bangalore union minister of state for water resources bijoya chakravarty on sunday said there was a need for adopting a holistic approach for water resources development within a basin to overcome flood and drought situations within the same basin delivering the valedictory address at the three day ninth national water convention here chakravarty said the country was endowed with rich water resources but were not properly utilised due to temporal and spatial variation of rainfall large scale interbasin transfers of water seem to be one of the practical solutions to overcome such imbalances of water availability in future she said chakravarty felt this would not only check desertification but can also bring large areas of deserts under green cover in addition all possible measures to conserve water including adoption of scientific water management techniques must precede this course of action to maximise the quantum of available usable water she said the centre had set up the national commission for integrated water resources development to prepare an integrated water resources plan covering drinking irrigation industrial flood control and other uses of water and to suggest modalities of transfer of surplus water to waterdeficit basins through interlinking of rivers as regards role of women in water sector women folk should be made to play a definite and distinctive role for it to become a success diversification of the role of women by opening up more opportunities for them in processing of foods value addition in post harvest technology poultry farming sericulture agrobased cottage industries etc is the need of the hour she said karnataka water resources minister hk patil said it was necessary to sensitise people to the human issues of water management our government has used new advances in science and technology information technology and state of the art methods to better manage this area he stated patil also emphasised that new practices especially private participation had largely reduced the completion time thereby bringing in more efficiency the three day convention saw the presentation of 49 papers and a set of 15 recommendations were evolved which will be submitted to the centre for consideration