Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment
Abstract
The Arkavathy sub-basin, which is part of the Cauvery basin, is a highly stressed, rapidly urbanising watershed on the outskirts of the city of Bengaluru. The purpose of this situation analysis document is to summarise the current state of knowledge on water management in the Arkavathy sub-basin and identify critical knowledge gaps to inform future researchers in
the basin.
It is hoped that such an analysis will help those studying or working on water issues in the basin itself, and also provide useful insights for other such urbanising basins.
The Arkavathy sub-basin is located in the state of Karnataka in India (see Figure 1). It covers an area of 4,253 km2, and is part of the inter-state Cauvery River basin. The sub-basin covers parts of eight taluka – Doddaballapur, Nelamangala, Magadi, Bangalore North, Bangalore South, Ramanagara, Anekal and Kanakapura within three districts – Bangalore Urban, Bangalore Rural and Ramanagara. The total population in the sub-basin was 72 lakhs in 2001 and is estimated to be approximately 86 lakhs in 2011. This is distributed approximately 50:50 between urban and rural settlements (although the urban share is growing rapidly), with 33 lakhs from Bengaluru city (more than one-third of Bengaluru’s total population). There are also four major Class II towns: Doddaballapur, Nelamangala, Ramanagara, and Kanakapura with populations ranging from 35,000 to 95,000. In spite of rapid urbanisation, there are still 1,107 revenue villages with populations ranging from less than 10 to 6,0001, and agriculture continues to be the mainstay of a large number of them
