Where is India’s new National Water Policy?

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In 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India, set up a committee of independent experts—led by Mihir Shah—to draft a new National Water Policy. The draft of the National Water Policy was submitted almost four years ago. The draft policy document has not been spoken of much since. In doing so, India is being made bereft of moving towards what Mihir Shah described as a “new water governance paradigm” delineated by a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach to water management.

The war of paradigms

Over the last decade, India has been witnessing a quiet conflict between opposing paradigms of water governance. On one hand, the existing water dispensation led by institutions like the Central Water Commission has been at the forefront of endorsing, adopting and propagating the colonial water engineering paradigm rooted in water supply augmentation plans through structural interventions like dams, barrages and diversion channels over rivers and water bodies.  On the other hand, such traditional engineering thinking has been challenged by state-of-the-art water professionals who endorse and propose a more comprehensive and holistic water governance paradigm that is socially and ecologically informed and is still emerging with the accrual of new knowledge. This new emerging paradigm is embodied in the knowledge base and interdisciplinary framework known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM).

The existing water dispensation led by institutions like the Central Water Commission has been at the forefront of endorsing, adopting and propagating the colonial water engineering paradigm rooted in water supply augmentation plans through structural interventions like dams, barrages and diversion channels over rivers and water bodies.

This paradigm shift from traditional water supply-augmentation plans to innovative modes of water demand management, keeping in view the integrity of the natural ecosystem, represents the global trend over the past five decades. From the 1970s onwards, global water professionals started questioning the wisdom of following the traditional structural paradigms, noting their harmful effects on the basin ecosystem. The European Union (EU) and the United States (US) shortly recognised the detrimental effects of such anthropogenic interventions, which fragmented river systems and caused irreversible damage to community livelihoods. The structural interventions changed the structure and functions of natural ecosystems and dented the ecosystems’ capacity to provide important ecosystem services (i.e., services provided by the ecosystem to the human community like fisheries, water, climate moderation, carbon sequestration, etc), on which the basin community was dependent.

As the scale of the problem amplified over time, corrective steps followed. With the EU adopting the Water Framework Directive in 2000, approximately 5,000 such structural interventions were dismantled in France, Sweden, Finland, Spain, and the United Kingdom over a decade. In conformity with the directive, EU member states have been taking big strides to promote water demand management (as opposed to supply development) and attempting to maintain the natural hydrological flow regime by keeping water instream.  This is helping enhance the ecological health of rivers and water bodies. Similarly, the US, which was once the biggest exponent of structuralist thinking exemplified by its creations of engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam and Tennessee Valley projects, removed over 1,000 such structures over rivers in recent decades.

With the EU adopting the Water Framework Directive in 2000, approximately 5,000 such structural interventions were dismantled in France, Sweden, Finland, Spain, and the United Kingdom over a decade.

The solution is not confined to dam removals and decommissionings only. Institutional approaches are also being utilised to preserve water in rivers. For instance, Chile introduced the 1981 National Water Code to trade water rights independently of land ownership. Water markets have been established over the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia to enable farmers to enhance water productivity and contribute to sustainable water management. The most recent example is the commencement of water derivatives trading in California, started in 2019, through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange platform to mitigate water availability risks in the western US.

Trends in India

Much opposed to this global trend and call for change, India's water technocracy has revealed inimicality to the plea for transition to the emerging new paradigm. Any attempt to move forward to the new paradigm has been vociferously opposed by this hydro-technocracy, which clung to many outdated concepts of water resource development, prioritising immediate economic gains at the expense of long-term sustainability issues. The last decade, however, witnessed specific initiatives to guide the nation towards comprehensive water governance. Two bills were formulated: the Draft National Water Framework Bill 2016 (NWFB) and the Model Bill for the Conservation, Protection, Regulation, and Management of Groundwater 2016. Concurrently, a report titled, A 21st Century Institutional Architecture for India’s Water Reforms was published in the same year. The last report that talked of dismantling the existing governance institutions like the Central Water Commission (CWC) and Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and forming an integrated National Water Commission met with extensive opposition from the hydro-technocracy that represents not only the brick-and-mortar institution but also the institutionalised thought process dominating the water governance system in India. The National Water Policy 2020 is the latest document, which as per newspaper articles mostly by Mihir Shah, seems the latest addition to the call for change. However, the document, though submitted long ago, is yet to be tabled.

The National Water Policy 2020 is the latest document, which as per newspaper articles mostly by Mihir Shah, seems the latest addition to the call for change.

What is to be expected from the new National Water Policy?

A series of op-eds written by Mihir Shah suggest that the new National Water Policy is going to be the game-changer in the water policy spectrum of India. There is no doubt that Indian rivers—both Himalayan and Peninsular—have suffered due to the outdated myopic thought process propagated by the colonial engineering paradigm. The interstate Cauvery conflict and the associated problems with the Final Award by the Tribunal on the conflict, the allegation of the floods in Bihar due to the Farakka barrage in West Bengal, and the apprehended ecological impacts of river interlinking projects—all conform with the thinking that the inherent reductionism of the colonial engineering paradigm will only aggravate water insecurity, and is antithetical towards meeting the future development challenges. Embracing the new emerging paradigm will help in rendering a systems approach to water governance, encompassing both general water management and, more specifically, the governance of river basins.

A recent paper published by the Observer Research Foundation summarises the tenets of IWRM and emphasises the need to embrace them in the new National Water Policy. These tenets are the following:

1. Water is an integral component of the organic eco-hydrological cycle and should be understood as a flow. It is not a resource stock to be stored and used as per human needs and convenience.
2. Water’s intrinsic value needs to be understood through its various uses, including its ecological use. This is made possible through a holistic and integrated valuation framework entailing the valuation of the economic, social, cultural and ecosystem services linked to water and its flow regimes.
3. Therefore, water should be viewed as an economic good, necessitating the establishment of appropriate institutional mechanisms to recognise its value to ensure its judicious and sustainable use.
4. Equity and distributive justice are important, and hence human basic needs should be met by ensuring accessibility.
5. The river basin should be treated as the fundamental unit of governance.
6. Neither economic growth nor food security can be treated as a function of increasing water availability under conditions of scarcity and climate change. Instead, the focus should shift towards demand management through various other means.
7. A comprehensive assessment of water development projects is important with a view to the benefits and the perceptible and imperceptible costs over time and space.
8. A solid foundation, knowledge base, and repository of transparent and multidisciplinary is crucial for understanding the social, ecological, and economic roles of water resources, and the trade-offs thereof.
9. Droughts and floods should not be treated as extreme events, but as integral components of the global eco-hydrological cycle.
10. Gender considerations are critical, as emphasised in the Dublin Statement, which recognises that "women play a central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water”.

A comprehensive assessment of water development projects is important with a view to the benefits and the perceptible and imperceptible costs over time and space.

As stated earlier, this paradigm is emerging and provides broad guidelines for a policy framework to evolve. Therefore, the above points cannot be treated as exhaustive and will be subjected to changes based on a better understanding of future challenges and greater accrual of knowledge over time. As the broad contours of the emerging paradigm, the above pointers reflect the present state-of-the-art thinking. The author of this piece presented these points in front of the National Water Policy Drafting Committee in 2020, and it is expected that the new National Water Policy has already embraced these pointers. However, whether they have been incorporated or not can only be known if the Policy is brought to the surface and discussed and debated. This is of utmost need as water governance and security is already a big developmental challenge that will only amplify as a bigger challenge for the future of the Indian economy if not addressed effectively now.

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Nilanjan Ghosh is a Director at the Observer Research Foundation.

• Water
• India
• colonial paradigm
• ecosystem services
• groundwater management
• India
• Integrated Water Resources Management
• Mihir Shah
• National Water Policy
• water demand management
• water governance

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