Jaisalmer Kund Tanka Rainwater Harvesting Rajasthan

Jaisalmer in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan is the epicentre of traditional desert water harvesting knowledge, where communities developed a sophisticated range of systems including kund underground cisterns, tanka rooftop rainwater storage, johad check dams, and khadin agricultural water retention bunds over 3000 years of inhabitation in one of the driest inhabited environments on earth. Jaisalmer receives less than 150mm of annual rainfall and has no perennial river. The tanka — an underground plastered cistern fed by courtyard or rooftop drainage — provided each household drinking water storage sufficient for an entire year. The khadin system in the Sam and Pokaran areas harvests runoff in a basin behind an earthen embankment and grows winter wheat on the moisture-recharged silty land — a food-water-soil management system with no parallel. Community water cooperative institutions traditionally managed tanka maintenance and khadin allocation through village assemblies. Water harvesting revival cooperatives have been supported by NGOs and state government in many Jaisalmer villages.