Water Governance and Management in India

A large part of India is naturally prone to drought. Unfortunately, droughts have now become more frequent due to development interventions, deforestation and climate change. Drought is insidious and affects millions. It disrupts the social fabric and affects economic and social development in ways that are inter-generational, miring those affected in a perpetual cycle of poverty. It affects health and nutrition, education, food security and creates a climate for continuation of social evils. There are government mechanisms and institutions in place to deal with droughts, yet over the years, evidence indicates that clearly much more needs to be done. There are examples of communities successfully drought proofing their villages through afforestation, rainwater harvesting and judicious use of water. Such efforts need to be scaled up through linkage with government resources. Addressing drought can no longer be ignored, given the water crisis that the country faces as it stares at an ever-widening gap between demand and supply. This chapter informs about major droughts in India, devastation due to drought, government institutions and mechanisms, prevention and measures for drought mitigation and community efforts. The chapter suggests a roadmap for the way forward.

The Ganga River basin is one of the largest and complex river network traversing eleven States of India, revered and regarded as lifeline of the region. Brahmaputra water is the prime resource endowed to the NE region and it has the potential to bring all the desired growth and prosperity to the region. Flood is a major concern in Ganga and Brahmaputra basins and it becomes the biggest bottleneck against development due to recurring floods. River Governance is a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary task and poses a formidable challenge for administrators, decision makers and water sector professionals, both in Central and State Government. This paper focuses itself on one such river governance dimension i.e. integrated approach in tackling the recurrent floods. The primary responsibility for flood control lies with the States. The Union Government renders assistance to States which is technical, advisory, catalytic and promotional in nature. We need to remind ourselves that floods per se do not understand State boundaries. Further, for large basins like Ganga and Brahmaputra, the cooperation and synergy among the riparian States on the issue of tackling flood is very vital. In this context, the significance of integrated development and operation of storages in the major sub-basins of Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems to mitigate the flood damages is emphasized in this paper presenting outcome of a study.

India, blessed with suitable topography in Himalayan and Western and Eastern Ghats region, has substantial potential for hydropower. As a means of clean energy, hydropower also supports much needed conservation suitable for monsoon-based intermittent and disparate water availability regime of the country. Development of hydropower addresses water security as well, thereby strengthening the water and energy vertices of the water-food-energy nexus triangle. India has 148,701 MW of hydropower potential, of which exploitation has been a meagre 38,000 MW representing just 26% of available potential. Hydropower development has been the least in the region with the highest potential namely, Himalayan region and especially the North-Eastern areas. Immediately post-Independence, hydropower development was coupled with creation of water conservation infrastructure in form of large reservoirs needed for ensuring water and food security. However, the same pace has not been maintained since then and development in the sector is lagging. The chapter makes a case for taking up hydropower development as a strategy for water and energy security as also to provide impetus to generation of green power, now mandatorily required to meet climate change resilience goals of the country. At present, the policy climate for hydropower is beset with many misconceptions and provides hurdles in terms of excessive tax burden, load of welfare measures which are not necessarily associated with hydropower schemes and other interventions working against the techno-economic viability of the schemes. The chapter argues for multi-sectoral approach for resolving the problems associated with a comprehensive development for overall development of the power and water sector in the country.

This chapter describes the parallels and interdependencies between inter-state water conflicts within India, and the transboundary ones with its neighbours, emphasizing on the Brahmaputra river basin. Water disputes in India are often more conflicted than the disputes at transboundary level. Despite that, there has been no or very little assessment conducted regarding how the decentralised and fragmented approach to water governance within India creates ambiguity over water ownership and leads to inter-state disputes, and also affects transboundary water governance. Although work has been conducted on degenerated federalism and an extensive amount of literature is available on its effect on different sectors—such as land, law & order and education—of interest here is the effect of state-based water resource management on transboundary water governance. Also, several Indian states tend to have significant influence over transboundary water governance, which sometimes leads to an additional layer of complexity. Views and sensitivities of the involved states have to be taken into account even as this extra layer of complication may fasten discussions or even prolong them. The chapter also looks at some of the concerned water policies (state and Central) and how they can possibly assist in effective governance and management of the resource. Also, introduction of a basin level organisation will be fruitful, given the intense politicking both at the state and transboundary level.

Rivers have been a major source of water. River basin is considered as the basic hydrological unit for planning and development of water resources. The discourse on river basin management has developed over time in response to the changing demands placed on river systems by societies, and the changing conditions of rivers. WWF India has been working across important river systems in the country with the aim of making river systems healthy, rich in biodiversity and providing long term water security to communities, businesses and nature. The chapter outlines the efforts undertaken as part of the Rivers for Life, Life for Rivers programme of WWF India, to develop a basin management plan for the river using a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach, engaging with various stakeholders in the Ramganga river basin. The process of developing the basin plan involved making decisions over the different uses and demands for water resources and associated systems within the Ramganga basin. The basin plans outline measures for developing, protecting and harnessing the resources of the Ramganga basin in order to achieve water demand of different uses while ensuring health and safety of the river itself.

Water governance has traditionally been in the hands of local communities. During the British Colonial period, and later in Independent India, the State arrogated control. While intentions were good, the outcomes were not. On the other hand, local water governance deteriorated with the decline of local institutions. While macro management should have taken a wider view of the resource, micro management had to ensure equitable distribution. Neither achieved their outcomes owing to limited abilities and vision. Further, the ability of local government institutions varies from state to state and, more often than not, declines with its size, i.e., smaller urban local bodies or panchayats are less capable than larger ones in water management. To address this, both the national and state institutions need to build capacities of local institutions while transferring power and finances to enable them to do their job. On their part, local institutions need to see their role as managers and not merely implementers of national or state policies and programmes.

The contemporary discourses on water management in India, as in other developing countries, increasingly emphasise on community participation in general and women’s participation in particular. Although, most often such participation is sought for in the name of empowerment, the taken-for-grantedness behind such assumption has been extensively critiqued. That said, this chapter engages itself with the question as to how the discourse of ‘participation’ work towards (re)producing specific meanings of ‘water’ and ‘women’ and to what extent such meanings translate into women’s empowerment. In doing so, this chapter calls for a feminist political ecological framework to expand scholarly conceptualisations of both ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’. It argues that empowerment is not only an end which is materially manifested through such indicators like membership in water users associations (WUAs), attending community meetings, participating in gender-ascribed roles such as generating awareness and arbitrating community practices regarding water and sanitation, ownership of assets and so forth. It also entails expansion of choices for functioning and it is in this context that the women’s embodied experiences and the manner in which they make sense of such experiences must be given due recognition in any analysis of empowerment.