1 Reviving the Ganges Water MachineMachine:: Potential 2 3 Upali A. Amarasinghe, Lal Mutuwatte, Lagudu Surinaidu, Sumit Anand and Sharad. K. Jain 4 5 Name, email and addresses 6 Upali A. Amarasinghe (Corresponding author) -
[email protected] 7 International Water Management Institute (IWMI), P.O. Box 2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka 8 9 Lal Mutuwatte –
[email protected] 10 International Water Management Institute (IWMI), P.O. Box 2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka 11 12 Lagudu Surinaidu -
[email protected] 13 Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - National Geophysical Research Institute (CSIR-NGRI), Hyderabad, 14 India 15 16 Sumit Anand –
[email protected] 17 International Water Management Institute (IWMI), ICRISAT Campus, Patancheru, Telangana, India 18 19 Sharad K. Jain -
[email protected] 20 National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, India 21 22 1 1 Reviving the Ganges Water MachineMachine:::: Potential 2 3 Abstract 4 The Ganges River Basin faces severe water related challenges related to a mismatch between supply and 5 demand. Although the basin has abundant surface water and groundwater resources, the seasonal 6 monsoon causes a mismatch between supply and demand as well as flooding. Water availability and flood 7 potential is high during the 3-4 months (June to September) of the monsoon season. Yet, the highest 8 demands occur during the 8-9 months (October to May) of the non-monsoon period. Addressing this 9 mismatch, w hich is likely to increase with increasing demand, requires substantial additional storage for 10 both flood reduction and improvements in water supply. Due to hydrogeological, environmental and 11 social constraints, expansion of surface storage in the Ganges River Basin is problematic.