Better Use of Present Resources: 
Concluding Remarks 
KANWAR SAIN 
Central Water and Power Commission, Ministry 
of Irrigation and Power, New Delhi, India 
Through countless centuries there has been built up a balanced 
relationship among water, land, and the vegetative cover. Each 
dependent on and helpful to the others, they have developed 
together, through physical, chemical, and biological processes, to 
create and maintain useful and abundant resources for the habita- 
tion and sustenance of man. But man has not used the resources 
properly; in his ruthless exploitation of land and water resources, 
man has violated the basic arrangements in a manner that upsets 
the fruitful balance which created and maintained the land and 
water resources. 
No doubt a great part of the arid and semi-arid regions are 
man-made in so far as the vegetation has been cut down or burnt 
for purposes of cultivation, or else has been used for grazing 
purposes. Though the original cause of the Rajputana desert in 
India can be traced to geological events, its further deterioration 
can definitely be attributed largely to human causes. The forests 
were utilized beyond their natural recuperative powers. The 
vegetation, wherever it existed, became a grazing ground. All 
these resulted in accentuating the formation of desert character- 
istics. 
Permanency of Irrigation 
Richards comes to the conclusion that, ‘‘All waters used for 
irrigation contain more or less soluble material. It is only a matter 
250 
