive traditional water harvesting structures and integrate them into broader water security strategies. The wisdom embedded in a 600-year-old khadin or a 2,000-year-old anicut is not obsolete – it is a blueprint that modern water management is only beginning to fully appreciate.

What do you think? Which of these traditional systems do you find most relevant to today’s water challenges in your region? And given the scale of India’s current water crisis, should the revival of indigenous water storage methods be made a higher policy priority?

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Table of Contents

A heritage born from necessity 🔗

Khadin: turning runoff into farmland 🔗

Kund and kuin: underground water treasures 🔗

Nadi: the village water reservoir 🔗

Anicut: river engineering for irrigation 🔗

Bandhara: Maharashtra’s community check dam 🔗

Indigenous knowledge as the common thread 🔗