Governance of Water

ii Governance of Water
 Governance of Water
Institutional Alternatives and Political Economy

Edited by
Vishwa Ballabh
Copyright © Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and Vishwa Ballabh, 2008

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Governance of water: institutional alternatives and political economy/edited by Vishwa Ballabh.

p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Water-supply—Government policy—India. 2. Water resources development—India.
3. Water-supply—Rates—India. 1212 4. Groundwater—Economic aspects—India. I. Ballabh,Vishwa,
1957–
HD1698.I4G68 333.9100954—dc22 2007 2007046905

ISBN: 978-0-7619-3607-7 (HB) 978-81-7829-770-5 (India-HB)

The SAGE Team: Sugata Ghosh, Neha Kohli and Mathew PJ

Jacket design by W&P graphics

 Dedicated to

Dr Verghese Kurien
who has undiminished faith in people’s power and their institutions
vi Governance of Water
 Contents

List of Tables ix
List of Figures xi
Preface and Acknowledgements xiii

Section I: Governance: Concepts, Issues and Challenges

1. Governance of Water: Issues and Challenges
Vishwa Ballabh 3
2. Water Governance, Politics, Policy
Ramaswamy R. Iyer 18
3. Misgovernance of Droughts in India
Jasveen Jairath 36
4. Gender Issues in Water Governance: Review of Challenges
and Emerging Strategies
Seema Kulkarni, K. J. Joy and Suhas Paranjape 61

Section II: Pricing, Subsidies and Governance

of Surface Water
5. Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation:
Some Emerging Trends
K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati 79
6. Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems
Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh 100
7. Irrigation Water Pricing: Analytic of Competing Sources
R. Parthasarathy 124
8. Resource, Rules and Technology: Ethnography of Building
a Water Users’ Association
Esha Shah 137
9. Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation:
Can We Break the Deadlocks?
Vishal Narain 159
viii Governance of Water

10. Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge

Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh 174

Section III: Groundwater Governance

11. Groundwater Governance in Eastern India
Vishwa Ballabh, Kameshwar Choudhary, Sushil Pandey
and Sudhakar Mishra 195
12. Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat:
A Micro-level Analysis
Anjal Prakash 215
13. Governing the Groundwater Economy: Comparative Analysis
of National Institutions and Policies in South Asia,
China and Mexico
Tushaar Shah 237

Section IV: The Way Forward

14. Multi-stakeholder Participation, Collaborative Policy Making
and Water Governance: The Need for a Normative Framework
K.J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape and Seema Kulkarni 269
15. Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue as an Approach Towards Sustainable
Use of Groundwater: Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin,
South India
S. Janakarajan 287
16. The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy
Tushaar Shah 307
17. The Water Resources Policy Process in India: Centralisation,
Polarisation and New Demands on Governance
Peter P. Mollinga 339

About the Editor and Contributors 371

Index 377
 List of Tables

6.1 Comparative Figures of Recovery and Costs in MRBC 108

6.2 Recovery of Irrigation Fees in Mahi Right Bank Canal 109

7.1 Basic Characteristics of the PIM Project Villages, Gujarat 127

7.2 Mean Values of Land Area (in ha) by Sources of Irrigation, 129
Thalota
7.3 Percentage Distribution of Households by Communities and 129
Sources of Irrigation, Thalota
7.4 Performance of Select Tube well ‘Companies’ 131
in Thalota, North Gujarat

8.1 Number of Landholders Using Different Sources of Water 152

10.1 Inter-state Water Conflicts in India 176

11.1 Groundwater Development in Selected Villages (Village-wise) 197

11.2 Installation of Bore Wells and Pump Sets in Different Periods 198
11.3 Distribution of Bore Wells and Pump Sets by Caste 200
and by Size of Landholding
11.4 Sources of Investment for Bore Wells and Pump Sets 203
in Selected Villages
11.5 Refinance for Minor Irrigation by NABARD to Uttar Pradesh, 205
Bihar and West Bengal (1987–2001)
11.6 Role of Commission Agents in UP, Bihar and West Bengal—A 206
Comparative View
11.7 Pure Buyers of Groundwater by Size of Landholding Categories 210
11.8 Pure Buyers of Groundwater by Caste 211

12.1 Eco-regions of Gujarat 217

12.2 Irrigation Potential Created and Utilised as per June 2003 219
x Governance of Water

12.3 Area Under Principle Crops (in million ha) 223

12.4 Area Irrigated by Source (in km2) 223
12.5 Area Irrigated by Source (in ’00 hectares) 225

13.1 Variety of Institutional Arrangements for Groundwater 241

Irrigation in Nine Villages of Henan and Hebei Provinces
13.2 Comparing Features of Village Groundwater Economies 244
in South Asia and North China
13.3 Comparing Water Institutions and Policies in South Asia 252
and China—Summary
13.4 Groundwater Governance: Comparative Analysis of 261
Institutions and Policies in South Asia, China and Mexico
13.5 Structure of National Groundwater Economies 262

16.1 Characteristics of Swayambhoo Water Institutions 327

17.1 Rational Choice and Comparative Sociological Approaches 360
to the Analysis of Policy Processes
 List of Figures

1.1 Framework for Understanding Water Governance 7

5.1 Subsidies on Major, Medium and Minor Irrigation

(1980–81 to 1999–2000) 82
5.2(a) Regional Shares in Irrigation Subsidies—TE 1982–83 83
5.2(b) Regional Shares in Irrigation Subsidies—TE 1999–2000 83
5.3 Estimates of Subsidies on Major, Medium and Minor
Irrigation: A Comparison 84
5.4 The Vicious Circle in Indian Irrigation 88

6.1 Circuits of Market Interactions for a Public Organisation 102

6.2 Organisational Structure of the Mahi Right Bank
Canal Irrigation System 108

8.1 A Schematic Map of the Atchakat and Approximate Location 141

8.2 An Open Channel Taking Off from the Main Canal 144
8.3 Water from a Bavi Located Outside the Atchakat being
Brought to Atchakat Land 152

10.1 Inter-state Water Conflict and Resolution Framework 178

13.1 Structure of Chinese Water Administration and its Funding 248

15.1 Flow Chart Water Transportation—Water Sale—from Rural to

Urban Social Analysis of Implications of Water Crises 296
15.2 Degrees of Conflicts and Sustainable Development 297

16.1 Relation between Formalisation of Water Provision

and Economic Growth 308
16.2 Transformation of Informal Water Economies in Response
to Overall Economic Growth 311
16.3 Criticality of Social Analysis 312
16.4 Transaction Costs and Productivity Pay-offs of Institutional
Interventions 314
xii Governance of Water
 Preface and Acknowledgements

The challenge of water management is not new to India. Given its highly seasonal rainfall and
river flows, investment in water storage, control and distribution have been part and parcel of
the strategy to meet the challenges of the water crisis since time immemorial. Investments in
water storage and control, however, increased several fold since the late nineteenth century.
Yet, despite these investments, India’s water situation is precarious and the rural and urban
water problems have assumed unprecedented proportions, not only threatening food security
but also India’s ability to meet the drinking water needs of its people. Today, most of our
dams store much less than their planned capacity, they irrigate less than half their planned
cultural command areas and more than 60 per cent of irrigation needs and 80 per cent of
drinking water are met through groundwater sources. But groundwater tables are plummeting
and aquifers are drying up. It thus appears that our past strategy has completely failed to
ameliorate the looming water crisis. The consequences of such water stresses are unimaginable.
This book is an outcome of these concerns and examines the whole gamut of issues related to
the ‘governance of water’ from varied perspectives. It also hopes to set an agenda for future
debate among policy makers, practitioners and academics.
This book was planned as a part of Silver Jubilee celebrations of Institute of Rural Manage-
ment, Anand (IRMA) in 2004. For celebrating its Silver Jubilee, IRMA organised a Symposium on
‘Governance in Development—Issues, Challenges and Strategies’, held from 14–19 December 2004
to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the Institute. The Symposium comprised 16 workshops;
each workshop focused on different themes, all of which were related to thematic and sectoral
issues of governance of rural development processes. One of the sub-themes was on ‘Governance
of Water: Issues and Challenges’, which ultimately culminated into this book.
This book has emerged out of a collaborative process among more than 30–35 researchers
and policy makers debating and discussing issues of water governance, institutions and political
economy over a period of almost an year. The book is divided into four sections. The first section
deals with water governance at paradigmatic levels. The second section covers governance issues,
institutions and political economy related to surface water, including inter-state water disputes
and their resolution. Section three covers the governance of groundwater and the final section
sets the agenda for future discourse and the way forward for meeting the challenges of water
governance. What emerges from the arguments made in the various chapters in the book is that
the challenges facing water governance cannot be addressed in the current policy framework,
xiv Governance of Water

and that only effective governance and management of water, which require a paradigm shift,
can help face such challenges. This book represents the efforts of individual researchers who
have come together with their ideas and insights as well as their collective consensus, at the
same time acknowledging the contradictions of this debate.
I take this opportunity to thank all the workshop participants for their valuable comments
and observations made during the course of the presentation and discussion of the various
papers. My special gratitude to the session chairpersons, discussants and rappoteurs without
whose cooperation it would have been difficult to conduct the workshop smoothly and bring
out this book. I am also grateful to the contributors of the various chapters to this volume
for their cooperation in bringing out this book. The views expressed and inferences drawn
are those of the respective authors of the various chapters and do not represent those of the
funding agency or their employing institutions.
Thanks are also due to the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), Sir Dorabji Tata
Trust (SDTT) and Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) for providing generous grants for research, con-
ducting the symposium and publication. The IWMI-Tata Project, Anand, of the International
Water Management Institute provided partial funding for conducting the interim workshop;
their support is gratefully acknowledged. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the support
provided by Kurt Vogele, Amitabh Behar, Teresa Khanna, Tushaar Shah, Sarosh N. Batliwala,
Arun Pandhi, H.D. Malesra and Mukund Gorakshakar. The support received from Watershed
Organisation Trust (WOTR), Ahmednagar for conducting interim workshop and logistics is duly
acknowledged. The Institute of Rural Management, Anand and School of Business & Human
Resources, XLRI, Jamshedpur have allowed me time and freedom to edit the book. I have
received the utmost support from the then IRMA Chairperson Dr. V. Kurien for conducting
the Symposium. My colleagues and students at IRMA contributed enormously to this, their
contributions are gratefully acknowledged. My thanks are also due to Neha Kohli and Sugata
Ghosh at SAGE for providing all necessary support during the process of publication of
this book.
I would like to thank Padmini Unikrishanan of IRMA who handled all the administrative
chores relating to the workshop and symposium and word-processed the earlier versions of
this book meticulously and ungrudgingly. Thanks are also due to Dibiya Ekka for helping me
in editing the current version of the manuscript. Last, but not the least, I would like to thank
my family members and friends who have always been a source of inspiration, in particular my
wife Geeta ‘Kumud’, who stood beside me during the most difficult times.

November 2007 Vishwa Ballabh

 Section I
Governance: Concepts,
Issues and Challenges
2 Vishwa Ballabh
 1
Governance of Water:
Issues and Challenges

Vishwa Ballabh

B ACKGROUND

Water-related issues impinge on human wellbeing in a variety of ways. Water sustains people’s
livelihood support system and features in food production, and is thus important for food
security; it combines natural ecosystem, provides sink and dissolves waste material. In fact,
preservation of water sources in their pristine and unpolluted state is essential for the devel-
opment of a healthy society. No doubt then, Indian planners and policy makers consider the
development of water resources as core to the overall economic development, and massive in-
vestments, both public and private, have gone in the development of water resources. These
investments created a congenial environment for agricultural growth, leading to increase in
production and productivity and a favourable food balance. Yet, presently, several problems
are encountered in the way water resources are used and managed, some of which are dis-
cussed below.
First, the sustainability of irrigated agriculture and massive investment in groundwater and
surface water development have, however, been questioned on several grounds including the
competition for water for domestic and industrial purposes. In fact, doubts have been raised
about India’s capacity for sustained growth in agriculture to feed its population (Rosegrant
et al. 1999).
Second, the gap between the demand and supply of water is increasing rapidly. In 1951,
the per capita availability of fresh water in India was 3,450 m3 per year. In 1999, it stood
at approximately 1,250 m3 per capita per year—and will reduce to 760 m3 by the year 2050
(Government of India 1999). This, coupled with uneven distribution of water in major water
basins, further accentuates the problem. The quality of both surface and groundwater is
declining rapidly. Agriculture too has a dual impact on water quality: (i) excessive use of fertil-
isers and pesticides through leaching directly affects water quality; and (ii) over-extraction
4 Vishwa Ballabh

of groundwater causes deterioration of water quality. Of the 3,841 administrative blocks in

India, 620 (16 per cent) exploit groundwater to its capacity, or even over-exploit it (World
Resource Institute 1994).
Third, that the development of irrigation has made major contributions to the growth and
sustenance of Indian agriculture in the last five decades, is beyond question. But the irrigation
sector is besieged with problems. Apart from inordinate delays in the completion of large and
medium surface irrigation projects, the under-utilisation of potential created, unsatisfactory
quality of irrigation, low-cost recovery and adverse ecological and social consequences of
the present system of irrigation practices have become issues of public debate (Vaidyanathan
1999). With increasing competition and competing claims on water, the irrigation water is
being allocated to other users and sectors. Urban domestic, power sector and industry receive
priority over all other uses, followed by irrigation and drinking water in that order (Ballabh
and Singh 2004)1. Allocation of water within the command area of an irrigation scheme
too is determined more by an ad hoc manner than by design. In the absence of regular and
timely supply of water, the farmers also respond and make efforts to gain and control water
as much as they can and thus try to minimise risk arising from uncertainties of delivery inad-
equacies and timeliness of water supply (Ballabh et al. 1992). Thus, the crisis of governance
and management of water resources in India are observed in all aspects of development and
capture, allocation and conservation, leading to inefficiency, inequity and unsustainability of
water resource management—which in turn leads to competition and conflicts among users
and user sectors.

C OMPETITION AND C ONFLICTS

The rapid increase in the use of water in agriculture, industries and urban townships is causing
scarcity of water downstream. In the absence of well-defined property rights in river stream flow,
surface water sources are de facto open access resources and, therefore, being over-exploited;
the riparian doctrine does not promote socially optimum use of water (Ballabh and Singh
2004). When a river basin cuts across state boundaries, the upstream state over-appropriates
water resources leading to inter-state disputes. There are several examples of inter-state disputes
over water, among which the Cauvery water dispute is the most well-known. The Cauvery
Water Disputes Tribunal award created dissatisfaction in both the claimant states leading to
conflict and riots. The growing scarcity of water and political economy of states often lead to
rejection of such tribunal awards. Often, the tribunal award (allocation) takes a narrow view
of resource management and suggests enforcement of rigid deadlines and technical designs. It
also does not take into account the regeneration of the ecosystem and groundwater recharge
and use, which often becomes counterproductive. For these reasons, tribunal awards are gen-
erally not acceptable to the disputing states.
Pollution also creates a shortage of drinking water in many areas. This often becomes so bad
that people organise processions and picket government offices to protest against the erring
 Governance of Water 5

industrial units (Moench 1999). Furthermore, increasing water scarcity has led to diversion
of water to cities and municipalities from the reservoirs constructed for irrigation purposes.
For example, between 1976–77 and 1996–97, water allocation from a multipurpose reservoir in
Gujarat to the cities varied from a minimum of 7 per cent to 100 per cent of the water stored
in the reservoir (Ballabh and Singh 2004).
As the water scarcity problem becomes more severe, the local people start agitating, and
protests and demonstrations become a common feature. The most notable example is of
the Coimbatore and Erode districts in Tamil Nadu, where the district administration had to
mediate between water sellers (who were selling water to industrial units and urban centres
through tankers) and farmers (Janakarajan 1999). Farmers in many arid and semi-arid areas
believe that groundwater transportation from rural areas to the urban areas and industrial
units is the major cause for groundwater depletion.
The competition for scarce water also leads to wide-scale pilferage. It is quite common that
farmers capture canal water and transport it to non-canal command areas, often at the cost
of command area farmers. These farmers not only irrigate their own land, but also sell it to
other farmers at exorbitant prices. Similarly, the farmers also divert drinking water, trans-
ported through long distance pipelines, for irrigation purposes. The irrigation and water supply
departments often do not have any control beyond the capture and release of water (Ballabh
et al. 1999; Janakarajan 1997).
The development of water markets has a positive impact and water is made available to even
those who do not have the capacity to invest in deep tube wells. However, it also has adverse
consequences. The discourses on development of water markets in the Indian context have
largely ignored the impact of water markets on the sustainability of the resource base. Further,
competitive deepening makes the access to groundwater increasingly skewed in favour of large
resource-rich farmers, leaving the small farmers at an increasing disadvantage when it comes
to sharing the benefits of well irrigation (Vaidyanathan 1999; Shah 1993; Prakash and Ballabh
2005). The competitive deepening of wells for irrigation also adversely affects both quantity
and quality of drinking water available in rural areas. As a result, the number of ‘no sources’
villages is steadily increasing over time (Agrawal and Narain 1997). Another dimension of
the water markets which is often ignored in the Indian context is that, in many areas, they
are not fully developed and unequal trading relationships prevail between sellers and buyers.
This results in the exploitation of buyers through price and non-price mechanisms (Shah and
Ballabh 1995; Janakarajan 1997; Prakash and Ballabh 2005).
The existing governance for water and political economy of the state supports urban rich
domestic users, industrial units and rich landowners. The losers are small and marginal farmers,
the urban poor and people living in remote rural areas who are unable to meet even their
basic need of drinking water (Ballabh 2002, 2003b). Increasing pollution and lack of proper
sewage and effluent treatment further accentuate the problem of water scarcity. According
to an estimate, the total environmental cost of damage to India’s natural resources is in order
of US$ 9.7 billion annually and a substantial portion of it could be attributed to the damage
of natural water bodies (World Bank 1995). Thus, governance in the water sector is not able
to achieve either preservation or conservation of water resources, nor is there equity and
6 Vishwa Ballabh

social justice in the allocation of water to competing users and claimants. Some of the ills of
governance in the water sector were sought to be addressed through people’s involvement and
transfer of the management of water services to people’s institutions. These reforms are quite
slow and the agencies responsible for bringing about the changes have, in fact, hardly any
interest in altering the situation (Ballabh 2002). The responses of non-governmental organ-
isations (NGOs) and civil society organisations have been critical in identifying alternative,
technologically feasible and institutionally workable solutions. But this has not made an
impact at a scale to mitigate the crisis in the water sector due to lack of financial and human
resources.

G OVERNANCE OF W ATER

The concept of governance (or good governance) varies widely. The World Bank defines
governance as ‘the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s
economic and social resources for development’ (World Bank 1992). This has been equated
with ‘sound development management’ and emphasises more on economic policies and the
management of development projects. On the other hand, the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) defines governance as the exercise of economic, political and administrative
authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes
and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their
legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences (UNDP 1997). Thus, there
are several alternative conceptualisations of governance which recognise the plurality of the
actors involved. Governance, in this broader sense, includes the legitimate authority exercised
in the application of government power and in the management of public affairs. There is
greater emphasis on participation, decentralisation, accountability, responsiveness and even
broader concerns, such as those of social equity and justice.
Several alternative models are emerging in India to enlist greater participation of people
in the management of public affairs and development processes (Jayal 2001), both at broader
policy level as well as in different sectors of the economy. Some examples of water governance
models are discussed herein. The first model deals with the imperative to roll back the state,
mandated by the agenda of economic reforms and globalisation (i.e., the turnover of public
tube wells). The second model involves the contestation of state projects, practices and dis-
courses contained in the social movements arguing for a radical participatory democratic pol-
itics (e.g., the Narmada Bachao Andolan). The third model of water governance is expressed in
the phenomenon of NGOs as it seeks to either take on developmental functions in ways that
are imitative of state initiatives in this field, or else takes on the work of implementing state
policies and programmes as a franchisee or public service contractor (i.e., watershed develop-
ment programmes). The fourth model of water governance brings together the state and com-
munity, sometimes in partnership, though with varying degrees of emphasis on one or the
other (i.e., participatory irrigation management). Finally, the fifth model of water governance
 Governance of Water 7

is that of decentralising the state. The initiative for this has been state-driven, taking the form
of a constitutional amendment, e.g., the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and recent changes
brought through constitutional amendment of the Panchayati Raj Act (73rd Amendment, 1992),
making them responsible for the local management of water-related services and water bodies.
These reforms are applied in various degree and forms to the water sector (see Figure 1.1). Thus,
the governance agenda recognises that pluralism of actors in the societal domain and the state
is loosing its dominant position in the development spheres. It is particularly recognised that

Figure 1.1: Framework for Understanding Water Governance

Issues in Water Sector

• Scarcity
• Food and Livelihood Security
• Equity
• Gender
• Empowerment
• Competition and Conflicts
• Economic and Financial Viabilities

Governance: Issues Environmental

Institutions
and Strategies Factors
• Government
• Legal and policy • Socio-cultural
and Public
• Structure and design • Political
Organisation
• Decentralisation • Liberalisation,
• Water Users • Participation Privatisation and
Association • Accountability Globalisation
and CBOs Transparency
•
• PRIs
• NGOs
• Market

Outcome
• Efficiency
• Equity
• Sustainability
• Resolution of Conflict
• Economic and Financial Viability

Source: Adapted from the Silver Jubilee Symposium proposal Institute of Rural Management, Anand
(IRMA), 2004.
8 Vishwa Ballabh

development is not a concern of the states alone, and that civil society and private sectors
can all play a significant role in catalysing the process of development. Some of the issues
confronted in water governance are mentioned in the following paragraphs.
First, the understanding of governance of water should begin with defining the crisis and
dilemma of water resources development (Iyer 2003). This dilemma basically advocates focus
on limited supply of water and our ability to learn to live with it. If this is recognised, the focus
of governance in the water sector needs to be shifted from water resources development (WRD)
to water resources management. This also means that the focus needs to shift from big WRD
to primary and local water harvesting structures and watershed development programmes.
Once this paradigm is recognised, it would entail several changes in the design of governance
of the water sector. This has become particularly important because decentralised management
of the water sector is considered to be a better approach. On the other hand, linking rivers
and creating basin level organisations for integrated water resources management (IWRM) are
suggested to resolve issues confronting the water sector. The decentralised management of the
water sector and integrated approaches to WRD need not necessarily conflict with each other;
however, they do mean systems of governance different from what are in practice.
Second, water comes in many forms that are typically governed by different legal, economic
and cultural frameworks. However, some argue that water needs to be treated as an economic
good, which suggests intent to re-conceptualise the existing water governance framework using
an economic interpretation of the common denominator and giving primacy to the market.
If we consider water to be an economic good, it simply means that water now has recognised
value or, more specifically, that it has been commodified (i.e., turned into something that can
be bought and sold in the market). The greatest criticisms, of the ‘water as an economic good’
paradigm, have been levelled against the second interpretation which fosters a trend toward
privatisation of water, for profit control over water. Critics maintain that water is different from
commodities and should be exempt from such a definition. Proponents of markets, however,
argue that without assigning water the true price of its use, it is being wasted and its use will
be ultimately unsustainable to support human life and ecological health.
Trying to differentiate between water as a public or private economic good may be theoret-
ically helpful by clarifying that water—not unlike land and other natural resources—is com-
posed of a ‘bundle of rights’ allowing some aspects of water to fall under private control and/or
to be consumed, and withholding others in ‘the public domain’. The latter status undoubtedly
pertains to the recognition of water as a necessity and to a host of direct and symbolic common
values associated with water. While market pricing is a tried and true way of regulating the
use of a scarce good, it is blind to anything that cannot enter the marketplace. So, while in
theory one can specify all direct and symbolic values in economic terms, not all of them can
be realistically reflected in the prices of economic commodities. The risk is that the economic
value of water could come to mean simply its partial value as a commodity. The loss of access
to all the rights in the bundle that are not reflected in the commodity market is a legitimate
cause for concern. So if we seek to reconceptualise water as an economic good, how do we
use pricing to regulate private consumption without endangering other private and public
rights in the bundle?
 Governance of Water 9

Between water as an economic and a common public good, there is a third argument.
According to this view, water does not display any innate qualities either private or public.
In the everyday realities within which people live and sustain their livelihood, there is a fluid
continuum between what is private and public about water. For example, at times there is
access to it as a common pool resource; at other times, people pay for water or use it as a
means to barter (Mehta 2003). Thus, the ‘publicness’ and ‘privateness’ of water is the result
of social and political interventions and realities. Access to water reflects power asymmetries,
socio-economic inequalities and other distributional factors such as land ownership.
Third, in the ongoing debate about water as a right, a need and/or a commodity, the
distinction between the individual’s need for water and water as an economic good is help-
ful. There will be little disagreement that, from the perspective of individual human beings,
adequate access to safe water must be treated as a right similar to other human rights enshrined
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Water is the essence of all life and cannot be
replaced with anything else to fulfill its role. While the declaration of water as a human right
may not make available more water, it could institutionalise access to water, particularly for
the poor. If the right is justifiable and constitutional, there is scope for it being a powerful
tool for mobilisation. The declaration of water as a human right can also be used to take gov-
ernments, companies and other agencies to task if people’s rights to water are denied due to
disconnection and commodification processes. However, rights come with responsibilities;
and there is a need for massive resources, institutional forces and political processes to oper-
ationalise such a right.
Fourth, water as an economic good also relates to globalisation processes which lead to an
enhanced focus on water as a ‘global’ problem or issue with a whole new host of global players
coming up with ‘solutions’ to solve the problems of poor water access for the world’s poor.
However, apart from being multifaceted, water is largely local or regional in scope. Thus, the
notion of water as a global public good is good in theory (especially if we want to harness
international cooperation around water), but in reality it does not match with the biophysical
properties of water and its various externalities. But the General Agreement of Trade in Services
(GATS) is set to become the first enforceable international agreement covering the supply of
freshwater. As implied, the provisions of the GATS cover investment (‘commercial presence’)
as well as trade in water. How and in what ways the GATS provision will affect Indian water
resources is neither understood nor examined. Since it aims to remove barriers to trade in
the form of domestic regulation, its provisions will affect the ability of many governments to
deliver their public policy objectives with regard to affordable water. How water is viewed in a
particular context as an economic, social and common good has ramification on ‘governance’.
For example, viewing water only as an economic good means developing and enforcing private
property rights would be an essential ingredient of governance requirements. These debates have
led such policy prescriptions as the development of secured property right is sine qua non for
efficient and sustainable management of water resources. The proponents of the property right
school have further argued that assigning this right would empower users, less privileged women
and the security of long-term investment in water savings; cause users to consider opportunity
10 Vishwa Ballabh

cost of water and gain additional income from the sale of assigned water right and internalise
externalities. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that enforcement of meaningful property
right in the context of the Indian situation is difficult and has a large transaction cost which
outweighs the benefits. This is true for both surface as well as groundwater.
Fifth, the water sector in India is also going through various reform processes. Apart from
people’s involvement through Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) in Participatory Irrigation
Management (PIM), the private and public participation is being advocated in water related
services. These experimentations are at various stages of their development and wide varieties
of factors are responsible for promoting people’s involvement in water management. However,
a critical question which needs to be answered is: to what extent does the formation of the
WUA or involving private and public partnership lead to the creation of mutual accountabil-
ity between users and traditional water bureaucracy, thus making water bureaucracy more
accountable? A related issue, which has brought forth current literature on irrigation and water
sector reform is that the water bureaucracy does not have any incentives to decentralise man-
agement and involve users (Ostrom 1995). The determinants of the success of these reforms
thus revolve around changes within the water bureaucracy and the incentive structure facing
the concerned officials. Available evidences suggest that the water bureaucracy remains
apathetic towards the WUAs.
Sixth, the response of NGOs and social activities has been critical in identifying alternative
technologically feasible and institutionally workable solutions. NGOs are few in number
and their scale of operations is limited, relative to the magnitude of the problem. Generally,
they advocate water harvesting through locally controlled and administered institutions for
sustainable solutions to rural drinking water, and the participation and control of farmers
in the management of irrigation systems. Lack of commitment and general apathy towards
such an approach by the water bureaucracy, however, limits the scope of wider adoptability
(Ballabh 2003a).
Seventh, the National Water Policy (NWP), adopted by the Government of India in April
2002 and the Supreme Court directives to link major Indian rivers by 2016 would have far-
reaching implications on the governance of water. This Policy emphasises the participatory
approach and argues for legal and institutional changes, necessary to implement decentralised
governance of the water sector. As a result, several scholars are arguing for multi-stakeholders’
platform (MSP) and the creation of institutions which can facilitate the above process. The
MSP and integrated water resource management (IWRM) at various levels are newfound ap-
proaches to resolve some of the issues confronting the water sector. Both MSP and IWRM ex-
perimentations are in their nascent stages. If the experience of participatory irrigation is any
indication, the new found approaches are unlikely to succeed given the fact that the Indian
water bureaucracy remains firmly in control of the decision making process as well as resources.
The water service departments remain unaccountable to water users and their institutions, and
these departments determine the degree and nature of people’s participation. The functioning
and decision making processes within the department continue to remain undemocratic and
non-transparent (Ballabh 2003b).
 Governance of Water 11

C HALLENGES OF W ATER G OVERNANCE :

S UMMARY OF C ONTENT

The growing scarcity and ineffective institutional arrangements for capture, allocation and
distribution compounds the water crisis. These crises are unlikely to be resolved by the supply-
side management approach and efforts to increase the water supply. When requirement exceeds
supply, the excess supply is diverted to already well-off people. As stated in the preceding sec-
tion, in the struggle for capture and control over scarce water, those left out are among the
poorest of our society—the poor and marginal farmers and domestic water users, both in rural
and urban areas. Equitable water distribution of scarce water among multiple users poses a
major challenge. Mismanagement of water in the deficient areas is also quite common. The
natural scarcity of water is thus aggravated due to its usage by a few (Jairath 2003).
Analysing these claims and counter-claims within the broad ambit of political contestation
and defining politics as the complex and aggregate of relationships of men in society, especially
those relationships involving power and authority, several discernable features are visible on
the waterfront. First, contestation over water is not at one level but is being articulated and
played at different levels; second, at each level of these contestations there are dominant groups
with each one interested in maintaining the status quo; and, third, there seems to be a coalition
of dominant groups from one level to another (Ballabh 2003b). Thus, the Indian water sector
is facing a major crisis of governance in which the dominant coalition is the gainer and the
state political economy reinforces the above process.
As mentioned earlier, the notions of governance that have emerged in recent years in-
clude not merely institutions of national government but also those of local and global gov-
ernance. These new definitions are more broad-based and consider governance as a process
which encompasses state–society interactions and partnership. The definition of governance
thus includes a range of organisations—public and private as well as co-operatives, and the
complex relationship(s) between and among them. Institutions of local government (such as
panchayats); civil society organisations (ranging from social movements to NGOs and from
co-operative to civic associations); and private corporations as well as other market institutions
are all relevant actors in the context of the new governance paradigm. Democracy and civil
liberties form an integral part of good governance. In the current discourse of the politics of
policy making in Indian water resources, the dominant paradigm is highly technocratic in
nature and the emphasis is on infrastructure building and a prescriptive style of policy making
and management. The emphasis on big projects and the plan to connect river systems are
the manifestations of this dominant thinking, including prescription about how and in what
manner peoples’ participation needs to be solicited in water management. The hype and debate
around the river linking project initiated by the Government of India (GOI) misses the point
that this is a rehash of the old strategy of addressing social problems through engineering
solutions. The need for stakeholders’ participation in policy formulation is recognised and
enlisted, but their representation is highly questionable.
12 Vishwa Ballabh

The capability and credibility of the tribunals to resolve water-related disputes among states
is apparent apart from delay in the resolution of disputes, often even the implementation
of award is not enforced. As water scarcity increases such disputes are also likely to increase
among the regions, users and different claimants of water resources. Overall, this hydro-politics
is constructed around the scarcity of water and management and devolution of power to the
people’s institutions is often ignored. The macro hydropolitics, the capture and the creation
become part of a grand strategy to mitigate water scarcity. The state not only designs mega
projects but also promotes those policies and programmes which help the dominant class of
users to capture and control scarce water. The inadequacy of the current governance structure
in the Indian water sector should be seen from these perspectives, and the role of public, pri-
vate and civil society organisations in mitigating water crisis in India needs to be redefined
keeping in mind their strengths and weaknesses.
Realising that the new paradigm of governance is the locus of many emerging challenges
of rural development, the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) chose ‘Governance
in Development’ as the main topic for its Silver Jubilee Symposium. Specifically, the major
objectives of the symposium were:

• To identify issues and challenges confronting governance in development across

different dimensions—such as decision making, participation, decentralisation and
accountability.
• To identify the role of state, market and civil society organisations in bringing out good
governance in development process.
• To create new knowledge and strategies for governance in development processes that
expand human capabilities and opportunities.

Of the 16 themes selected for the symposium, one of the themes was specifically focused on
understanding the challenges in the governance of water resources. This book is an outcome of
this particular effort to identify issues, challenges and strategies in the governance of water. It
is also an outcome of a year-long process of discussion and debate among 30–35 water profes-
sionals ranging from practitioners and academicians to policy makers. While some of them
had been observing developments in the Indian water sector for over five decades, others had
just started their career as young water professionals in the last four to five years. Thus, a good
mix of the young and the old was debating on issues of governance. An interim workshop
was also organised in Pune, in collaboration with the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR),
a leading NGO working on the conservation and management of water resources.
The chapters in this book have been organised into four broad sections. Section I, which
is introductory, comprises four chapters, including this chapter; ‘Water Governance, Politics,
Policy’ by Ramaswamy R. Iyer; ‘Misgovernance of Droughts in India’ by Jasveen Jairath; and
‘Gender Issues in Water Governance: Review of Challenges and Emerging Strategies’ by
Seema Kulkarni, K.J. Joy and Suhas Paranjape. Together, these chapters cover various threads
of water governance at theoretical, empirical and paradigmatic levels. The authors use both
descriptive and prescriptive approaches of governance and present very varied points of view,
 Governance of Water 13

which together create a holistic learning about the concepts, issues and challenges involved
in the governance of water. At the prescriptive level, they present normative content which
needs to be incorporated to mitigate the water crisis.
Section II, which deals with the governance of surface water, particularly the canal irri-
gation system including the governance of inter-state water basins, consists of six chapters.
The chapter ‘Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation: Some Emerging
Trends’, by K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati identifies the current pitfalls and maladies of surface
irrigation system and broadly identifies the issues related to pricing, subsidies and institutional
reforms to overcome the current problem. Manoj Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh’s chapter titled
‘Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governances of Canal Systems’ analyses the incentive
structure for irrigation and revenue officials for delivery recording and collection of water
charges using management perspective and theories. ‘Irrigation Water Pricing: Analysis of
Competing Sources’ by R. Parthasarathy examines why the Water Users’ Association under
the participatory irrigation management is not willing to raise irrigation charges. The next
two chapters in Section II that discuss limitations and constraints of participatory irrigation
management are: ‘Resources, Rules and Technology: Ethnography of Building Water Users’
Association’ by Esha Shah; and ‘Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation:
Can We Break the Deadlocks?’ by Vishal Narain. These chapters also identify the environmental
and institutional changes that need to be incorporated in irrigation reforms for broader par-
ticipation of users in irrigation management. Finally, the chapter by Hemant Kumar Padhiari
and Vishwa Ballabh, ‘Inter-state Water Dispute and the Governance Challenge’, covers the
limitations and challenges of resolving inter-state water dispute and conflicts. It argues that
under the current governance arrangements, even if the disputing states arrive at a final agree-
ment, there is no guarantee that the conflict will not resurface again.
Section III deals with the governance of groundwater and includes three chapters. The
chapter by Vishwa Ballabh, Kameshwar Choudhary, Sushil Pandey and Sudhakar Mishra deals
with groundwater development in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and highlights
the role of public policies and panchayati raj institutions, including water markets, in access
and control of groundwater resources in water abundant regions. The chapter by Anjal Prakash,
‘Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat: A Micro-level Analysis’, argues
that groundwater governance from the ecological perspective would mean understanding
the environmental deterioration that is located in land use, local ecology and patterns of
development. The perception of scarcity is rooted in historically evolving politico-economic
relations. It is more so in societies encompassed by large socio-economic inequalities in access
and control over resources. Water scarcity, therefore, does not have a universal effect on all
social groups. An ecological framework means devising strategies to protect the interest of
historically marginalised groups in the wake of extreme scarcity situations. Finally, the chapter
by Tushaar Shah, ‘Governing the Groundwater Economy: Comparative Analysis of National
Institutions and Policies in South Asia, China and Mexico’, presents an overview of groundwater
economy, governance and challenges in South Asia. It argues that the current approach of
leapfrogging and importing ideas from different economies is unlikely to succeed in the South
14 Vishwa Ballabh

Asian context. The nature and strategy of governing groundwater depends on a variety of
factors, including the extent of formal/informal nature of the groundwater economy. How
countries respond to the challenge of sustainable management of their groundwater economies
depends on a constellation of factors that defines the peculiar context of each country. This
constellation of factors differs vastly across regions and countries and these differences have a
decisive impact on whether an approach that has worked in one country will work in another
with a different context.
Section IV, the final part of this book, deals with the ways forward and includes four
chapters. The chapter ‘Multi-stakeholder Participation, Collaborative Policy Making and Water
Governance: The Need for a Normative Framework’ by K.J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape and Seema
Kulkarni examines the meaning, scope and challenges of incorporating deliberative democracy
in water governance through multi-stakeholder participation. The chapter by S. Janakarajan,
‘Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue as an Approach Towards Sustainable Use of Groundwater:
Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India’, demonstrates how multi-stakeholder
participation could be used to bring disputing groups on a common platform and help resolve
some of the disputes related to water governance. The chapter by Tushaar Shah, ‘The New Insti-
tutional Economics of India’s Water Policy’, makes an attempt to analyse why reform in the
water sector is not effective and suggests that the institutional analyses of this sector currently
focuses on law, policy and administration, which is part of institutional environment. However,
the effectiveness of the water sector reforms can only be impacted through institutional
arrangements which represent ‘rule in use’. While several officially sponsored interventions in
water sector reform have failed, we have not learned from large scale spontaneous institutional
changes that have not only enhanced welfare and productivity but have also reduced the
transaction cost of institutional transformation, argues Shah.
The final chapter ‘The Water Resources Policy Process in India: Centralisation, Polarisation and
New Demands on Governance’, by Peter P. Mollinga argues that, in an era of institutional trans-
formation in the water sector, an analysis of the actual dynamics of the policy process is required.
It is also argued that analysis of the policy as a process and the politics of policy perspective
are required before a meaningful institutional transformation can be suggested from various
perspectives—including the political economy of resilience of the Indian hydro-bureaucracy.
The main characteristic of Indian hydro-bureaucracy is that it continues to be a centralised and
hierarchical organisation, rooted in the post-Independence planned development approach.
Its administrative structure, dominated by civil engineers and water resources bureaucracy,
has reproduced itself in new forms and shapes under competitive populism policies, but is
now facing severe dilemmas and problems in the age of liberalisation. Another characteristic
of the Indian water resource policy process is the high degree of polarisation in the debate
and the interaction between civil society and the state.
Thus, the chapters in this book discuss water governance through three perspectives of
governance: legal, public administration and institutional economics, with larger political
economy concerns. It is stated that governance in water should be differentiated from the
 Governance of Water 15

general governance of polity and economy. It is also suggested that water governance cannot
be discussed in isolation from the state of affairs in the country marked by institutional ineffi-
ciency, corruption and non-performance.
Different models and approaches of governance are discussed in various chapters for both
groundwater and surface water. In particular, participatory irrigation management is discussed
at length. Despite its usefulness, it has not been scaled up to make a significant impact on
water resource management. This is further complicated by the resilience and inertia within
the water bureaucracy.
The possible link between the larger structure of economy and the transaction cost in water
as well as relations with the democratic polity as it actually functions needs to be understood
more clearly. Both action research and socio-political research related to transformation of water
governance need to be analysed more in depth to make water governance more transparent,
participatory and accountable to the larger society.
The dichotomous distinction between the private and the public in water governance is
argued to be both wrong and misleading. Democratic governance is yet to be established in water
development and management. More active civil society involvement and decentralisation are
identified as ways to improve governance. It is pointed out that these cannot substitute the role
of the state, particularly in protecting the rights of the disadvantaged sections of society. It is
also identified that civil society needs to play a more active role when it comes to improving
information available in the public domain.
A major challenge is to meet the growing demand for water in various sectors such as
agriculture, industry and drinking water and to maintain sustainability of the resource base.
There exists virtual competition between these sectors, which results in conflict. The inter-
state conflicts over water are also increasing, and there have been concerted efforts to express
public solidarity. Judicial activism through public interest litigations has highlighted these
issues. The need for social science research to focus more on the transformation process of the
Indian state and to draw ideas from streams like environmental sociology and the politics of
policy making should be explored further. It is in this context that the role of multi-stakeholder
participation and democratisation of governance has been further advocated.
The contributors to this book have emphatically argued that the water sector is facing chal-
lenges which cannot be addressed in the current policy and political framework. Reform is not
only to include the re-orientation of policy priorities and approaches, but also the restructuring of
institutional frameworks away from the state–village dichotomy (argued to be a central feature
of the present predicament). There is a requirement for new ‘intermediate’ institutions that
allow a negotiated approach to water resources governance. Multi-stakeholder participation
and integrated water resources management have the potential to create new vistas and oppor-
tunities. In order to conserve precious water resources, there is a need to move away from the
supply-driven to a demand-driven service design along with effective ‘software’ and ‘hardware’
systems which integrate water resource management at all levels—from community to state,
to the national level.
16 Vishwa Ballabh

Note
1. According to the National Water Policy of 1987 and 2002, meeting the needs of drinking and domestic
water requirements is the first priority in water allocation, followed by irrigation and industry—in that
order. However, these are only normative statements of state policies. The actual allocation differs
radically from these stated policies. For details, see Ballabh and Singh (2004).

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22–23 April, held at The Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand.
——— (2003a). ‘India’s Water Crisis and Institutional Challenges: An Overview’, in S. Pal, Mruthyunjaya,
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——— (2003b). ‘Politics of Water Management and Sustainable Water Use’, Indian Journal of Agricultural
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 Governance of Water 17

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 2
Water Governance, Politics, Policy∗
Ramaswamy R. Iyer

I NTRODUCTION

At the outset, a few words about the term ‘governance’ may be in order. It is often loosely
used in a very wide-ranging sense, covering meanings for which other terms exist. Such usage
involves the loss of valuable differentiations. The best use we can make of a multiplicity of
terms such as ‘government’ (meaning the act of governing), ‘administration’, ‘governance’,
‘politics’, ‘policy’, ‘management’, and so on, is to employ them in distinct senses to the extent
possible. From that point of view, the term ‘governance’ needs to be used with a delimitation
of its boundaries and an avoidance of an overlap with other terms. It is perhaps best used in
the governmental or public-administration context. The expression ‘corporate governance’
has come to stay and has to be tolerated, though it seems to this writer that it involves an undue
exaltation of what corporate bodies do. As for civil society institutions, they may in some in-
stances be engaged in what might be called ‘governance’, but by and large, governance is what
governments do; the term refers to the manner and quality of the act of governing. An undue
extension of the meaning of the term robs it of its clarity and precision.1
Keeping those considerations in mind, it seems useful to employ the current vogue-word
‘governance’ to stress the fact that the experiences and perceptions that people have from
day to day of the functioning of a whole range of governmental and related institutions and
services are as important as the nature of the prevailing political system or economic policies.
Among such institutions and services are water supply, electricity, garbage collection, the police,
the courts, public transport, tax payments and refunds, and so on. Promptness, efficiency,
responsiveness and the absence of corruption in these agencies and services will make a great
deal of difference to people’s lives. To some extent this can be separated from the forms of
government or issues of policy, though a despotic form of government or bad policies will
sooner or later affect even these day-to-day matters. Within limits, and with qualifications,
one can say that country X (say, China, Singapore) has an authoritarian political system but

∗ The issues discussed in this chapter have been elaborated further in my book Towards Water Wisdom:
Limits, Justice, Harmony (Sage 2007).
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 19

provides good governance, or that country Y (say, India) is a ‘free’ country in political terms,
a democracy, but is not a shining example of good governance.
When we proceed from those generalities to the specific case of water, two questions
arise. First, is ‘water governance’ something special? Is it not part of overall governance?
Second, can we separate water governance issues from water policy or water management
issues? The two questions are inter-related. To the extent that corruption, inefficiency and
non-performance in water-related institutions are merely reflections of the general state of
affairs in the country, this does not tell us much about water per se. However, to the extent
that ‘governance’ problems relating to water stem from wrong approaches, bad policies or
misdirected planning, water governance cannot be discussed in isolation from water policy or
resource management. It may be added here that water is perhaps more liable to politicisation
than most other matters.

‘G OVERNANCE ’ P ROBLEMS 2

What then are the ‘governance’ problems in relation to water? The following is a series of
brief, synoptic accounts, without tables and diagrams3, of ‘water governance’ as it appears to
different groups. The pictures that are presented will be found familiar enough; care has been
taken to state the position in terms that will find general acceptance.4
Taking urban water supply first, the general experience in most of our cities is one of a
limited, intermittent, unreliable supply; poor water quality; an unresponsive administration;
an inequitable distribution of the available water over different areas varying from as low as
30 or 40 litres per capita per day (lpcd) in the areas of the poor to more than 400 lpcd in the
affluent areas; an implicit subsidisation of the rich through low water rates; and an inadequate
coverage of the poor by the public system, forcing them to buy water at much higher rates from
private sources.
The use of large quantities of precious and scarce fresh water for the disposal of human waste
through flushing toilets; the absence of sanitation facilities for large numbers5 of people; the
enormous generation of waste of all kinds—domestic, municipal, industrial—in urban areas;
the very partial treatment of such waste; the discharge of untreated and partially treated sewage
and effluents into the rivers, turning them into sewers; the contamination of aquifers; and
so on, are also matters that may be mentioned here. However, they go beyond ‘governance’
in the narrow sense.
Turning to rural water supply, despite five decades of planning and more than a decade of
‘Drinking Water Missions’, the curious (and by now familiar) fact is that targets for covering
‘uncovered villages’ are repeatedly achieved, but the numbers grow larger rather than smaller.
This must mean that some ‘covered’ villages are lapsing back into the uncovered category,
and that newer villages are being added to this class. A significant aspect of the scarcity of
water in rural areas is of course that the burden of bringing water from distant sources falls
on women, including girl children.
20 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

Canal water for irrigation (from major and medium projects) is cheap6, but unreliable. The supply
is generally not provided in the time or the quantities needed. The systems are in many cases in
disarray because of poor maintenance and operation.7 The farmer is dependent on the irrigation
bureaucracy which is not service-oriented, and is (with honourable exceptions) unresponsive
to the needs and problems of the water user. The problem of tail-end farmers in the command
getting very little water is well-known. The system is also amenable to manipulation and
distortion by the influence of the rich and the politically powerful, and corruption plays an
important role here as elsewhere. The problem of water logging and salinity that has been
a concomitant of canal irrigation in many cases is a serious one, but it is primarily a water-
management rather than a ‘governance’ issue, though there may be governance aspects to it.
Similarly, in the context of canal waters and irrigation, inter-state river-water disputes have
been very prominent, but these again are political and water-use rather than governance issues.
We shall revert to this later in the chapter.
In relation to groundwater, ‘governance’ seems non-existent. Both law and politics are to
blame here. By law, the water under a piece of land belongs to the owner of that land, and
he or she (including businesses and corporate entities) can exploit it at will. This could lead
to inequitable relations between the seller and the buyer of water, the depletion or contam-
ination of the aquifer and the drying up of wells and other water-sources in nearby areas. The
existing legal position makes regulation very difficult and this is compounded by political
factors. Despite the existence of the Central Groundwater Authority for about a decade, and
some attempts at legislation at the state level, there is no real regulation of groundwater use
(on what Tushaar Shah [2004] describes as ‘colossal anarchy’ in relation to groundwater.
See also note 27).
In the context of large projects, ‘governance’ generally presents a high-handed, violent and
cruel aspect to those who face displacement/loss of livelihood and delayed and badly flawed
rehabilitation. To them, governance often means the police.8 The social activists and non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) that seek to mediate between such project-affected people
and the government are likely to perceive ‘governance’ in terms of callousness to suffering,
denial of human rights, repression, the use of force in response to resistance, and so on. Those
concerned with environmental issues will tend to fault ‘governance’ on violations of environ-
mental laws, rules and procedures, and will find serious limitations and inadequacies in En-
vironmental Impact Assessments (EIAs).
From the financial, economic and management points of view, low water rates and the consequent
ills of poor revenues, losses in financial terms, inadequacy of funds even for operation and
maintenance (O&M) and non-availability of funds for capital-renewal and new investment,
will constitute bad governance.
From the point of view of the governmental agencies concerned with water—the municipal
authorities and the Irrigation Departments—proper governance will undoubtedly seem
hamstrung by a chronic inadequacy of budgetary allocations; a shortage of water (in many
cases) for the service that they are expected to provide; the pressures of the rich and the
politically well-connected; a powerlessness to deal effectively with those who violate the
law or bend or circumvent the procedure; improper directions from the political levels; and
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 21

the pervasive presence of corruption. (The reference is to the perceptions of the upright and
conscientious officials; others may prefer to conform to the prevailing ethos and make their
‘adjustments’.)
The various water governance problems and deficiencies enumerated above are usually seen
piecemeal, and many partial remedies and fragmented reforms are proposed: Participatory
Irrigation Management or PIM; privatisation; water markets; proper pricing of water; and so
on. Some of these ‘reforms’ originate in the government, some are recommendations of the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and some are ideas advocated by
our own economists. Some of these propositions are sound, some are questionable, and some
are fraught with danger.
From the world of the environmental and social activists and mobilisers, there are pleas for a
National Rehabilitation Policy (now in place, and as mentioned above, a disappointment); the
drastic modification of the Official Secrets Act and the enactment (or the full implementation)
of a Freedom of Information Act; a thoroughgoing reform of the Land Acquisition Act; full
adherence to The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996;
due conformity to the provisions of the Environment Protection Act; proper implementation of
the requirement, now mandatory, of a public hearing in the case of large projects; and so on.
Reforms in the area of governance are indeed very necessary. However, if we consider any
‘water governance’ issue carefully, we will find ourselves led beyond governance in a narrow
sense into larger issues, and beyond the sphere of governments into the domains of water
users, private sector agencies, and civil society. We must therefore look at a wider canvas. But
before we proceed from water governance to water policy and management, a brief reference
to ‘water politics’ may be in order.

W ATER P OLITICS

The most visible manifestation of water politics is in inter-state river-water disputes. In

recent times we have seen the enormous importance that the dispute over the sharing of
Cauvery waters has in the politics of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Similarly, the disputes over
Ravi-Beas waters (Punjab–Haryana), the Almatti project (Andhra Pradesh–Karnataka), the
old Mullapperiyar and Parambikulam Aliyar agreements (Kerala–Tamil Nadu), are politically
very important. The politics of the Ravi-Beas issue has become very evident with the passing
of an Act by the Punjab Legislature terminating past water agreements and the Presidential
reference on this matter to the Supreme Court.9 In the international arena, water relations
are important components in (and determinants of) India’s political relations with Pakistan,
Nepal and Bangladesh.
It is politics that has rendered the River Boards Act 1956 inoperative and made the estab-
lishment of any kind of organisation at the river-basin level extremely difficult. In the
Krishna Tribunal’s Award, Scheme B that envisaged a Krishna River Authority was not made
mandatory and never came into operation. In the Cauvery case, attempts to establish a
22 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

standing, professional-cum-bureaucratic Cauvery River Authority had to be abandoned and a

political Authority set up (essentially as a mediating body, without any planning or managerial
functions).
Turning to ‘major/medium’ projects, promises to undertake such projects play an important
role in electoral politics, and their locations and important features are often influenced by
political considerations. The differential incidence of the social costs and benefits of such pro-
jects on different groups, and the generally inequitable distribution of their benefits among the
beneficiary groups, are part of the ‘political economy’ of the projects. References are sometimes
made to the alleged politician–bureaucrat/technocrat–consultant–contractor nexus, but the
existence of such a nexus and its extent are allegations that need to be verified in each case.
Besides, such a nexus, where it is a reality, would fall under the head of ‘corruption’ rather
than ‘politics’.
A special case, namely the head-reach/tail-end conflict in an irrigation command, tends to
become political as the two groups organise themselves and exert pressure on the irrigation
department: one of the two groups (generally the head-reach group) might become politically
more powerful and influential with the department.
Again, the idea (often advocated) of resettling and rehabilitating project-affected persons
in the command area of the project and giving them a share in the benefits of the project,
and the Acts that have been passed in this regard in some states, run into difficulties in actual
practice because of the resistance of those who are already in the command area: this is a
political difficulty.
Similarly, rural/urban or agriculture/industry water conflicts tend to get politicised. For
instance, the conflict between the polluting industries and the farmers and other rural
inhabitants in the Palar Basin in Tamil Nadu has political dimensions. Also, we are often told
that in Maharashtra sugarcane plantations get assured water throughout the year, but there
are acute drinking water problems in the adjoining villages: this too is a political fact, as it at-
tests to the greater power and influence of the sugarcane lobby.
Again, it is politics that is responsible for the reluctance of most State Governments to
raise (canal) irrigation water charges appropriately (as recommended by many Committees
and Commissions), and their readiness to give electricity to farmers at very low rates or free,
leading to the reckless mining of groundwater.
Issues of equity, power and caste relations, ‘gender’10, and so on, arise in the context of the
establishment of Water Users’ Associations under the PIM scheme, watershed committees for
managing water-harvesting or watershed development initiatives, and tank farmers’ associations
(in the southern states). These involve both social and political questions.
Finally, the difficulties in regulating the exploitation of groundwater are (as mentioned
earlier) partly legal and partly (and more importantly) political.

W ATER S ITUATION : M AJOR C ONCERNS

Let us now look at the wider canvas of resource policy and management, which will subsume
governance and political issues as well. As we survey the present water situation in the
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 23

country and try to envision the future, the worries and concerns that seem prominent are
the following:

• grim forecasts of water scarcity or a water crisis in the country as a whole and the related
problem of food security;
• more specifically, the persistent problems of drought-prone areas, arid zones and other
water-short areas;
• recurring flood-related damages and losses in other areas;
• bitter and divisive inter-state river-water disputes, and the growing ineffectiveness of the
constitutional conflict-resolution mechanism;
• some unresolved issues relating to rivers with Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh;
• the emergence of acute water conflicts between users (agriculture/industry, agriculture/
drinking water) and between areas (rural/urban);
• the difficulties of meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals for the provision of
safe drinking water and sanitation facilities;
• the ominous depletion of groundwater aquifers in many parts of the country;
• the shrinking of wetlands;
• the pollution and contamination of water sources, cutting into the already scarce available
supplies;
• the enormous waste of water in every kind of use (agricultural, industrial, municipal,
domestic); and
• the uncertainties arising from predictions of climate change.

An adequate discussion of all the points enumerated above (many of which are inter-related)
cannot be attempted in this chapter. In particular, issues of water quality11 and pollution, flood
management12, groundwater management13, sanitation14, climate change15 and water relations
with neighbouring countries16, will need separate chapters of considerable length. We shall
focus here only on a few key themes or ideas: the perception of an imminent water crisis; the
stress on large supply-side projects or long-distance water transfers; the belief that droughts and
floods can be linked and that the answer to the first lies in the second; the tendency to think
of water as a commodity (‘economic good’); the advocacy of ‘full cost recovery’ as the basis
for pricing; and the faith in the efficacy of market forces and in the virtues of privatisation.

Crisis?
Is a water crisis inevitable? The brief answer to that question is: ‘Yes, if we go on as before.
No, if we take certain steps.’
Fears of a crisis arise from projections of future water demand linked to projections of the
rate of growth of population, pace of urbanisation and processes of economic ‘development’.
The relevant numbers will be found in the Report (September 1999) of the high-level National
Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan (hereafter NCIWRDP) set up
by the Government of India, Ministry of Water Resources, as well as in certain studies such as
24 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

those by the Working Group of the NCIWRDP; by the India Water Partnership (India Water
Vision [1999]); and by Kanchan Chopra and Biswanath Goldar of the Institute of Economic
Growth (Chopra and Goldar 2000). Without going into the numbers, it may be stated that
the demand-supply balance seems precarious enough in all these studies to warrant concern;
and that concern has led to the formulation by the Government of large supply-side projects
such as big dams and long-distance water transfers. However, the crucial element here is the
demand projection, and that needs to be looked at carefully.
In every kind of water-use, major economies are desirable and possible, though difficult. We
have to go beyond the somewhat modest assumptions of improvement that the NCIWRDP
has made.17 Substantial improvements in efficiency in water-use in agriculture (in conveyance
systems, crop-water requirements, irrigation techniques, yields18) are needed, and if achieved,
will sharply cut down the agricultural demand for water. In rural and urban water supply,
the tendency is to project future needs on the basis of per capita norms which are fairly high
and which are sought to be raised further. However, instead of improving the norms for
supply from the current figures to higher levels, it might be more appropriate to maintain (or
perhaps even reduce)19 current norms, enforce economies on those (whether in rural or urban
areas) that use too much water, and improve availability to groups or areas that receive too
little. The substantial incidence of waste in urban water-supply systems is also a matter that
calls for concerted action. In industrial use of water, multiple recycling and re-use needs to
be insisted upon, allowing minimal make-up water. Strenuous efforts need to be made to
promote improvements in efficiency and technological innovations in every kind of water-
use to maximise what we get out of each drop of water. If we do all this, the demand picture
will not remain the same. The pressure on the resource will not disappear but may well be
less severe than now feared; a crisis may still emerge, but it may not be unmanageable. A cri-
tical examination of projections of future water demand, or rather of the assumptions and
methods involved, ought therefore be an important area of study. (The writer is well aware
that the approaches that he is advocating will involve radical changes in thinking and in ways
of living. If we feel that it is not ‘realistic’ to expect such changes, we must also ‘realistically’
accept the inescapability of a crisis.)
Turning to the supply side, large-dam projects are not the only answer; there are other
possibilities. Local rainwater harvesting (i.e., ‘catching the raindrop as it falls’) and watershed
development are also part of the supply-side answers20 to the demand. Fortunately, many
successful examples of such initiatives are available. If these examples could be replicated in
thousands across the country (wherever feasible), they could be far more significant components
in national water planning than we can now imagine. A veritable transformation of the water
scene may result.
If we combine those two approaches, namely,

• on the demand side, the practice of the utmost economy and efficiency in water-use and
of resource-conservation; and
• on the supply side, efforts to augment the availability of ‘usable’ water through extensive
recourse to local water-harvesting and watershed development,
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 25

we may be able to avert a crisis, though the situation will undoubtedly be difficult and will
call for careful management.

Big Projects: Last Option

Such an approach may not eliminate the need for big projects, but may minimize that need.
Big dams and long-distance water transfers have to be treated as projects of the last resort and
chosen only if they are the best options in a given situation.
But why should they be treated as the last option rather than the first choice? The reasons
can be succinctly stated: they have serious impacts and consequences, environmental, social
and human, not all of which can be remedied or mitigated or compensated for, or even foreseen
fully; Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Cost-Benefit Analyses are highly flawed
as the basis for project decisions; the balance between total costs and total benefits (financial,
economic, ecological, social and human; direct and indirect; immediate and distant; primary
and secondary/tertiary; quantifiable and non-quantifiable) is difficult to ascertain; the costs will
be definitely incurred and may turn out to be higher than foreseen, whereas the benefits are
uncertain and may fall short of expectations; the financing of such projects presents formid-
able budgetary and debt-service problems; and so on. (We ignore here the phenomenon of
‘time and cost over-runs’ on such projects; the extent of corruption often associated with
large public investments; and the vicious circle of poor revenues arising from low water rates,
leading to poor operation and maintenance and to poor service, and therefore to poor revenue
collections and resistance to increases in tariffs. These are managerial or ‘political economy’
problems not necessarily attributable to the projects.)
The reasons for being wary of large projects and choosing them only if they are the unique
possibility or the best option in a given case are clear enough. However, their avoidability
would depend on the availability of other options.

Alternatives?
Are there alternatives? How significant are they? It has already been argued that extensive local
rainwater harvesting and community-led watershed development may minimize the need for
big projects, and that this can form a significant part of national planning if undertaken in
large numbers all over the country (wherever feasible). However, two questions arise:

(1) On a national scale how much will this add to the available (‘usable’) water? No clear
answer is available to this question, but there is a number of 140 BCM21 shown as
‘additional run-off capture’ in Chopra and Goldar (2000), referred to earlier. All that one
can say is that given the large gap between precipitation (4,000 BCM) and ‘available’
water resources (1,953 BCM), and that between the latter and ‘usable’ surface water
resources (690 BCM)22, there seems to be scope for adding significantly to the last num-
ber through local action.
26 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

(2) What will be the hydrological consequences of extensive rainwater harvesting in all
catchments?23 Will this reduce run-off and therefore river-flows? Again, no answers are
available. This needs new research. However, one’s guess here again is that given the
gaps mentioned above, river-flows may not be significantly affected by interceptions in
the upper catchments, though some reductions of downstream run-off in the immediate
vicinity may occur. In any case, all measures of augmentation of the ‘usable’ quantum
of water—large dams, power-driven bore wells and tube wells for the extraction of
groundwater, and local rainwater harvesting and watershed development—will have
their hydrological and environmental consequences, and we need to be aware of these.
Prima facie, it does not seem likely that the impacts of rainwater harvesting will be worse
than those of large dams or groundwater extraction.

Doubtless a wise combination of all three methods of augmenting supplies will need to be
adopted. The widespread practice of rainwater harvesting will reduce the need for recourse to
dams and ever-deeper bore wells and tube wells. Besides, water harvesting is often used as a
means of recharging groundwater.

Droughts, Floods and River Linking

The ‘paradox’ or ‘irony’ of flood and drought is a formulation often heard in India. The topo-
graphy of the land and the pattern of rainfall result in the incidence of floods in some places
and droughts in other areas and sometimes they can occur (in different areas of course) at the
same time. There is neither ‘paradox’ nor ‘irony’ here: these are merely facts of geography that
govern our lives. Area-specific ways of coping with these features of nature that impinge on
our lives have to be, and can be, worked out. This is where the challenge lies. What we should
do about the occurrence of floods in one area and what we should do about the water needs
of arid or drought-prone or water-short areas are two separate questions. (Briefly speaking,
the answers to the problems of arid or drought-prone areas have to be primarily local, with
the bringing in of external water being an exceptional recourse in those places where local
solutions are unavailable or grossly inadequate.) Unfortunately, the wrong perception of a
paradox or irony here leads to the wrong answer: the ‘inter-linking of rivers’ to divert flood-
waters to arid areas.
A detailed critique of the Government of India’s ambitious river linking project cannot be
attempted here.24 Each such ‘link’ proposal must of course be examined carefully to establish
need, feasibility, techno-economic viability, acceptability from environmental and human
points of view, and so on, and some may be found worthy of approval. The objection is to a
general theoretical conceptualisation of river linking. The fallacy involved in it is particularly
evident in the expression ‘national water-grid’ on the misleading analogy of a power-grid or
a highways-grid. In a power-grid or a highway-link, the movement can be in both directions,
but that is not the case with a river link; water will flow only in one direction. Apart from that,
highways and power lines are human creations and can be manipulated by humans. Rivers are
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 27

not human artefacts; they are natural phenomena, integral components of ecological systems,
and inextricable parts of the cultural, social, economic, spiritual lives of the communities
concerned. They are not pipelines to be cut, turned around, welded and rejoined.
‘Flood Control’ is a large subject that cannot be discussed here in detail, but a few words
may be in order. The initial response to flood damage was to try to ‘control’ floods through
structural means such as dams or embankments. It was found through experience that these
efforts were ineffective or even harmful. Without going into the matter in detail it can be
said that while dams may moderate flood flows to a limited extent under normal conditions
(provided they are planned and operated for that purpose among others), they may aggravate
the position if (in the absence of a flood cushion) water has to be suddenly released in the
interest of the safety of structures. As for embankments, there is serious doubt about their
efficacy as flood-control measures. They have often proved a remedy worse than the disease.
It is increasingly recognised that what we must learn to do is not so much to ‘control’ floods
as to cope with them when they occur and minimise damage, partly through ‘flood-plain
zoning’ (i.e., regulation of settlement and activity in the natural flood plains of rivers) and
partly through ‘disaster-preparedness’. However, the notion of ‘flood control’ continues to
hold some sway over people’s minds.25

26
Water Markets, Privatisation
In this country water markets have tended to emerge particularly in the context of groundwater
extraction through tube wells and bore wells, and they serve some useful purposes, though
there are dangers of unsustainable extraction as also of inequitable relationships between
sellers and buyers. Water markets exist and cannot be ruled out, but there are some difficult
issues. The first question that needs to be asked is: is water a commodity? Given the multiple
dimensions of water, the answer to this question has to be ‘yes and no’. In economic uses
(commercial irrigation, industry) it is a commodity, but as a means of life support (water for
drinking, bathing, washing and cooking) it is not. It must be added that if water is a commodity
in some uses and a basic life-support need and therefore a fundamental right in other uses,
the latter aspect must always take precedence over the former.
The advocates of water markets (who definitely view water as a commodity) recommend:
‘Define property rights and allow trading’, but the citizen’s right to water (for drinking, cooking
and washing) is a part of the right to life and the water rights of a farmer for irrigation or those
of an industry for industrial uses are use rights; neither can be regarded as ‘tradable property
rights’. That line of argument seems to lead to the conclusion that the prescription ‘define
water rights and allow trading’ is untenable and cannot be followed. And yet, this has been
done in certain countries. Farmers have been allowed to sell their water to industries or for
urban water supply. States (having a ‘surplus’ of water) in a federal structure have been allowed
to sell water to other states (which are short of water). Both those examples are taken from the
United States of America. It is sometimes argued that water markets are the answer to conflicts
over water, whether between uses (e.g., agriculture and industry) or between administrative
28 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

or political units (e.g., states or provinces). In India too this proposition is occasionally urged.
We are told: ‘If water markets were to prevail, Orissa might be prepared to sell a quantum of
Mahanadi waters; the conflict between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over Cauvery waters can
be resolved; farmers and industrial units (in say Tiruppur) may find a way out of their bitter
fight’27; and so on. This is a dangerous and pernicious principle, and the mere fact that it seems
to have worked in some instances in certain countries should not blind us to the dangers.
As already mentioned, use rights are not property rights and cannot be allowed to be traded
in. Farmers or industries may have temporary surpluses to spare, in which case they can sell them,
but a permanent surplus (e.g., if a farmer decides to reduce or give up the practice of agriculture,
or an industrialist decides to close down his or her industry) should entail a loss of the water
right and a reallocation of it by the state or the community. As for water-sharing by states in
a federal structure or by countries, the general principle has been that the lower riparian has
certain rights and the upper riparian a certain obligation towards the lower riparian. That was
enshrined in the Helsinki Rules (1966) and continued in the UN Convention of 1997. That
principle also lay behind the Indus Treaty 1960 between India and Pakistan and the Ganges
Treaty of 1996 between India and Bangladesh. To say that the upper riparian can sell water to
the lower riparian would be to negate that well-established principle or stand it on its head.
It is amazing that such a negation can be seriously put forward. Apart from the denial of the
rights of the lower riparian, it would introduce a commercial motivation into the thinking of
the upper riparian and might lead to an unsustainable exploitation of the resource.28 Further,
the upper riparian province or state or country can sell water to the lower riparian only by
acquiring control over the waters through structures: in other words, the upper riparian will
first stop the water from flowing to the lower riparian and then sell the water so blocked to
the lower riparian. The preposterousness of the proposition is obvious and does not need to
be laboured. Upper and lower riparians (or riparians and non-riparians) must share waters
(where necessary) through the routes of agreement, treaty, conciliation, mediation, arbitration
or adjudication, and not by a sale-and-purchase contract.
Turning to the advocacy of privatisation, the argument for privatisation cannot forthwith
be transferred from consumer or industrial goods to water, because the analogy is inapt: we
cannot do without water and there are no substitutes for it. Moreover, water is a basic right
and (as mentioned above) the state does have a responsibility to ensure that no one is denied
this right, regardless of which agency provides the service. Besides, the prime motive of the
private corporate sector is profit, and if considerations of profitability come into conflict with
other considerations, profitability will prevail; such an approach cannot be brought into the
sphere of a basic life-support resource.
A simplistic proposition might be to say that the privatisation of a service is acceptable
subject to regulation, but that we must be wary of privatising the resource itself. However, such
a distinction is difficult to maintain. The privatisation of the water supply service may sooner
or later lead to the transfer of control over the resource to private hands. Even if a private
entity is not formally given the ownership of the water source, the transfer of control struc-
tures (a dam or a barrage or a bore well or a pumping station) to it (or the building of such
structures) gives it a position of power which cannot easily be undone, and which can have
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 29

serious implications. Lastly, allowing the domestic private sector to exploit national natural
resources, particularly water, may make it difficult to deny a similar right to foreign investors
in terms of the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime and principles, and this carries with
it the danger of countries losing control over their own natural resources.
The supply of water by private tankers in urban areas and the burgeoning bottled-water
trade are also instances of water markets. These ought not to be necessary at all. They become
necessary and possible only because of the failure of public systems in terms of the duration,
regularity and dependability of supply and the quality of the water provided. If the public
system provided an adequate, reliable and safe supply, the demand for tankers or for bottled
water may go down sharply. Apart from that, these supplies (and the soft drinks business)
have necessarily to draw raw water from somewhere, and that draft may be an unsustainable
or inequitable one. The instances of the bore wells of the Coca-Cola company depriving an
entire area in Kerala of its water, and of Chhattisgarh handing over a 20-km stretch of a river
to a private concessionaire for water supply, are well-known. In both these cases, there has
been a public outcry and the stories are as yet unfinished.

Pricing
The twin propositions that water rates should be regarded as ‘user charges’ and not as a form
of taxation, and that the principle behind ‘user charges’ should be ‘full cost recovery’, are
important elements in current economic thinking. This writer has no difficulty in accepting
those propositions in the context of water as an input into economic activity (irrigation, indus-
trial use, water for hotels). However, these principles cannot apply to ‘water for life’ (drinking
water, or what Peter Gleick calls ‘basic water requirement’) without modification. This too
must be priced reasonably. Full economic pricing to the affluent seems warranted: there is no
reason why they should be subsidised, and there may even be a strong case for penal pricing
beyond a certain level of use as a means of discouraging wasteful use. However, some degree
of subsidisation to the less affluent may be called for. Besides, no one should be denied this
basic life-support need merely because of his or her inability to pay, and that consideration
may necessitate free supplies to the very poor. Finally, some kind of reasonable pricing or
costing will have to be adopted for ‘water as a social good’ (water for municipal services such
as firefighting, water for public institutions such as schools and offices). The translation of the
approach outlined above into a structure of charges may not be easy, but that difficult task
will necessarily have to be undertaken.

W HAT N EEDS TO BE D ONE

Pulling the threads of the discussion in the foregoing sections together, let us proceed from
analyses to an agenda for action. The following is an attempt at a compendious statement of
what needs to be done in relation to water.
30 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

• ‘Water for life’, i.e., safe drinking water (including a minimal allowance for cooking
and washing), is a basic right and must be assured to all, in cities and in villages, in ac-
cordance with modest norms. Sanitation facilities must be assured in accordance with
the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
• Water as a ‘social good’ (water for municipal uses, firefighting, hospitals, public insti-
tutions) must be adequately provided for.
• Reasonable availability of water must be ensured for economic uses (agriculture, indus-
try), giving primacy to food security and maximising output per unit of water.
• A series of area-specific answers must be formulated for the needs of arid, drought-prone
or water-scarce areas, the stress being on local solutions and recourse to external water
being exceptional. ‘Development’ in such areas must not be of the water-intensive
kind.
• In all categories of water-uses, economy and efficiency must be brought about, waste
avoided and multiple use of the same water ensured to the extent possible. The approach
must be to meet the essential water needs, curtail the less essential or non-essential uses
sharply and restrain and manage the totality of demand within the availability to the
extent possible, so that it does not get out of hand.
• Principles for the proper pricing of water in all uses must be laid down and strictly fol-
lowed. This will include full economic pricing for some uses (including penal pricing
for use above a specified limit), reasonable pricing for other uses, subsidised pricing for
the poor and a modicum of free supplies to the very poor.
• Such supply-side augmentation as is found necessary must be undertaken with due
regard to sustainability, equity and social justice. Primacy must be given to extensive
community-led local water-harvesting and watershed development activities (wherever
feasible) with due regard to hydrological and environmental aspects.
• Large projects for the storage or diversion of river waters or for long-distance water
transfers must be treated as ‘projects of the last resort’, i.e., undertaken only in those cases
where they are the unique or the best option, after a stringent independent evaluation
with reference to total costs and benefits (financial, economic, social, human, environ-
mental) and with the fullest participation of the people likely to be affected. (Certain
reforms in this context, such as an effective Freedom of Information Act, an overhaul of
the Land Acquisition Act, and so on, have been mentioned in the second section of this
chapter. In particular, the National Rehabilitation Policy needs to be drastically revised.)
• Projects that have been ‘on-going’ for a long time should be put through a stringent
review. Some should be accelerated, some re-phased and some terminated.
• The Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) approach, i.e., the transfer of the man-
agement of an appropriate part of the system to farmers’ associations, is a limited but
useful reform. It must be introduced in all existing (major and medium) projects and
built into new projects ab initio.
• The reckless exploitation of groundwater currently proceeding, leading to the rapid
depletion of aquifers in many places, must be quickly brought under a regime of
regulation. This may entail changes in the law relating to ownership rights over
groundwater, enactment of new state-level laws for regulating the extraction and use
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 31

of groundwater, establishment of regulatory bodies, rationalisation of power tariffs, and

so on.29
• Water augmentation, use and management at all levels and scales—all categories of
uses on the demand side, and large projects, micro-watershed development, rainwater—
harvesting and groundwater extraction and use on the supply side—must be within
an overall framework of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) for a basin
or sub-basin. The concept of IWRM, much advocated in international circles, needs to
be widened and deepened to make it truly holistic and in harmony with nature.
• Water sources and systems must be protected from pollution and contamination, and
those already affected must be retrieved. This will call for a massive effort.
• Conflicts relating to waters (rivers, aquifers) will need to be minimised, and principles
and mechanisms for obviating them, or for resolving them when they arise, strength-
ened where they exist and introduced where they do not. Non-compliance with statutory
or constitutional conflict-resolution provisions must not be accepted. The political
difficulties of establishing appropriate organisations at the basin or sub-basin level for
harmonious and holistic resource management need to be tackled.
• Ways of coping with floods and minimising damage and loss must be worked out for
all flood-prone areas and real-time information systems and warning mechanisms
established.
• The need for enacting a governing, over-arching national water law integrating all laws
at the Central or state levels (including the new ones that are needed) relating to or
having a bearing on water must be seriously considered.30

All this will call for action at multiple levels: the Central and state governments, village
panchayats and nagarpalikas, the community or civil society, and the water users, individual
or group or corporate. The specific actions at each level are not being spelt out here. What
is important is to ensure the fullest coordination and cooperation among all agencies. In
particular, as water management at the local level gets devolved to the panchayati raj institu-
tions (PRIs), a constructive working relationship will need to be established between civil
society institutions such as watershed committees and PRIs.
The agenda outlined above will include administrative actions, the establishment of insti-
tutions (by the state and civil society), the framing of rules and regulations, the enactment of
laws, social mobilisation and the institution of social sanctions, and so on. In this context, cus-
tomary laws must be given due consideration. Formal and customary laws must be harmonised
where necessary. However, something more is involved: a major transformation of thinking
is needed in relation to water.

T OWARDS A T RANSFORMATION OF T HINKING

As this writer sees it, that transformation would include an awareness and understanding
of water as a scarce and precious resource to be conserved, protected and used with extreme
32 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

economy; an integral part of nature; a sacred resource; a common pool resource to be managed
by the community or held as a public trust by the state; primarily a life-support substance
and only secondarily anything else (economic good, social good, etc.); a fundamental human
and animal right; and a bounty of nature to be gratefully and reverentially received and
shared with fellow humans (within the state or province or country, or beyond the borders
of the country), future generations of humans, and other forms of life. Such a view of water,
in combination with the general principles of equity and social justice, would ensure among
other things a voice for women in water-management and a proper place for them in water-
governance institutions; respect for the rights of access of tribal and other communities to
the natural resource base with which they have had a close association for centuries; minimal
displacement and environmental impacts as criteria in the choice of projects; and due regard
for the rights of project-affected persons.31 If that kind of thinking could be brought about,
it would change the nature of water politics, eliminate water-related conflicts (between uses,
between areas, between countries) or make their resolution easier, make water governance
more enlightened, and transform the relationship between the state and civil society. It may
even make proper groundwater management possible. Efficiency problems may still remain,
but they would be relatively easier to deal with. On the other hand, if we merely try to improve
efficiency in administration and to find institutional or legal answers to political and attitudinal
problems, we may indeed have some (limited) successes, and they will be very welcome, but
the major concerns will remain unresolved. Water governance and water politics cannot be
transformed without transforming water policy (which reflects our understanding of and
relation to the resource), and the transformation of water policy can only be brought about
by water-wisdom.
That might seem to some readers a rather pious and unrealistic conclusion to a long analytical
chapter. It is of course much easier to build a dam or drill deep for water than to undertake
the kind of education and social mobilisation that the transformation outlined above calls
for; but that way lies disaster. That is where ‘realism’ (as many see it) will take us. Wisdom is
needed for avoiding that disaster; the pursuit of wisdom will not be easy; but it will be realism
in the true sense of the word.

Notes
1. A fuller discussion of the meaning of ‘governance’ will be found in the author’s article on the subject
in the issue of the Indian Journal of Public Administration, January–March 2004.
2. Some of the problems and issues referred to in this and ensuing sections are discussed in greater detail
in the author’s other writings mentioned in the References at the end. On some issues, the reader’s
attention is also drawn wherever necessary to relevant writings by others.
3. This is intended as an analytical and not as an empirical chapter.
4. In this section, the focus on ‘governance’ may entail the omission of certain other aspects or issues.
5. See the website of the WHO’s Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, Geneva: www.
wsscc.org
6. Whether it should be cheap is another question.
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 33

7. This is what leads to the Participatory Irrigation Management Programme.

8. The long-awaited National Rehabilitation Policy has at last been announced, but it is a deeply dis-
appointing document. In many ways it represents a significant de-liberalisation of policies and prac-
tices already established in existing projects; it can only be described as a thoroughly retrogressive
measure. (PS: That was a reference to the National Rehabilitation Policy 2003, notified in February
2004. Subsequently, after much debate a revised draft NRP 2006 was put in the public domain,
leading to further debate. Currently, taking note of the comments received, and after consultations
with the Ministry of Tribal affairs, the Ministry of Rural Development is trying to draft a National
Rehabilitation Bill for enactment.)
9. This is the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act 2004, passed by the Pubjab Legislative Assembly
on 12 July 2004.
10. This writer has some reservations on the use of the term ‘gender issues’ to refer to issues relating to
women, but the usage has gained currency and seems unlikely to change.
11. See Adhikary et al (2000), Chapter 3.
12. See Rangachari (1999) and Mishra (2001).
13. See Shah (2004).
14. See WSSCC website www.wsscc.org
15. No reference is mentioned here, as there is a large body of literature on the subject.
16. On India’s water relations with neighbouring countries, see Iyer (2003), Chapters 18–20.
17. The NCIWRDP projects, by the year 2050, an improvement in irrigation efficiency from the present
level of 35–40 per cent to 60 per cent; improvements in yields in irrigated and rainfed agriculture
from 3 tonnes and 1 tonne to 4 tonnes and 1.5 tonnes respectively; and an improvement in the
efficiency of industrial water use by no more than 20 per cent.
18. All these (crop water requirements, timing of watering, maximising of yields per unit of water) call for
much more research than has been done so far. Again, government policies that have an influence
on cropping patterns and result in encouraging excessive water-use need to be reviewed.
19. The reference is essentially to (Indian) urban norms. Rural norms are lower and perhaps cannot be
reduced; however, raising them to bring them close to or on par with existing or proposed urban
norms may need reconsideration. Peter Gleick (1996) puts the basic water requirement for human
needs (drinking, sanitation services, bathing, cooking and kitchen) at 50 litres per person per day.
Even if that is doubled, we get only 100 lpcd. The NCIWRDP’s projection is to raise the present urban
norm of 140 lpcd to 200 lpcd and the rural norm from 70 to 140 lpcd. It may be added that some
European cities are reducing their norms to around 100 lpcd.
20. Apart from minimising waste in all uses and insisting on multiple re-use in industry, it needs to be
recognised that domestic and municipal waste is also a source from which water for some uses needs
to be extracted. This will be a small addition on the supply side.
21. 1 BCM = 1 billion cubic metres = 1 cubic kilometre or km3.
22. The numbers are drawn from the report of the NCIWRDP.
23. On this question, attention is invited to the series of articles in The Hindu (T. N. Narasimhan, the
present author, Chetan Pandit, and T.N.N. again—6 January, 27 January, 10 February, 9 March
2004).
24. Those who are interested may see the author’s articles on the subject in Economic and Political
Weekly, 16 November 2002; Frontline, 20 December 2002; The Hindu Environment Survey 2003; and
HIMAL South Asian, August 2003. See also his book WATER: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns (Sage 2003),
Chapter 26.
34 Ramaswamy R. Iyer

25. For a fuller discussion of floods and what to do about them, see Rangachari (1999) and Mishra (2001).
26. On the whole range of issues involved in this matter (water as commodity, water markets, privatisation,
corporate control, etc.) see Petrella (2001), Vandana Shiva (2002), International Consortium of Investi-
gative Journalists (2003) and Barlow and Clarke (2002).
27. These are arguments that the author has heard in the course of discussions.
28. That applies also to the sale of water by farmers to industry or by rural communities to urban areas.
This too may lead to an over-exploitation of the resource for commercial reasons.
29. Having regard to the enormous number of private tube wells in the country and the fact that most of
these are cases of ‘self-supply’, i.e., outside the purview of supply systems, public or private, Tushaar
Shah (2004) is sceptical of the efficacy of ‘regulation’ and of changes in policy or law as remedies
for the depletion and contamination of groundwater aquifers. This writer is in agreement with his
diagnosis of ‘colossal anarchy’ in relation to groundwater, but not wholly with his conclusions and
recommendations. Limitations of space prevent an elaboration of that statement here.
30. The case for such an umbrella legislation at the national level has been argued in the author’s article
‘Towards a Re-Ordering of Water Law in India’, Indian Juridical Review, National University of Juridical
Sciences, Kolkata, Vol. 1, 2004.
31. That was a broad outline of the needed transformation of thinking. A fuller statement in the form
of a ‘Declaration’, preceded by a detailed discussion of the issues, will be found in another paper by
the author: ‘Beyond Drainage Basin and IWRM: Towards a Transformation of Thinking on Water’
(Iyer 2004c), not yet published, but available for reference in the website of the University of California
Santa Cruz e-Scholarship Repository, 2 May 2004, http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgirs/CGIRS-2004-7.

References
Adhikary K.B., Q.K. Ahmad, S.K. Malla, B.B. Pradhan, K. Rahman, R. Rangachari, R.K.B. Sajjadur,
B.G. Verghese (eds) (2000). Cooperation on the Eastern Himalayan Rivers: Opportunities and Challenges.
New Delhi: Konark Publishers, under the auspices of Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad, Dhaka, Centre
for Policy Research, New Delhi, and Institute for Integrated Development Studies, Kathmandu.
Barlow M. and T. Clarke (2002). Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water,
published in India by New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2003.
Chopra, K. and B. Goldar (2000). ‘Sustainable Development Framework for India: The Case of Water
Resources’—Final Report, Delhi: Institute of Economic Growth, for the UN University, Tokyo.
Gleick, P. (1996). ‘Basic Water Requirements for Human Activities: Meeting Basic Needs’, Water
International, no. 21, International Water Resources Association.
——— (1999). ‘The Human Right to Water’, Water Policy I, ElsevierScienceLtd, http://webworld.unesco.
org/water/wwap/pccp/cd/pdf/educational_tools/course_modules/reference_documents/issues/
thehumanrighttowater.pdf.
Government of India (1987). National Water Policy. New Delhi: Ministry of Water Resources.
——— (1994). Guidelines for Watershed Development. New Delhi: Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment.
——— (1997). Report of the Working Group on Participatory Irrigation Management for the Ninth Plan. New
Delhi: Ministry of Water Resources.
——— (1999). Report of the Working Group on Perspective of Water Requirements (National Commission on
Integrated Water Resources Development Plan). New Delhi: Ministry of Water Resources.
——— (1999). ‘Integrated Water Resources Development—A Plan for Action’, the Report of the National
Commission on Integrated Water Resources Development Plan. New Delhi: Ministry of Water
Resources.
 Water Governance, Politics, Policy 35

Government of India (2001). ‘Reply to the World Commission on Dams’, letter No.2/WCD/2001/DT (PR)
Vol.-III dated 1-2-2001 addressed to the Secretary General of the WCD (see WCD’s website www.
dams.org).
——— (2002). National Water Policy 2002. New Delhi: Ministry of Water Resources.
——— (2004). National Policy on Resettlement and Rehabilitation for Project 2004. Resolution dated 17
February. New Delhi: Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development.
India Water Partnership (2000). India Water Vision July 1999. New Delhi: India Water Partnership and
Institute for Human Development.
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (2003). The Water Barons. Washington D.C.: Center
for Public Integrity.
International Law Association (1966). Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. London:
International Law Association.
Iyer, R.R. (2003a). WATER: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
——— (2003b). ‘Water: Some Crucial Questions’, Indian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. XLIX No.3,
July–September (Special Number on Water Resources Management).
——— (2004a). ‘Towards a Re-Ordering of Water Law in India’, Indian Juridical Review, Vol. 1.
——— (2004b). ‘The Meaning of Governance’, Indian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. L, No. 1, Golden
Jubilee Special Number on Governance for Development, January–March.
——— (2004c). ‘Beyond Drainage Basin and IWRM: Towards a Transformation of Thinking on Water’,
Not yet published, but available for reference in the website of the University of California Santa Cruz
(e-Scholarship Repository, 2 May 2004) http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgirs/CGIRS-2004-7.
Mishra, D. Kumar (2001). ‘Living with Floods: People’s Perspective’, Economic and Political Weekly,
36(29): 2756–61.
Petrella, R. (2001). The Water Manifesto, London: Zed Books and Banglore: Books for Change.
Rangachari, R. (1999). ‘Some Disturbing Questions’, Seminar, 478, June.
Shah, M. (2002). ‘Water Policy Blues’, The Hindu, 7 June.
——— (2004). ‘Rethinking Watershed Strategy’, The Hindu, 29 January.
Shah, T. (1993). Groundwater Markets and Irrigation Development. Bombay: Oxford University Press.
——— (2004). ‘Water and Welfare: Critical Issues in India’s Water Future’, Economic and Political Weekly,
39(12): 1211–13.
Shiva, V. (2002). Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit. New Delhi: India Research Press.
The Hindu: Articles on the hydrology of water-harvesting:
Chetan, P., ‘Hydrology of Rainwater Harvesting’, The Hindu, Open Page, 10 February 2004.
Mihir, S., ‘Rethinking Watershed Strategy’, The Hindu, leader page, 29 January 2002.
Iyer, R.R., ‘Water-Harvesting: a Policy Perspective’, The Hindu, leader page, 27 January 2004.
Narasimhan, T.N., ‘Rain Harvest and Water Woes’, The Hindu, leader page, 6 January 2004.
——— ‘Water: a Broader Understanding’, The Hindu, leader page, 9 March 2004.
Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. 2003. WASH: From Vision 21 to Action. Power Point
Presentation. Geneva: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, available at the website
www.wsscc.org.
 3
Misgovernance of Droughts in India
Jasveen Jairath

I NTRODUCTION
The hunt for a suitable definition of governance (on water and droughts) from amid the
exploding literature on the subject led to a never-ending abyss. The artificiality of seeking pure
definitions without a commensurate deepening of insights into the problématique further
discouraged the search. For the purpose of this chapter, therefore, the decision was taken to
work with a simple understanding of the notion of governance—as one that refers to systems of
‘how’ decisions are made, as distinct from the ‘content’ of the decisions, ‘who’ makes them and,
finally, ‘how they are executed’. The distinction between the ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘who’, and the
modalities of the execution of decisions, however, remains more at the intellectually analytical
level and may not be substantially real. In the more practical existential form, all these aspects
constitute an integral whole necessarily related as a composite process, constituting each other
and reproducing itself as a totality. As a consistent togetherness these structures or levels rein-
force each other. Embedded within this ‘whole’ of the decision-generating industry is always a
particular political agenda and a representation of specific interest groups that gets articulated
as the mechanism works itself out through practiced governance.
It is therefore implied, first and foremost, that the issue of governance is not politically
neutral. It is not merely a question of replacing one set of institutions with another—as often
presented in popular fora such as Global Water Partnership (GWP Update 2002). Rather, it
is an issue of displacing one set of power structures with another. I deliberately use the word
‘displacing’ and not ‘replacing’ because the former clearly connotes the process of change as a
struggle and a contentious process, as opposed to the relatively benign stance indicated by the
latter. An understanding of the governance system for droughts in India—its characteristics,
dynamics, consequences and possible strategies for change—thus has to take off from a standpoint
of ‘how’ ‘whose’ agenda is nurtured and propagated by the existing governance structure, and
how this is situated in the overall structure and development of water resources development
(WRD). Designing change of governance modes can follow from such an understanding of how
the water resources of the country are developed—not as descriptions but as an unraveling of
the underlying thrust of social forces that lead to observed patterns of harnessing water as a
historical process of evolution. An understanding of droughts—commonly perceived as water
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 37

scarcity—has to be linked to the total WRD process, i.e., as to how ‘decisions are taken’ about
making water available for human use and how it is in fact ‘utilised’ by ‘which’ category of
consumers. It is in this context that we have to assess how droughts are understood, discussed
and decided upon. The following questions, for instance, need to be raised: what are the re-
alities of droughts and how are these interpreted to arrive at a diagnostics of the situation that
ultimately underscores related policies and actions? In other words, how does the discourse on
droughts influence the governance of droughts that is consciously designed? What happens
when designed governance mechanisms fail? What is the nature of de facto governance that
exists ‘by default’ in the absence of a formal institutional mechanism of governance—howsoever
weak and inadequate? This governance, by default, results from the independent, ad hoc and
fragmented/isolated decisions that are taken by individuals to respond to experienced water
scarcities. The net of such anarchy of decision making brings to fore some patterns of water
scarcity impacts that were never designed by any agency. They occur due to uncoordinated
decisions, taken in isolation from each other, and contribute to the emergence of the aggregate
water scenario with its skewed characteristics of water availability. This is akin to the anarchy
of market regulation—where the composition of total social-production follows by default
from interaction of complex forces in the market place. This is in contrast to realising planned
output by deliberate design. The discursive domain on droughts also influences this spectrum of
decisions that entail acting on droughts in a particular direction. Hence, it is also a governance
mechanism—albeit by default.
This chapter thus takes—as its point-of-departure—the popular discourse on droughts. It
explains how it legitimises the political agenda of prevalent governance mechanisms to lead
to decisions that may in fact aggravate differentially experienced water scarcity, which are
constituted within the overall WRD decisions, and not as something independent. Thus,
observed adversities are not due to water scarcity per se but due to misgovernance. Such a
position prominently recognises the role of human intervention as an agency of coming to
terms with natural extremes of climate change and avoids fatalistic notions of droughts re-
sulting from the ‘wrath of Gods’.

D ISCOURSE ON D ROUGHTS

Uncertainty, Scarcity and Risk in Context of Water

In the context of recent development debates1 on the theme of ‘uncertainties’ and associated
risks, with respect to sustainable availability of natural resources, we focus on the issue of water
availability vis-à-vis societies and the accompanying water-related risks. In recent decades, it
has been estimated that the scale and frequency of water-related risks due to human induced
factors are overtaking ‘naturally’ caused disasters. The burden of loss is 13 times more in under-
privileged countries, which points to a greater vulnerability of the poor within these countries.
38 Jasveen Jairath

Droughts have accounted for 11 per cent of the total disasters—35 per cent of which were
located in Asia. It has been estimated that economic losses from water disasters comprise
20 per cent of new investments needed in the water sector (World Meteorological Organization
[WMO] 2004). Droughts have been a major source of loss in the last 40 years—India suffered the
largest fatalities during the 1965–67 droughts, with a total of 1,500,000 victims. This is over and
above even the combined droughts in Africa during 1972–75, where the fatalities were 250,000
(WMO 2004). The generally accepted view is that the recorded losses were underestimated and
could be—at least—doubled, if the consequences of many smaller and unrecorded disasters
that cause significant losses at the community level are taken into account.
Risks are born of many natural as well as human induced phenomena and are typically mani-
fested through droughts, floods and pollution of fresh water sources. As we will argue later, risks
arise not only due to extreme climatic fluctuations but more because of a weakness in coping
with the same, i.e., in poor proactive preparedness to face risks in underprivileged countries.
Management of risk and uncertainty, therefore, constitutes an integral part of planning for
water and livelihood security. Sectoral approaches that have been adopted in the past for the
development of water resources in most countries have probably limited the capacity for
effective management of risk and uncertainty. Integrated water resource management (IWRM)
as the new paradigm of WRD—that recognises the interconnectedness of water with various
social sectors—may be better able to handle such complex issues of risks associated with
uncertain access to water. The level of risk from sudden natural disasters is contingent on the
vulnerability of society, coupled with the probability that hazard will occur. Vulnerability,
whether political, social or economic, is in turn a function of the sociological situation of a
community and is related to inequalities, gender relations, ethnic and racial affiliations, and
so on. Risk reduction amounts to reducing vulnerability and is very much dependent on the
nature of human intervention in terms of its timing and content of actions.
Following the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR 1990–99),
the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) was adopted by all governments with
the aim to mobilise governments, UN agencies, regional bodies, civil society bodies and private
sectors to prioritise mitigation of water-related risks, which, probably, can never be entirely
eliminated. In this context, three main components of risk management are pointed out
(Dilley 2001): first, to know, identify and understand the risks; second, to implement measures
to reduce these risks if possible; and, third, since uncertainties cannot always be known in
advance, to share the risks or spread them over a larger area or population so as to dilute its
concentrated impact. Acknowledging that it is never possible to reduce the risks to zero, the
challenge is to minimise them.2 As stated during the international conference in Bonn: ‘It is
impossible to design a system that never fails (fail-safe). What is needed is to design a system
that fails in a safe way (safe-fail)’ (Kundezewicz 2001).
The main challenge, however, is to overcome the high incidence of limitations of existing
governance systems, particularly in the context of continuing poverty in the Third World
countries.
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 39

Limitations of Existing Governance

International commitments need to be followed up with political action by governments
acting towards proactive risk reduction. However, it is observed that politicians all over have
incentives to balance the allocation of resources in a way that preserves their political support.
As noted by WMO: ‘In the political environment therefore, policy responds more to shorter-term
[emphasis added] concerns than to long-term structural measures. One practical consequence
is that, to be effective, policy analyses and formulation needs to be adapted to preferences of
policy makers’ (WMO 2004: 282). Second, as is reinforced later, ‘while supported by technically
advanced methodology, programmes and investments, water sector risk management terms
of political economy is still based on reactive (emphasis added) approaches and therefore
has limited political currency’ (ibid.). This has serious implications for the governance of
droughts as a long-term and proactive measure for disaster management that is integral to
policy, planning and practice of water.
International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) has identified the following constraints as
widely observed for effective risk management:

(i) Geo-political conflicts dominated the 1990s’ humanitarian agenda to the exclusion of
reducing vulnerability.
(ii) Risk reduction is not an integral part of water resources development and management
(WRD&M) and neither is it integrated into the political economic allocation process in
the water sectors or other strategic sectors.
(iii) Risk reduction is viewed as a technical problem, and often the underlying factors that
compel people to live in insecure conditions are ignored.3
(iv) Donors dedicate far fewer sources to risk reduction than to relief.
(v) Cost recovery of risk reduction is unreliable as it is more in the nature of a public good. With
increasing privatisation of WRD and reduced role of the state, national governments are
facing increasing budgetary constraints for pro-active risk reduction measures (IFRC 2002).

Commenting on governance of risk management the WMO study notes:

Risk and uncertainty continue to represent weak links in water management systems … there
is a call to national governments and international organisations for alternative manage-
ment approaches and adjusted governance responsibilities that need to be recognised,
assessed and acted upon … risk management and uncertainty are expected to emerge as
major social and political challenges in water resources in the next decades … the evolution is
towards wider social responsibility to control also the causes of disasters (WMO 2004: 285).

Noting the shift from natural to human induced disasters and from known/manageable risks
to greater uncertainty, it has been thus noted:

Observed solutions based on engineering sciences are becoming increasingly ad hoc,

fragmented and reactive and generally insufficient. In the last decade, debates on water
40 Jasveen Jairath

governance and on management of water risk have increasingly been redirected to include
ethical demands and management concepts based on political and economic realities.
This change in governance responsibilities and attitudes has importance to the immediate
victims of the disasters, who tend to be the poor and marginalized populations, but with
special impact on women and children (WMO 2004: 288).

Thus, there is a need for an ideological and practical imperative to revisit the issue of risk man-
agement through public discourse, at global, national and local levels.

Droughts and Poverty

Droughts in the poor regions are often related to distribution problems, know-how and human
and capital resources (Priscoli and Llamas 2001). Drought mitigation strategies may aim to
reduce vulnerability through various measures, such as altering land use patterns and agri-
cultural practices. Alternatively, water can be transferred from non-affected areas through con-
tingency planning for protecting priority uses in areas affected by water scarcity. Reallocation
of populations is another avenue that is explored but is limited by the social and political
capacity of poorer countries to operationalise the migration and rehabilitation, which remain
very ‘thorny’ issues. It is clear, however, that drought-related adversities are rooted more in
poverty than in low rainfall per se. (See Bandyopadhyay [1989] for an illustration of complex
linkages of rainfall and droughts.) Mitigation efforts, therefore, have to be embedded in poverty-
alleviation strategies through assured access to water for livelihood security.
In traditional societies, water users had evolved localised systems of water management that
were not ideally egalitarian but comprised a degree of local self-reliance dictated partly due
to compulsions of simpler technologies. They were also more ‘in control’ over their natural
environment as they had direct access to natural sources. With a shift of responsibility for these
functions into the hands of the state, communities were increasingly alienated from their
control over the management of water resources. Recently, with increased deregulation, privat-
isation and liberal market economic policies, states may also find a resource crunch due to
which they are unable to fulfill their obligations towards risk prevention. This may lead to
an increase in the vulnerability of the marginalised segments of population. However, it does
mean that local communities had developed mechanisms to cope with periods of water stress
by adjusting their lifestyles accordingly, during extreme climatic and economic variations.
A serious weakness in the governance of risk mitigation is the poor adaptive capacity of under-
privileged communities to accommodate the droughts in their already precarious lives. The
poor, in fact, are most vulnerable to disasters (Moench and Dixit 2004). Flood and drought
are also the major causes of poverty and displacement of poor populations. Very little data
is available on the linkages between disasters and poverty, but statistics show that victims
of disasters are concentrated in places where preparedness has been low, with most of the
population living in low-quality housing and under-degraded environment. Exposed to health
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 41

hazards resulting from disasters—without the capacity to prepare for the same or re-establish
a life-supporting condition afterwards—the immiserisation of such communities is further
aggravated.

D ISCOURSE OF D ROUGHTS AND G OVERNANCE 4

Highlighted here are some prominent aspects of the discourse on water scarcity. These reflect
a technical interpretation of the issues involved and reinforce conceptualising them in terms
of technical quantum (of water) divorced from their institutional context. This serves to
reinforce the water shortage thesis as essentialism. This ‘inherentness’ of water shortage—sought
to be established as an axiom—constitutes the rationale for water enhancing approaches that are
proposed as exclusive options, often at the cost of more balanced packages that could be based
on the relative assessment of quantum, distribution and the institutional aspects of WRD as an
integrated bundle. It is argued that the scarcity discourse contains within it a technical and a
social conceptualisation of the problématique that easily lends itself to technocratic solutions
that are posed in a mechanistic framework. While not discounting the role and efficacy of tech-
nical and engineering inputs to solve the water crises, issues of technology choice, technical
change and absorption/diffusion of particular technical trajectories need to be situated in a
specific social/institutional context. Major decisions pertaining to technical choices are, very
often, based on political considerations. Ignoring the sociological contextualising of the water
problem and treating it as a balancing game of physical quantum amounts to methodological
reductionism that abstracts from the complexities of how water is made available and utilised.
The unrealism of such a viewpoint leads to equally unrealistic prescriptions that fail to de-
liver. The dismal performance of most large surface irrigation projects in South Asia has been
extensively documented and corroborates the same. (See Paranjape and Joy [2004], for a recent
review of the water sector developments in India.)

Relative vs. Absolute Droughts

To begin with, we briefly highlight some of the typical modes of conceptualising water scarcity
by the state in the popular media, academia and generally as perceived by the community—the
lay as well as the better informed. It has been observed that portrayals of absolute scarcity of
water along with its associated adversities (that are undeniably very real)—from different parts
of the country—constitute the rationale for a focus on ‘absolute shortage of water’ in society.
Such a picture is presented to the exclusion of a possible (but not adopted) perspective that
water scarcity for ‘some’ can arise due to water monopoly by others. This causal and relational
aspect of scarcity for some (that may affect their minimum livelihood needs) and the relative
scarcity for others (that may be related to the accepted standards of living beyond their mere
survival) tends to be obscured when a general notion of ‘water shortage’ is floated and is
42 Jasveen Jairath

widely and uncritically accepted by all. This also raises the question of what is ‘scarcity’ and
what is ‘surplus’. Clearly the notion of ‘less’ is vis-à-vis an assumed and accepted level of what
is adequate. The implicit assumption of an accepted standard of enough or satisfactory water
availability is, however, never explicitly articulated. As such, this water shortage, relative to a
reference point, is presented as an ‘absolute’ water shortage. Second, these experienced water
shortages may not be generated so much by less ‘naturally’ available water as by its poor
management and/or distribution.5 For example, there is ample evidence that points to the
experienced water shortages in locales relatively well-endowed with natural sources of water—
while naturally water deficient regions do not suffer ’droughts’ to the expected extent due to
better preparedness.6 The artificiality of water scarcity—created with reference to surface, ground
and in situ water due to misplaced water practices and policies—has encouraged production
patterns and lifestyles requiring concentrated over-exploitation of water, generating negative
externalities for the economically and politically weaker segments of society (Bandyopadhyay
1989). The empirical evidence on the relativity of notions of ‘scarcity’ and ‘surplus’ is never
brought to the fore and they are passed on as absolutely constituted terms.
The foregoing is not to deny recognition of the serious implications of less ‘than normally
expected’ availability of water through natural modes. However, how this less-than-normal
water quantum is shared among socially, ethnically, economically and gender differentiated
segments of society—to generate an equally differential experience of water scarcity—is the
pertinent question that never gets posed. Unconsciously, such an understanding pervades
deeply in the popular psyche. We have discussed some of the implications of fudging the
differences between absolute and relative droughts and the associated policy implications
of such popular misconceptions, in so far as they underlie the broad direction of decisions
undertaken by public sector institutions for developments of water resources in the country
under the banner of alleviating water shortages (Jairath and Mustafa 2002). Ironically, the
consequences of such decisions generate new patterns of exclusion and inclusion to the new
sources of water thus made selectively available. These new differentials in the access to water,
therefore, create further relative scarcity for those excluded.

Exploding Population and Food Security

A second strand of thinking that influences the understanding as a cause of, and response
to, water scarcity is the perception of the rising population as a pressure on a limited natural
resource such as water. Quoting the increase in population in developing countries such as
India (an undeniable empirical statistic) it is argued, first, that this is one of the major causes
of water shortages since more people’s livelihoods have to be supported from existing water
sources. Alternatively, it is noted that the population growth has surpassed the growth in
water resources and this imbalance is reflected in the observed shortages. Second, there is
the need to produce an increasing amount of food as there are more mouths to feed. More
food production requires more water. This explains both the cause of water scarcity—due to
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 43

greater use of water for food production—and the need for greater investments in the water
sector to make up for the existing deficit to increase food production. Implicit in this analysis
is support for investing in large surface irrigation works. The argument offered is that such
a step would support process of industrialisation, generate employment and meet increased
demand for food through extension of irrigation, and so on. Based on the assessments of per
capita consumption of food and population growth, projections of increasing food demand
are postulated.7 Per capita calculations seriously violate the highly-skewed income distribution
in most countries (in South Asia) that reflect the access to food through the market. To begin
with—and as argued—the co-existence of surplus foodgrain that co-exists with under-nourished
population (Bandyopadhyay and Perveen 2004) and starvation deaths clearly belies the sug-
gestion that people are hungry because they are too many. Rather, the message that the issue
of food deprivation of the poorer majority cannot be explained by its lack of availability within
the country (in the present historical juncture) is loud and clear. Ironically, in the case of one
of the worst drought years of 2001, the country decided to increase the export of foodgrains by
75 per cent in 2002–03—when there was a 15 per cent fall in production/procurement. From
48 lakh tonnes of exports in the preceding year, the exports went up to 124 lakh tonnes, which
made India the sixth highest wheat exporting country in the world (Parsai 2003).
In the light of incontrovertible evidence that points to discriminatory access to water by poor
and marginalised sections of the population (Paranjape and Joy 2004), it is untenable to argue
that increasing population growth is responsible for accentuating pressure on water sources.
Mamdani (1973), in his classic research on demographic trends in India, notes that most of
the increase in population takes place precisely in the poorer classes for various sociological
reasons of old age security, infant mortality, increasing family income through additional
labour, and so on. The adoption of family planning practices is strongly correlated with rise
in income levels. Hence the suggestion that development is the best contraceptive. This being
the case to apportion the blame for creating pressure on scarce water resources on precisely
that majority—which is in fact denied the security of basic minimum water needs—does not
hold water! (Sainath 2004: series of recent articles on livelihood implications of water depriv-
ation in the southern states of India). Besides, water for livelihood accounts for not more than
10–15 per cent of total water consumption (Paranjape and Joy 2004). How can 15 per cent of
the total social demand create water shortage, when a majority cannot even comfortably access
water sources? Or, is it the dynamics of the balance—for 80 per cent of which irrigation is the
highest consumer—that has to be explored to understand generation of scarcity of water due
to monopolisation/concentration within particular constituencies. These hypotheses need to
be explored through analysis of disaggregated data, before arriving at a conclusion that rising
or high population causes water scarcity.

Poor Precipitation
Third, water scarcity is typically explained through fluctuations in the natural precipitation
in an area, region or country. Most drought studies explain the observed phenomena in terms
44 Jasveen Jairath

of rainfall fluctuations, its spread over the annual cycle and its variation from an expected
normal over the years. Two points need to be noted in this context. First, the evolution of
drought-proneness of an area very often cannot be explained in terms of a secular decline
in precipitation. For example, in Mahbubnagar district, Andhra Pradesh, there is extensive
empirical evidence from the drought belt of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to
illustrate the point that water scarcities may be accentuated in spite of normal precipitation
over extended periods of time (Jairath 2004; Bandyopadhyay 1989). That is, the emergence of
water scarcity—as distinct from the natural/historical/longstanding aridity of a region—cannot
be directly correlated to loss of natural water available without empirical substantiation. It is
possible to observe rising indices of drought-like conditions—such as an increase in cultivable
wasteland over a period that is not cultivated due to the non-availability of water—under con-
ditions of normal average precipitation (Jairath and Mustafa 2002). This has reference to an
abnormality in ‘available water’ relative to a shared expectation of the normal. Second, as
pointed out by Bandyopadhyay (1989), the already drought-prone areas, or those areas with a
very low level of precipitation, do not necessarily suffer from droughts even during lean periods,
since they have evolved strategies of land/water use that provide an insurance against annual
rainfall fluctuations. Where normal precipitation is low, and communities have learnt to adjust
to low water consumption over the years, water scarcity cannot be confused for a drought-like
situation. Just like other forms of extreme climatic fluctuations, the issue is not of natural
hazard or climatic change, but of the capacity of social units to cope with a proactive process
of preparedness. The reference here is not made towards what is broadly referred to as ‘coping’
by poor communities affected by droughts. Being prepared to face a natural/climatic hazard
through socially secured systems that are depended on to guarantee a reasonable sustenance
during the adversity is very different from the ex-post ‘coping’ that poor communities usually
do—and which is derived from their vulnerability and precarious existence. ‘Coping’, for
them, is an act of desperation in a situation of distress that is motivated by an attempt to mitigate
the adversity. The point is to compare and contrast the relative ease of the wealthy with the
distress of the vulnerable. During one of the worst and persistent droughts in the Anantpur
village in Mahabubnagar district, economically well-of sections continued to drought-proof
their existence through purchased/imported water. This is not to deny the constraints that,
for instance, an abnormal drop in rainfall can create in a locality; but one has to examine
whether local initiatives to cope with expected rainfall fluctuations (that may have evolved
over the years) have been strengthened, consolidated or dislocated through investments in
WRD projects. What has been the nature of state support to enhance stability and manage
the crises? To what extent has the ‘adaptive capacity’ to handle the water scarcity, through
various long and short term interventions in the past, been effective? A priori claim to hold
rainfall fluctuations per se responsible for water scarcity related adversities are thus open to
question. This is not to deny the relevance of precipitation as an explanatory variable, but its
specific role needs to be elaborated in the local context.
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 45

Technological Defining of Scarcity

Water scarcity has been officially conceptualised as the onset of droughts that have been
categorised as follows (this is more or less universally accepted):

(i) Metrological—due to lack of precipitation.

(ii) Hydrological—due to lack of water in streams and aquifers.
(iii) Agricultural—when conditions are unable to sustain agricultural and livestock production
(Hounam et al. 1975).

Within this categorisation, there is a wide diversity of specific definitions that are adopted
by different countries. See Singh and Ballabh (2002) for the case of India. Abstracting from the
definitional details, however, the point is that official acceptance of such a representation of
droughts indicates a technological interpretation of water scarcity. Such identification is then
followed by interventions as a response to the situation arrived at through laid-out governance
procedures. This has two pitfalls. One, communities that have been suffering from endemic
water scarcity due to social and political reasons—in spite of not showing up as drought affected
as per the above criteria—get ignored and continue to suffer impoverishment due to sus-
tained water deprivation. Two, as a governance mechanism, it sets into motion a politically
motivated scramble for ‘qualifying’ droughts by the politically shrewd in order to appropriate
financial and material resources designated to alleviate the hardship of those critically affected
by prolonged persistence of drought conditions. The misgovernance thus generated is, there-
fore, built into the mechanistic and statistical identification of droughts by the bureaucracy that
consolidates its monopoly to certify the fact of droughts and thereby establishes its ‘control’
over the highly lucrative flow of resources designated for drought relief. The situation offers
an ideal opportunity for corruption and other forms of misgovernance to flourish at the cost
of those who continue to perish with thirst. In his aptly-titled book, Everyone Loves a Good
Drought (1996), P. Sainath brings into sharp relief the nexus between corrupt politicians,
bureaucrats, businesses and the locally powerful political elite to corner the resources meant
to provide succor to those in immediate distress induced by water scarcity. Assessment of
water security undertaken through such indices and statistical categories for the purpose of
policy formulation and planning is thus based on misrepresentations of ground realities that
are conceptually embedded. Such ‘constructed information’ reinforces arguments to support
supply, augmenting WRD through, for example, projects like the interlinking of rivers.

Polarity of Natural vs. Human Induced Scarcities

Water scarcity, howsoever interpreted, has been traditionally understood as being primarily
a ‘natural’ disaster caused by lower than expected precipitation. It is ‘god given’—as is
argued—and, thus, beyond our control. The only action that can possibly be taken is a passive
response of ‘adjusting/adapting’ to the sudden and unpredictable reductions in rainfall. Such
46 Jasveen Jairath

a viewpoint has, of late, been replaced by the recognition of the increasing contribution of
human-induced factors towards creating water scarcity, factors that interfere with nature or are
responsible for mismanaging water (WMO 2004). This leads to the well-accepted perception
of managerial deficiencies in water management. It is argued that it is the problematic man-
agement and use of water, the associated wastage/inefficiencies, economic under-valuation,
uneconomic allocation mechanisms, and so on, that leads to observed patterns of water short-
ages. The prescription following such diagnostics is that we need to improve the governance
structure through reforming the managerial institutions in the water sector—like government
departments, instituting water user organisations, urban water utilities, and so on. In some
cases, it is argued that this may require private-sector participation, as—driven by the profit
motive—their managerial efficiency is expected to be high. It also calls for revamping the whole
technical system of water resource development, delivery systems, etc., through infrastructural
investments.
To categorise factors responsible for generating water scarcity into exclusive sets of natural
or man-made parameters remains a variant of the essentialist perspective that considers ex-
planatory variables in an either/or context. Complexities of social processes leading to water
deprivation by some sections of the population may require a diverse set of interwoven factors
to produce particular patterns of water access (or its denial). To situate the respective aspects
in opposition to one another is to misdirect not only the discourse, but also the search for
solutions.
No doubt there is some element of truth in each of the foregoing professions. Natural/climatic
factors do certainly create the physical limits to the quantum of water that is available for
tapping. Mismanagement of water certainly creates problems of water delivery and wastage and
there is no denying that this state of affairs is not desirable. But will technical and managerial
strategies, by themselves, produce better distribution of water that ensures the basic livelihoods
water requirements of the majority? Can equity be guaranteed through managerial reforms per
se? On the other hand, if it is an issue of political control over resources that constitutes the
fundamental contradiction, then the corresponding strategy of redressal would be through
negotiations and contestations. It is not that there is not enough water for all in nature—it is
the exclusion of the majority from God’s bounty that builds their thirst. It is not the harsh-
ness of ‘mother nature’, but the violation of her generosity that constitutes the denial of basic
water to those who have no voice and no name. Hesitation to face this political reality upfront
is often responsible for the ‘muddy’ discourse on water scarcity where the consequence (less
water availability to the majority) is confused for the cause (less water is available for this
majority), pre-empting proper diagnostics and resulting prescription. Painkillers and cosmetic
remedies—such as a preoccupation with drought relief and other drought mitigation factors—
engage the governance of water scarcity, while purely technical solutions such as river linking
projects are propagated as a response to purely naturally perceived limitations of water avail-
ability. This serves to divert attention away from the more intractable issue of rights to water
and strategies for their implementation through a radical reorientation of the pattern of water
use that is unlikely to be realised voluntarily.
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 47

Demand Management
Of late, the notion of ‘demand management’ of water has gained currency as counter-posed
to supply focused discourse and practice, that is characteristic of the state sector as a response
to balance the prevalent exclusive focus on creation of supply facilities for water. Water
management, it is argued, should focus on the analyses of water demand which is generally
interpreted as the pattern of water use as it actually exists—and not that which may be desirable,
based on considerations of equity, efficiency and ecological sustainability. This is followed by
extrapolation of these past trends of water use to estimate water requirements at some future
date. The steps that follow are: one, investigating how such an estimated demand can be
met through augmenting water supplies; two, exploring strategies of increasing productivity
of water use in existing uses; and three, focusing on strategies for reducing waste in water use
(not wasteful avenues of use). That is, the emphasis is on the reduction of wastage in specific
use without questioning if using water for that particular purpose as such may be a relative
wastage from a broader social viewpoint. The issue of competitive use of water is seldom raised
in the context of wastage of water.
While it is difficult to find fault with most of the preceding points, it may be noted that
any attempt to raise issues of reorienting the whole pattern of water intensive lifestyles and
production system is conspicuous by its absence. There is no attempt to question the following:

(i) how existing water sources are used (mode of using);

(ii) who uses them (issue of access/control);
(iii) for what purpose are they used (issue of alternative uses); and
(iv) regulation of water use or its absence (equity implications).

Conventional demand management is thus reduced to an exercise of water accounting that

provides other avenues to rationalise the ‘need for greater water quantum’ thesis.
Demands, however, emerge as the net of decisions taken across the economy in response
to pressures of local, national and international markets, processes of globalisation, neo-
liberal policies of privatisation, the reduced role of the state, and so on. This mediates its
own pressures of production and consumption that need water use for their reproduction.
Thus, water demands are constituted through a complex social process (Moench et al. 2004)
that has to be understood and unraveled prior to intervening for change. In this context,
it is necessary to assess water needs as distinct from its demands and explore strategies of
ensuring need satisfaction as a priority. For comprising a meaningful basis for long-term water
resources development and management (WRD&M), planning demand management should
be replaced by ‘use and need management’ that examines the totality of the patterns of water
use in society as integrated with overall production paradigms and policies (or their absence)
which stimulate particular patterns of water consumption through a corresponding system of
incentives. This would need to be followed by strategies for instituting alternative incentive
packages and institutional changes for shifting water use along lines that is consistent with
declared social and developmental objectives. This is a process of struggle between contending
48 Jasveen Jairath

interests and requires capacities for skillful negotiation and not merely a wishful expression
for a stronger political will. For instance, strategies for the social mobilisation of water audits
at the local level could be one of the action points for developing a meaningful water plan
that could then be advocated for implementation—to the extent that water can be planned
and regulated at the local level. This is an area that begs detailed research, data collection and
experimental trails of proposed alternative water use patterns at localised levels that can be
dovetailed into aggregative/macro basin level planning.

D ROUGHTS D ISCOURSE AND L EGITIMISATION

OF W ATER R ESOURCES D EVELOPMENT (WRD)

The foregoing aspects of the discourse set the stage for a WRD trajectory that was followed in
India, which takes less water availability as the starting point of departure—without further
critical assessment of the problem. While such a standpoint cannot be disputed, its reduc-
tionist orientation of concentrating on the creation of supply structures to the exclusion of
concomitant attention to conditions of water regulation and utilisation constitutes its major
weakness. Without going into the details of WRD in India in the post-Independence period
that has been sketched elsewhere (Paranjape and Joy 2004), it will suffice to note its prominent
features:

• Large scale, top-down, technocratic focus based on state intervention (public sector) for
surface irrigation through river water harnessing.
• Indirect support of private irrigation through credit and infrastructural support for
privately-owned bore wells from 1970 and onwards.
• A gradual decline of irrigation by other means such as community maintained tanks in
South India and Ahar and Pyne systems in Bihar.
• Dug wells along the Indo-Gangetic plains, and so on, as these became dysfunctional due
to externalities of public and new forms of private irrigation.

These developments were associated with significant ecological adversities such as water
logging, salinity and declining groundwater table in the recent decades—all due to poor regu-
lation of water use through supply structures that were created. Their creation itself was beset
with a number of financial and operational inefficiencies as well as the range of governance
problems that afflict the water sector; which have been well documented in literature. Com-
menting on the weak and misgovernance in the water sector on the World Water Day
Vaidyanathan (2004) notes the following:

…the emphasize [sic] and preoccupation (of government plans and policy pronouncements)
continues to be overwhelmingly in favor of massive investments to augment water supply…
the sad and brutal truth is that the situation on the ground is getting worse, not better.
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 49

Conflicts are worsening; pollution is unabated; groundwater levels continue to fall; rivers
are drying up; and there is no sign of greater efficiency or prudence in using water. The root
cause of this is weak governance and massive misgovernance of water by the state…. Locally
powerful people use their political connections and bribery to get water for unauthorised
crops and for longer duration than prescribed. Punitive action is seldom taken…failure of
governments to ensure that allocations and scheduling of water in public systems conform
to clearly specified rules, to enforce regulations concerning groundwater extraction…another
area of misgovernance is in the implementation of programmes for water supply schemes,
soil conservation, and watershed development…instances of incomplete works, works of
poor quality and sometimes no work at all are numerous…substantial kickbacks in local
works to elected representatives and the bureaucracy at the district and sub-district levels
have become more or less a common practice…the entire system has become a brazen but
highly effective mechanism for siphoning public funds ostensibly meant for the benefit of
rural areas and poor people…without addressing these problems of weak…and bad gov-
ernance it is futile to expect significant progress in improving the quality of water resource
management, averting over-exploitation and degradation….

Notwithstanding the diversity of water analyses comprising the discourse, it is widely

recognised that WRD in India has been associated with serious problems regarding access to
water and the quality of supply creation. For the governances of droughts, this has the following
implications.
First, as previously argued, the rationale of WRD decisions has been basically derived from
the discourse on droughts that is strongly grounded in uncritical acceptance of the notion of
water scarcity as naturally ordained. This legitimises the powerful thrust on water augmentation
policies and practices. A serious developmental fallout of broader misgovernance of such
WRD has been the observed discriminatory access to/control of water, thus, ‘augmented’ by
that very section of the population in whose name the investments are justified. Ruining the
freshwater sources through pollution of surface/groundwater sources and depriving the poorest
in rural areas from drinking water through hand pumps (that are thus rendered dysfunctional)
due to over-pumping of water for water-intensive crops by the large land owners are glaring
illustrations of cases in point. The following experience of the Watershed Organisations Trust
(WOTR) further reinforces this:

A rough estimate shows that more than Rs 25,000 crore has been spent so far on drought
relief, but the number of scarcity villages are only increasing [emphasis added]. Maharashtra
ranks first in the country for the number of large and medium dams, despite which only
15 per cent of the area is irrigated. Irony of the fact is that there are 160 sugar factories in
this scarcity state and almost 60 per cent of the water is being used for sugarcane cultivation
in less than 4 per cent of the area… (The Watershed Family 2004).

Competitive displacement of the weaker members of community from the access to water
that they formerly enjoyed—as in the case of dug wells drying up due to over-pumping by
50 Jasveen Jairath

the landowning class—further illustrates the creation of absolute droughts for those deprived.
Evidence about such discriminatory dislocations of the socio-economically vulnerable sections
in a region has also been documented (Whitcombe 1972) for the United Provinces during the
colonial period.
As noted earlier, it is ironic that the excluded are typically the same segment of population,
for whom water deprivation has been recognised in the official discourse and used to rationalise
the creation of water supply. This, thus, illustrates the creation of relative and absolute droughts
precisely for those whose drought was supposed to be alleviated through such WRD. It is the
first paradox that begs for an answer from the governance managers.
Second, hard realities of severe and glaring water-induced adversities that are, in fact,
experienced by the most vulnerable—and, sometimes, even by the relatively well-off—do
assume a serious matter of concern for the state as the custodian of people’s welfare. Separate
and independent governance mechanisms, therefore, have evolved within the country to
respond to this incontrovertible evidence of physical suffering that communities do in fact
experience in different parts of the country and during different time periods. We briefly
outline these governance modes that are instituted specifically to handle the phenomena of
droughts. At the outset, however, it may be noted, first, that these mechanisms are, by and
large, disconnected from and independent of the WRD trajectory as previously noted (i.e.,
they do not constitute an integral part of planning, designing and executing a water project
as a part of state intervention); and, second, that they constitute a set of reactive measures to
an ‘officially recognised disaster’ and remain top down, palliative and cosmetic in nature. As
such, they are highly inadequate to provide the professed ‘relief’ from water-induced hardship
to those who desperately require it, and before it is too late—considering it is not feasible to
provide relief to a dead person.
We note here, one, the weakness of the designed governance mechanisms for handling
droughts; two, malfunctioning of even the poorly designed modes of governance and three,
the traumatic consequences of governance by default that the drought affected are forced to
bear with—in the event of designed systems breaking down, being inaccessible or simply
non-existent.8

G OVERNANCE OF D ROUGHT P ROOFING BY S TATE

Institutions to decide and act upon the ‘disaster’ caused by droughts operate mainly under the
aegis of the state. The limited role of the private sector is noticed in areas where adequate return
is assured—for instance, through the marketing of bottled water in remote water-stressed areas,
offered, of course, at a price that would exclude the neediest. There is a small niche occupied
by civil society, through social welfare organisations, undertaken as voluntary work during
times of extreme and sudden distress.9
The governance of droughts is primarily under the charge of the ministries of Agriculture
and Rural Development. To begin with, a process of drought declaration is initiated if more
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 51

than 50 per cent of the crop is found damaged. This activity is under the charge of the district
collector, the Centre has no role to play. A report is then sent from the district to the revenue
department and, after the districts are identified, a consolidated report is sent to the central
government. Then the central government dispatches a team or taskforce to evaluate the
situation, based on whose assessment, it then releases assistance from the Calamity Relief
Fund (CRF) and the National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF). After receiving the funds
and foodgrains, the district collector undertakes a final distribution in various forms—food,
drinking water, financial and/or other resources, etc.
Typically, state intervention for the short-term management of droughts takes the form of
implementing drought-relief measures. Relief measures—undertaken in an area after it has been
officially recognised or declared as drought affected—comprise the following: employment
generation programmes in drought affected areas; provision of drinking water and actual food
during critical time; and special programmes for women, children, the aged, and the infirm.
Employment generation is undertaken under the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY)
and its sub-component of food-for-work, sponsored by the central government. In addition,
states also take up special relief programmes under CRF/NCCF through various development
departments like minor irrigation, Public Works Department (PWD), Forest, Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS), and so on. Employment programmes are implemented through
public works, such as de-silting of tanks in rural areas, road construction, and the like. Provision
of drinking water for people and cattle is undertaken by deepening of bore wells, sinking of
new ones, repair of hand pumps, transport of water through tankers, purchase of water from
private bore well owners and supply to drought affected areas, etc. (See the report of the
National Institute for Rural Development [NIRD 2003] for a survey of recent management of
drought relief in some of the affected states.) The management line of the above programmes
runs through the general administrative machinery. However, the involvement of water organ-
isations/departments is conspicuous by its absence.
Free supply of electrical power to the farm sector as a form of drought relief is a populist
slogan of many political parties. Without digressing into the political agenda underlying pro-
vision of free power in agriculture to farmers as an immediate relief to cope with droughts, it
may be pointed that such a facility:

• Encourages deeper mining of groundwater sources in areas where water levels are
already falling at an alarming rate—thus contributing to increasing the water crises in
the long run.
• Comprises special subsidy to the landed class while it causes water deprivation to the
landless/resource poor who are dependent on hand pumps for their bare survival needs,
which becomes dysfunctional due to declining water tables.
• Constitutes an incentive for water intensive land use patterns and discourages exploring
and adoption of low water use production and life patterns.
• Assumes that free power translates itself automatically into free water. Lured by free
electricity, many farmers go for multiple drilling of bore wells for agriculture inspite of a
52 Jasveen Jairath

failure to strike water. This constitutes tremendous financial burden—very often leading
to indebtedness and ultimately suicides in rural areas (Sainath 2004).
• Fails to maintain infrastructure (electricity) as a result of insufficient resources with the
government agencies and transfers the burden of maintenance on users—which neutralises
the financial advantage of free power.
• Comprises a subsidy that is biased towards larger landowners as they are larger consumers
of electricity—land based inequities are thus reinforced.
• Remains more of a fire-fighting measure and does not build any long-term security in
terms of access to a water source.

Watershed Programme: Long-term Strategy

A separate track of interventions that aim at conservation of water through watershed activities
in the rural areas undertaken in the Desert Development Programme (DDP) and Drought Prone
Areas Programme (DPAP) districts attempts to achieve this through implementing measures for
groundwater and in situ moisture at the level of micro-watersheds. It is administered through
the Ministry for Rural Development (MRD) from the central government and Commissioners
of Rural Development in the state and finally through collectors at the district level. The
Watershed Programme of the MRD is probably the only major one, on a large-scale, to bring
about a structural change in the situation of water security. There is a conscious attempt to
introduce institutional reforms and reorient the governance of water conservation as a drought-
proofing system through micro-watershed based projects implemented by Project Implementing
Agencies (PIAs). This initiative does attempt to tackle the problem of water scarcity at a long-
term structural level, albeit from a technocratic perspective—in spite of the prominence given to
the participation of local communities in the decision making—to implement the programme
through an institutional structure that is laid out in the well-known Guidelines for Watershed
Development (Hanumantha Rao 1994) that have been the basis of the activities under this
programme since the 1990s.10
People’s participation to evolve systems of democratic governance for decentralised water
management at the local level is explicitly incorporated in the design of the programme.
However, like most state interventions, its top-down character has robbed it of the potential
of co-opting all the stakeholders—including the weakest—in the implementation process
that could have entailed political empowerment at the field level. While decentralisation of
the governance of the watershed institutions was explicitly on the designed agenda of the
programmes, field researchers point out serious limitations of grounding the same. A study of
the watersheds and joint forest management (JFM) projects in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh
and Karnataka, on the issue of decentralisation process, note: ‘…current decentralisation
policies have not actually changed the structure of rights or the distribution of benefit streams
from the Natural Resources themselves. The basic political statement over Natural Resources
remains unchallenged, despite the apparent momentum of the agenda for decentralisation….’
(Baumann and Farrington 2003).
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 53

Referring to the asymmetric control over a natural resource (NR) such as water, the study
further argues: ‘…centralising political forces constraint both the political and ecological scope
of the decentralization agenda…’ (Baumann and Farrington 2003).
However, the study notes the displacement of the control of line departments in the local
management of NRs and, in that sense, there has been a shift in the governance pattern. But
for the lay and the weak, this has not translated itself into empowering access to increased
share of water. In terms of political interest, representation of such governance patterns as
discussed in the beginning, the study further notes: ‘…decentralisation was a demand of
the ascendant agrarian groups from intermediate castes and has provided an instrument for
them to secure benefits from the state, from which they and been debarred…’ (ibid.).
Certainly, social mobilisation (as proxy to people’s participation) in the project areas has
been stirred, but only around the financial resources that a local political leader can draw to
the village in which the poor share through time-bound employment opportunities. Collective
action on common NRs had been missing, as it was not considered to be worth it. This is still
a far cry from broad-based water management at the field level founded on the recognition
of livelihood water rights for all, wherein all interest groups can negotiate for their rights
over NRs.

Design and Operation of Governance

The earlier section delineates main contours of the design of drought governance in a
short-term/immediate as well as long-term perspective. Abstracting from the malfunctioning
of these systems, to begin with, it may be noted that relief-oriented interventions are crafted
in alienation from the field conditions by those disconnected from the sociological emer-
gence of droughts during periods of lower than expected precipitation. They remain ad
hoc, fragmented and piecemeal in their execution and have uncertain access by the needy,
if at all. The criterion for eligibility for a claim to relief is exposte recognition of the problem.
The situation, however, requires proactive preparedness for dealing effectively with the
adversity. The criteria, as noted earlier, tends to exclude recognition of droughts that result
from chronic water deprivation of, for example, the landless/marginal landowners even dur-
ing reasonable rainfall years—when crops do not fail drastically and aquifers do not plunge to
the abnormal. Symptomatic recognition of droughts is followed by an equally symptomatic
prescription for the malady. While short-term/immediate measures in case of such calamities
are certainly required to limit the actions to a contingency, this firefighting approach leaves
the fundamental problem intact. Such a technocratic and rather simplistic perception of
droughts—as being caused by low rainfall—underlies the temporally limited and palliative
approach through relief measures that are repeated every drought year, while these years con-
tinue to recur with religious regularity. Droughts continue to resonate to the rhythm of the
rainfall with increasing amplitude—with neither WRD nor ‘relief’ enabling independence
from such climatic fluctuations—which the global north has realised. Accepting rainfall fluc-
tuations as the cause of droughts reinforces the inevitability of naturalistic determinism, thereby
blunting the need for evolving strategies for ‘preparedness’. As per the Journal of Hydrological
54 Jasveen Jairath

Sciences: ‘It is noted that droughts are normal occurrences in climatic systems and not just
the extremes. It is in this perspective that preparedness and planning for droughts has to be
risk based rather than crises-based…’ (Panu and Sharma 2002: S27).
The challenge of drought-proofing is, precisely, to attain independence from vulnerability
to natural (and normal) fluctuations in rainfall. Governance thus has to be oriented towards
evolving strategies of pro-active preparedness based on the social management of water re-
sources at the local level—gradually evolving to macro levels. Thus, a bottoms-up approach—
where drought management is an integral constituent of water management—is required to
replace the cosmetic approach that is effective neither in the short run, nor as a long-term
structural solution.
Whatever be the design defects inherent in governance of handling immediate disasters, its
operational features further dilute the effectiveness of interventions undertaken. To begin with,
rather than being dictated by priority of regional needs, the process of drought declaration
is itself more a process of political negotiation between the central and state governments.
Considerations of political alliances through political parties, in and out of power, play a
major role in influencing the actual outcome in terms of the amount of foodgrains and funds
allocated under the National Calamity Contigency Fund (NCCF)/National Calamity Fund
(NCF). This bargaining for relief is subject to imperatives of populist politics where extraneous
considerations prevail to clinch the ‘deal’ for relief allocations. Water-starved people, thus, con-
stitute a pawn in the game of power politics. They are ‘used’ to legitimise a claim to resources
that escapes those for whom it is intended—to ultimately reach the pockets of middle layers
of brokers comprising a club of politicians, contractors, businessmen, government officials and
the like. Sections of the politically powerful elite develop a vested interest in the occurrence
of droughts and its official declaration. For instance, scams surrounding the Food-For-Work
(FFW) programme launched as a drought relief measure during the 2003–05 drought years in
Andhra Pradesh, highlight the involvement of prominent politicians in hijacking rice that was
allocated under FFW and selling it in the open market to avail of margins due to price differ-
entials (The Hindu 2003). Sainath lays bare these linkages with stark candor in Everyone Loves
a Good Drought (1996). The governance system thus plays into the hands of the governors
and—criminally—at the cost of those languishing in thirst and hunger for years together.

G OVERNANCE BY D EFAULT

As the state-sponsored governance bypasses those for whom water scarcity is an immediate
livelihood constraint—and whose condition is most precarious, in that they have no buffer
to absorb even the most transient fluctuation of water supply—we now examine how their
decisions are governed. Over the years, communities have evolved their own localised re-
sponses to recurring fluctuations in rainfall through flexible land-use patterns, food habits,
lifestyle adjustments and culturally reinforced practices that encourage frugal water utilisation
(Bandyopadhyay 1989). Sharma (2004), in his study on governance of water during the colonial
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 55

period, points to the metaphors in local language, that reflect the ideological exhortation to
anticipate saving for a dry—and not for a rainy day! While these may not have been satisfactory
on many occasions, the differentials in risk-sharing had also prevailed. However, there was
a degree of localised integration of social units including modes of problem-solving—social
discrimination notwithstanding. With the onset of modern states, local ties have been replaced
by new forms of linkages through impersonal and distant market forces. The state assumes the
role of providing social welfare, especially in situations of acute and sudden water distress. The
poorest—who have been dislocated from previous forms of social absorption that was locally
understood/accessible to them—are now exposed to alien state machinery over which they
do not perceive any control. Nor can they access institutional machinery due to sociological
backwardness. In the eventuality of state governance breaking down during times of distress,
the already vulnerable segments of society are left at the mercy of market forces without any
institutional support. Under these insecurities, when vagaries of the market add on to those
of natural factors, the poorest make their own decisions born of desperate attempts to survive
through various means—taking loans from private moneylenders at usurious rates of interest,
migrating for employment, trafficking of women and minors and, as a finality, committing
suicide. Patterns of social dislocation observed—at a macro level—due to droughts are the net
of a multitude of atomic decisions taken by this most vulnerable section of population to eke
out a living amid dire physical stress. These are desperate measures to survive in a hopeless
situation and not coping strategies as is often referred to in the literature on droughts. Rather,
it is the failure to cope with the odds that calls forth these responses from the poorest. This is
referred to as governance by default, i.e., a system of decision making in a situation where no
systems are available. The tragedy and irony of interpreting the same as coping cannot be better
illustrated than by the study of the Palalmaru labour from Mahabubnagar, where women
and children migrate (from drought induced villages) as bonded labour to distant places
through a well-evolved system of intermediary contractors who advance credit at rates that
ensure perpetual bondage of the families to contractors (Jairath and Mustafa 2002). Some
present-day prominent politicians from the area have made their money during yesteryears
through such labour contracts. While women are often sexually abused by the contractors
lobby, children’s education is made impossible—thus creating generations of labour-fodder.
These options are however only for the able-bodied and productive women and men—the
aged, sick and weak are left behind in the villages to perish. The media reports, almost daily,
of suicides due to indebtedness in the drought-prone areas of South India (Sainath 2004).
Ironically, even the petty moneylender—the only one to lend to the poorest who are at least
‘bankable’—is also ruined by bad debts.
The second order spread of drought-induced impacts takes its toll from the likes of, for
example, the carpenter who committed suicide because his livelihood had been threatened—
since he received no orders for wooden ploughs, as ploughing opportunities for smaller (non-
tractor using) farmers had weakened due to declining agricultural operations. Finally, starvation
deaths reported every other day in the media are yet another form of ‘coping’ permanently!
Rather than interpreting such stark observations of human adversity as a telling comment
on the failure of WRD practiced hitherto (and in spite of heavy investments), the official
56 Jasveen Jairath

perception uses the situation to reinforce arguments for yet more of the top-down, supply-
focused water developments. Thus, the governance of droughts by default lends itself to fault the
governance of water.

C ONCLUDING R EMARKS

To recapitulate the basic points we note that:

• Governance of droughts is disconnected from mainstream WRD.

• Drought mitigation strategies are exposte/reactive and focused on fire-fighting.
• Proactive interventions—such as the watershed strategy—that are adopted have inbuilt
contradictions that are self-defeating.
• Increased privatisation of drinking water biases, service delivery towards those with
purchasing power—constituting weak insurance against droughts for the poor.
• WRD is typically fragmented and along sectoral lines, and excludes risk management
and planning as an integral constituent.
• Local self-management of water, supported through minimal exogenous water dependence,
should be the preferred strategy. Lifestyle and production patterns should be adjusted
to the requirement of local self-reproduction with respect to water availability close at
hand. This requires local-level capacity developments to understand water in a holistic
context and to negotiate among politically contesting interest groups for greater water
security for the majority.

We have earlier pointed out how, on the one hand, intellectual obfuscation of the process
of generating resource scarcity constitutes a legitimising force for governance of supply
augmenting WRD. On the other hand, de-linking scarcity from WRD helps the governance
of droughts to be dealt with as a natural disaster in isolation of forces that contribute to its
emergence. Conceptualising droughts as absolute water shortage rationalises water augment-
ing supply-side trajectory of WRD in the public and private sectors that are beset with well-
recognised governance problems.
In particular, the inequity in access to benefits from such investments and ecological ex-
ternalities imply that such harnessing of water creates new forms of differential access/control
that directly exclude significant segments of population from a provision of water security.
This is further aggravated by the indirect adverse effects of intensive water use (for the already
vulnerable) that is concentrated in the hands of the socio-economically privileged social strata
in urban, rural and industrial sectors. While some of the socially weaker sections have no doubt
shared the benefits of WRD, their continuous, and sometimes increasing, water deprivation
is entirely out of proportion with investments carried out in the water sector after independ-
ence (Paranjape and Joy 2004). Paradoxically, therefore, it appears that while actual scarcities
are deeply entrenched, the plight of those who suffer is used to reinforce walking along the
 Misgovernance of Droughts in India 57

same track of WRD that has failed or accentuated the scarcities. Water poverty of the poor
subscribes to legitimising governance decisions that reinforces exclusion of these very poor
through perpetuating monopolistic control over water by few. Actual droughts lend credence
to the manufactured discourse on water scarcities that constitutes the ideological legitimisation
of a WRD trajectory, which generates a new set of actual water deprivation among the poor.
Thus, ideological misconstruction of droughts leads to its existential construction.11 Hence, the vested
interest in cultivating ‘ideological fodder’ for supply-oriented WRD. The present governance
system of droughts in India represents sectoral interests of this group.
The shift to an alternate system of governance that prominently contains the interest of the
most marginalised among the better off is bound to be a struggle that would involve the entire
range of policy makers, bureaucracy, legal institutions, end users and the like. Second, main-
stream WRD would require being reoriented to integrate pro-active risk management as well as
building broader water strategies from an analytic assessment of end users in different water
uses. It will require the dislodging of the vested interest that has grown with the maintenance
of status quo. This is not likely to be a smooth process. Inertia and resistance to change has to
be factored in while designing the strategy. The challenge is to develop suitable negotiating
capacities among socially weaker sections as well as skills, in order to mobilise popular support
through networking and advocacy. The problem has to be attacked from multiple angles in an
integrated manner. The strategy has to be composite and the problem has to be handled on a
turnkey basis, avoiding the dangers of an ad hoc, piecemeal and fragmented approach.

Notes
1. Development theories in the post-war period led to an increasing disillusionment with the idea
of material progress due to its attendant negative fallouts on the ecological, social and economic
front due to exploitative capitalism/industrialisation. A general sense of pessimism prevailed among
the development theoreticians. Prominent among them were the apocalypse authors (Bull 1995;
Hobsbawn 1994; Kaplan 1994) who predicted the ‘coming anarchy’, ‘clash of civilisations’ and similar,
pessimistic-scenarios. An important offshoot of these post-modernist/anti-modernist traditions was
the idea of a ‘risk society’ proposed by Ulrich Beck, that focused on the influence of unintended
effects of technological development in societies that made any planning futile. Around the same
time, the acceptance of the ‘scarcity of natural resources’ also gained currency; further rationalising
the argument of the anti-development lobby that advised the poor of the Third World to ‘…forget
about the whole notion of scarcity because it forms a part of a strategy to impose capitalist logic on those
who do not need it….’
These views were however strongly contested for their relevance—particularly for the global South.
Prominent among the critics was Furedi, who challenged the idea that risk, as socially experienced, is
something new or recent and that it is associated with only the post-Fordist, capitalist phase. Colonised
people had to survive risks due to expansion of western capitalism, since the beginning. Second, he
found it opportunist that the West should start talking about the risks only when they are threatened
by it—as opposed to formerly exporting it to the South. Third, the notion of an inherently ‘risk so-
ciety’ projected the misconception that risks are evenly spread—thus discounting geographical and
social asymmetry in the spread of risk. It also undermines the necessity for emancipatory actions to
58 Jasveen Jairath

be selectively directed towards those who are most vulnerable to risks. Finally, implicit in this notion
is a sense of technological determinism and fatalism, thus underrating the power of human agency
to overcome risks.
2. Recognising the risk-induced constraints to investment and the huge losses incurred the world over,
many international agencies have come forward to take initiatives in this regard: the World Bank
has emphasised the need to mitigate risks to attract investment (World Bank 2001); the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has assumed operational responsibilities for natural dis-
aster mitigation, prevention and preparedness within the UN system. Similarly, the World Health
Organisation (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation (FAO), the United
Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and GWP have categorically recognised the imperative of
adopting integrated risk-based approaches to WRD (WMO 2004).
3. Commenting on the technocratic conceptualisation of risk reduction, the WMO report states: ‘while
risk reduction programmes and technology are very important, the call is for enhanced responsibility
for social water risk and recognition of a number of basic economic, institutional, legal and commercial
constraints to the achievement of effective risk management’ (WMO 2004: 284).
4. This section is based on Jairath (2004).
5. See Priscoli and Llamas 2001, and Bandyopadhyay 1989 for elaboration on and substantiation of
this point.
6. See Jayan (2004) for analyses of droughts amidst heavy rainfall in Kerala.
7. See Bandyopadhyay and Perveen (2004) for a brief overview of the issue in the context of the river
linking project. While he rightly questions the statistical validity of such exercises, there remains a
serious flaw underlying the argument that assumes that food security (like water security) is only a
matter of producing a larger quantum of food (water).
8. The latter refers to some of the practical strategies that the poorest are forced to adopt due to their
existential desperation born of droughts—euphemistically referred to as coping mechanisms in the
literature on droughts.
9. The gruel centres set up by volunteers in Andhra Pradesh during the summer of 2003 are a case in
point (The Hindu 5 June 2004).
10. See Concept Note (Soppecom-GIDR-CISED 2004) for details about the programme—its operational
characteristics as well as the extent of its coverage and the constraints encountered.
11. The idea was inspired through the various writings of Lyla Mehta (2000, 2001) on her work on
droughts in Kutch, Gujarat, India.

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 4
Gender Issues in Water Governance: Review
of Challenges and Emerging Strategies
Seema Kulkarni, K.J. Joy and Suhas Paranjape

I NTRODUCTION

The positive intention of improving gender participation in water access and control has not
translated into positive policy actions. Apart from structural reasons like patriarchy, one of
the main reasons for this has been a lack of conceptual clarity in gender goals in water and its
synergy with goals in the governance of water resources. New strategies for gender inclusive
governance, as understood in its broadest sense, cannot emerge unless a synergetic conceptual
framework is developed. This chapter highlights some of the issues that concern both the
grassroots organisations and academia working on issues of gender equity. It also highlights
the need for reconceptualising issues related to women and the problems in water governance
and management for overall better outcomes. Finally, it makes an attempt to bring out some
broad principles and alternative strategies to make water governance more fair, equitable and
just from the perspective of gender equality.
Pursuing a gender-just agenda in the context of natural resources as a whole has never
been an easy task. At one level, the continued insistence of the policy makers in treating the
household as a coherent unit with the male head representing the common interest of all,
despite the large number of studies pointing to gender biases in intra-household differences in
incomes, access to productive resources and health care, has left gender inequities unaddressed.
The other set of problems crop up from the assumption that women are a homogenous
category with an unchanging affinity to natural resources and unchanging roles. The issue
is compounded by the complexity of the larger sectoral problems that demand immediate
attention. The need of the hour is to develop a robust alternative framework that is able to
place issues of equity within the broader agenda of reform in natural resource management
as a whole, and water in particular.
62 Seema Kulkarni et al.

G ENDER I SSUES IN THE W ATER S ECTOR

Addressing gender equity in the water sector has been even more difficult because of various
factors, one reason being the nature of the resource itself and its close linkage to access to land.
Right to water effectively means the right to use available water, and availability is determined
by a range of factors and changes from season to season. Unlike land or forests, the right to
use water undergoes frequent changes thereby making it difficult to establish norms of equity
in general. Addressing gender equity in access to the resource is compounded with unequal
relations at the intra-household level and heterogeneity across caste, class and resource owner-
ship. Unless both these issues are tackled upfront evolving solutions may not be an easy task.
The first task, therefore, is to understand how women are perceived as a category.

Understanding Differences among Women

Grouping women as a homogenous category is the first kind of fallacy that needs to be tackled.
It is important to understand that women are not an abstract homogenous category and come
with large differences across class, caste and tribe in the Indian context. Women from oppressed
castes and tribes face a dual oppression, both as women as well as of the caste/tribe to which
they belong ( Joy and Paranjape 2001; Kulkarni and Rao 2002). These differences in social
relations amongst women undermine any notion of groups formed through homogeneity
of common interest as women. The notion of homogeneity has its relevance in the broader
context of addressing patriarchy; however, various experiences point out that grouping them
as a category in their relationship to water or other natural resources has only been counter-
productive. It is often argued that this sort of a position could lead to fragmentation and may
in fact be counterproductive to the broader struggle against patriarchy.
Once this difference is recognised, it may be easier to understand that water needs vary
across caste, class and tribe. Defining equity thus becomes a complex process. It calls for the
unpacking of ‘women’ as a category. For the Dalit women, social taboos prevent gaining access
to drinking water. The needs of women farm owners are considerably different from those of
women wage labourers or from those in landowning households deriving water rights through
their husbands. For non-land owning Dalit and adivasi women, water needs could revolve
around water-based enterprises like fishing or share-cropping.

Planning Around Potential Uses as Opposed

to Current or Actual Uses
Until recently, much of gender planning around natural resources was placed in the context
of women’s current tasks of collecting fuel, fodder, water and related survival tasks. Gender
planning done through these conceptual frameworks focussed largely on reducing the time
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 63

spent by women in these survival tasks. In the water sector, women are thus seen as those
who spend hours collecting water for domestic use. In fact, various studies do point to how
women’s tasks revolve around collection of water and the impact that this has on their
health and livelihoods. Time spent on collection of water for domestic use has meant reduced
opportunities for women to participate in ‘productive’ activities. This static notion of women’s
roles in survival tasks has translated into policy prescriptions that in fact perpetuate the
existing gender roles. Policies are therefore geared to involving women in decisions around
domestic water. Much of policy thinking revolves around how time spent on collecting water
could be reduced, how within the irrigation systems bathing spaces could be introduced, and
so on. Although this is a reality that cannot be ignored, what is also important is to keep a
bearing of what are the possibilities of making a transition from current to potential roles if the
property regime were to change. In fact, some studies show that wherever women have had
access to water for irrigation they have used it more productively than their male counterparts
(Zwartween 1997).
The focus then shifts from the current survival roles of women to a visualisation of changing
roles in a more egalitarian society where men and women have equal opportunities in access
to productive resources and the decision making around it. These critiques point to a need
for increasing control of women over productive resources and their voice in related decision
making processes.
Current and potential water needs of different categories of women would have to be assessed
if equitable access to water has to be operationalised. Although water needs differ for different
groups, the decisions around the development and management of the sources from which
these needs would be met would have to be taken commonly. It therefore goes without saying
that the common minimum principle to be adhered to, if gender equity is to be addressed, is to
allow formal membership to all men and women in Water Users Associations/committees.

Integration rather than Separatism

A natural fallout of the above assumption leads to a separation of two spheres, the domestic
and the productive. The first represents women and the second represents men. Policy pre-
scriptions have emerged based on this conception where men are seen in the domain of pro-
ductive water use and women in the sphere of domestic water use (ibid.). This neat categorisation
has led to a non-threatening policy agenda, making it convenient for the policy makers to
pacify women advocates1 seeking visibility of women in the domestic water sector without
having to address the deep-rooted gender inequities in access to productive resources and the
decisions around it.
The problem of separate spheres also emerges from, as we shall see in a later section, the
non-integrationist perspective dominating the water sector. Planning around water has been
fragmented into several compartments across uses, sources of drinking water, sanitation,
groundwater and surface water.
Any alternative strategies would therefore have to challenge these unrealistic assumptions
that have plagued both the gender equity issues as well as issues in water governance.
64 Seema Kulkarni et al.

Need for a Synergy between Water Sector Reform

Goals and Gender Equity Goals
Confounded by this already complex set of problems, the feminist movement in the water
sector is now forced to take note of emerging concerns in the wake of the water crisis, which is
partly emerging due to ever increasing demand on the water and partly due to poor governance.
Lack of effective governance in the groundwater sector has deepened the drinking water crisis
in the rural areas, the impact of which is largely borne by the rural women. Overemphasis on
large storages has largely undermined the efforts for harvesting local water resources, which
further compounds the crisis and increases differences between requirement and availability.
The environmental and social impacts of large storages, particularly on rural women, are well
documented. Over draft of water has led to depletion of the groundwater source and problems
of salinisation, arsenic and increase in fluoride levels in water, rising energy costs and finally
drying up of the sources, which has further deepened the drinking water crisis (Shah 2004).
Solutions to these problems come by way of the global governance agenda, which directs
states to open up the water resources to private interests for its efficient management, for ex-
ample, by the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB). By these dictums, water
is to be considered as a scarce vulnerable resource that needs to be treated as an economic good
and therefore needs to be used efficiently. Measures like water pricing, cost recovery and open-
ing up of the water resources as a whole to private interests are therefore being seen as self-
optimising mechanisms. In fact, recently, water has been made part of the General Agreement
on Trade in Services and amenable to World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) agreements.
Projecting the scarcity aspect of water resources has thus put the question of equity on the
back burner. The only way that it will get any hearing is if it can prove that investing in women
and the poor can lead to efficiency in the management of the resource. The possible connections
with the impact that these issues may have on the local water needs and women’s day-to-day
work around these needs, therefore, appears to be too localised to be considered amidst such
larger issues. The local and regional issues are likely to be ignored in the global governance
agenda where the efficiency issue is likely to dominate any other considerations.

D OMINANT D ISCOURSE IN W ATER G OVERNANCE

R EFORM AND ITS I MPLICATIONS ON W OMEN

Understanding Scarcity
The new policy approach perceives the problem as primarily a scarcity problem thereby guiding
its policies towards managing demand rather than extending supply. With this as the primary
approach, what follows is a set of directives that treat water as an economic good, which has
to, through its use, recover costs incurred on its development and management. Demands on
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 65

water are increasing, and claims on available basin waters have already been established by the
powerful leaving little or no space for the resource poor women and men to gain access to water.
Abundance or scarcity of water cannot be judged without considering the various competing
claims and demands on water and understanding how the resource is being currently used.
Posing scarcity as the only problem forces water-deprived poor men and women not to stake
any claims to water. Any new investments that could take water schemes to remote areas are
thus thwarted on the grounds of scarcity.
Various studies have shown that although scarcity of water is a critical issue, the problem is
usually more complex, and this needs to be understood before policy prescriptions are made.
Crisis in the groundwater scenario points to a scarcity situation arising out of unrestricted ex-
traction of water leading to low water tables and poor quality of water (Vaidyanathan 2002).
Studies on surface irrigation systems point to glaring gaps in management of the resource and
inequitable distribution as being responsible for the crisis. Unaccounted losses due to seepage,
evaporation and misuse in the distribution network have led to the scarcity-like situation. It
is estimated that only about one-third (30–35 per cent) of the water released from reservoirs
actually reaches the fields (Vaidyanathan 2002). Again, it is important to note that the water
released is far more than the actual consumptive use (Vaidyanathan and Shivasubramanian
2003). It is also estimated that more than 90 per cent of the water used for domestic uses and
industrial needs flows back into the streams, rivers and underground storage as effluents.
Much of this ‘lost’ water can be reclaimed if managed properly. What emerges here is that if
scarcity is understood with this lens then policy initiatives would have to be geared towards
redefining and reducing vested rights and imposing water savings on groups with these rights.
This saved water then has to be extended to a large number of water-insecure men and women
with a careful prioritisation of use.

Water as an Economic Good: Pricing, Cost Recovery

and Decentralised Management—The Self-optimising
Principles for Efficient Management of Water
The growing rationale for treating water as an economic good to be priced emerges from the
perception of looking at water as a scarce resource over which there are competing demands.
It is argued that if water is treated as an economic good, it would then be managed efficiently.
Pricing here is considered as one of the most critical remedial measures to address the ills
which have plagued the water sector. If water is increasingly recognised as a commodity to
be priced then women’s access to water for non-marketable produce or survival tasks may
be jeopardised, as increasingly men see greater advantage in either selling or using available
water to generate cash incomes (Green and Baden 1995). In such a scenario, it is usually the
‘paying’ crops that get preference over the ‘non-paying’ food crops, largely cultivated by women.
Water also has other social and cultural dimensions. Given this nature of the resource and
the socio-cultural value that it commands, treating it purely as an economic good may not
really become a very viable option.
66 Seema Kulkarni et al.

The economic criterion also raises some critical issues of what is really economically affordable
for women. Most studies and experiences indicate that women rarely have control over their
own or their households’ income. In many of the drinking water schemes, guaranteeing assured
supplies has prompted women to agree to the ‘user pays’ principle. However, willingness to pay
cannot be equated with the ability to pay. This issue therefore puts forth some critical ques-
tions before feminist water advocates: how does one arrive at what is the necessary quantum
of water for meeting women’s livelihoods; and how can it become affordable?
The other dimension of treating water as an economic good is making it a tradeable right.
This then means that water can be marketed as a free good. This has very serious implications
on the rights of the communities and particularly on women who are, in the present scenario,
responsible for the collection of water for domestic use.
Cost recovery is the other principle that is seen as critical for bringing in water sector reform.
In one of their newly formulated schemes, the Minor Irrigation Department of the Maharashtra
Government, with support from the German bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW),
promises to involve the beneficiaries in the resource development stage itself. It is referred to
as the Participatory Irrigation Development and Management (PIDM). The scheme is designed
in such a way that the beneficiaries themselves are to bear a large part (60 per cent) of the
distribution cost. This would be done through a combination of contributions in the form of
labour, cash and bank loans. Here, it was found that a large part of the labour contribution
was being done by the women from the beneficiary households. In many other studies from
across the world too, experience shows that the operation and maintenance of the irrigation
schemes or watershed works, which goes towards cost recovery, is largely borne by the women
of the household. In the case of drinking water, the World Bank’s own statement is very
telling: ‘Women who are trained to manage and maintain community water systems are more
accustomed to voluntary work and better trusted to administer funds honestly’ (World Bank
1992: 113 as quoted in Green and Baden 1995: 96). Cost recovery implemented in this man-
ner may, in fact, manifest itself in the form of increased labour for women.
The third mechanism of decentralised management is seen as the acceptable side of economic
efficiency. It is considered as the human investment in recovering the costs on the physical
structure. Without a broader restructuring of the water sector as a whole, institutional reform
in itself may not address the concerns of either equity or efficiency of use. Participation remains
restricted to simply managing the resource at the community level with the rules for water
resource development and allocation at the project or basin level continuing to be set by the
state or, increasingly now, by private interests.
Decentralisation often does bring in a promise of improved participation of women and
other resource poor groups; however, decentralised planning does not guarantee that women
would be allowed membership to Water Users Associations (WUAs) to play a role in the decision
making processes. Decentralisation almost always translates into community participation,
but the notion of community as a homogenous unit often ignores the social and economic
differentiations within. Thus, unless conscious efforts are made to recognise these differences
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 67

and involve women, Dalits and other resource-poor groups, there is little likelihood that such
institutional reforms would guarantee rights to women, or for that matter the other resource-
poor groups.
As far as women’s participation is concerned, this has translated into separated spheres—
irrigation and domestic—where women’s formal participation is seen to be in the domestic
sphere and men’s in the irrigation sphere. For women who are already constrained by socio-
cultural roles, participation becomes even more difficult when formal rules restrict it in the
WUAs. From the point of view of women, control by the irrigation department is now replaced
by that of the WUAs, where they have little or no space.
Thus, the implied cost savings from decentralised management systems with appropriate
cost recovery and pricing mechanism from a feminist analysis may represent hidden costs in
terms of increased labour of women at the community level (Green and Baden 1995).

R EVIEW OF A PPROACHES TO A DDRESS

G ENDER E QUITY IN THE W ATER S ECTOR

Feminist advocates working in the water sector are grappling with a range of these challenges
facing both the water sector as a whole and those within, addressing issues of gender equity.
Responses have ranged from arguing for gender participation on grounds of equity, poverty,
efficiency and welfare (Razavi 1997; Agarwal 1994; Jackson 1993). Many of these responses are
also shaped by the larger concerns within the water sector. This forces the feminist advocates
to link gender equity to more ‘legitimate’ concerns, such as better management of water, im-
proved efficiency and cost recovery.

Efficiency Approach
Efficient use of the scarce resource is an issue that has gained very high priority for water
advocates of all hues and colours. Almost all policy agendas are talking of improving efficiency
in water use. Picking on this thread, one strand of gender advocates has employed different
methods to prove that investing in women can be productive to the water sector. There
has been an effort to document different case studies to argue that if given the opportunity
women can be as efficient as men. These cases have shown that wherever water entitlements
have been given to women the outcome has, in fact, been very positive on women as well as
on the resource. Although this exercise does contribute to documenting of information on
women and productive use of water, it waters down the whole gender equity argument and
puts gender activists on a continuous defensive to prove how effective women’s contribution
is in improving irrigation efficiency. In the present scenario, the efficiency approach becomes
more amenable to policy makers rather than a zero-sum equity one.
68 Seema Kulkarni et al.

Comparisons are often made with the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme where
it is claimed that the twin concerns of efficiency and equity can go hand in hand with
gender participation (Agarwal 1994). In fact, Agarwal argues that in JFM women’s non-
participation will affect the programme efficiency negatively. The argument holds weight in
sectors where women’s current roles have helped them to attain the requisite skills for the
improved management of the resource. From this point of view, the same argument could
be applied to gender participation in the drinking water sector. But we have seen the pitfalls
of overemphasis on this sort of a conceptual framework. Also, skills acquired by women in
the arena of domestic water use due to their present tasks does not allow us to conclude that
they would naturally be efficient users of irrigation water as well. However, it would be equally
erroneous to disqualify them from the process because they are not its current users. Moreover,
efficiency of use is closely linked to what stakes you have in the resource on a long-term basis.
In the present governance system, women do not see a long-term stake in access to water for
productive use and hence may not necessarily be convinced of the need to use it ‘efficiently’.
Another argument put forward by feminist economists in the context of natural resources in
general, points to women’s unpaid labour on household farms as an economic waste. Women
represent an independent labour force, and the same labour, which was provided free, could
have been used either on women’s own plots or in other wage work.
The efficiency argument also cannot be applied to women in the same way as it can be ap-
plied to men. The different degree of representation of men and women in the processes of
human reproduction and sustenance has affected their respective capacities and productivities.
Women carry the burden of reproductive labour, which limits their capacities to engage in
more remunerative works. The issue is to create a level playing field through introduction of
a meaningful and enabling policy framework. The need for a reformulation of efficiency with
an understanding of women’s work in the reproductive arena therefore becomes critical.

The Needs Approach

The needs approach exhorts policy makers to address the needs that women have around water
to meet their household subsistence requirements. Most often these needs revolve around the
domestic water arena and translate into policy demands where women’s participation is sought
largely in committees on drinking water, sanitation and addressing needs for creating bathing
and washing spaces in the canal irrigation systems. Assessment of the level of participation in
this sector too points to the fact that women’s involvement has been limited to identifying
locations of the hand posts and pipelines or bathing spaces. Little effort has gone into involving
them in decisions regarding sustainable and reliable source development and management.
More recently, because of the competing demands on the resource, the complexity of the
gender inequity issue and varied differences between different categories of women the anti-
poverty approach is gaining significance. This approach clubs together all the poor women and
men in the same category and argues for an alliance of the two genders to resolve the larger
water sector problems. Very often this sort of an agenda sidelines the issue of women’s
subordination, which is not essentially an issue of poverty alone as factors that cause poverty
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 69

are not necessarily the same as those that cause a gender disadvantage (Jackson 1993). Again,
policy makers are more comfortable with this sort of an agenda as it does not touch upon the
inequities in access to resources.

Equity Approach
The equity approach, although simple and seemingly more straightforward as far as addressing
gender equity is concerned, is besieged with several problems. As mentioned earlier, where
demands over water are increasing, scarcity becomes the major issue. In a scarcity situation,
arguing for independent rights over water for productive use for women becomes increasingly
difficult as it is argued that it adds to the already existing conflicts between men from different
groups. To add to this is the fact that women from different classes and socio-cultural traditions
have different water needs. Defining equity in such a complex scenario therefore is no mean
task.
The most acceptable definition of gender equity within the productive sphere in water is
the recognition that women farm owners need access to water as much as men farm owners.
Like their male counterparts, they too would have to bear the burden of investing in water
infrastructure. It follows then that they too should be involved in the WUAs and encouraged
to participate in the decision making processes around this.
Legislation and law enforcement that strengthen women’s access to land and forests and
empowers them is widely documented (Agarwal 1994). Similarly, access to water means a dir-
ect benefit to women farm owners (Koppen 1999). These women are therefore seen as direct
beneficiaries for targeting irrigation facilities. Within policy makers, this is an agenda that
has been acceptable and is largely included as a priority issue in the policy framework. This
selective uptake by policy makers is interesting. However, it is one positive step whereby it
is now accepted that women owning land in the designated commands need to be involved
both in entitlements as well as membership of WUAs.
However, this is limited to women who own land and therefore are seen as natural bene-
ficiaries of either surface irrigation water, if they fall in the command area, or eligible for
groundwater extraction. This represents a very small population of women. A large section
of women are landless, some belong to landowning households while others are entirely
landless. For those who are unpaid workers on their household lands, it is the male heads who
manage the water resources, and therefore access to water does not represent a direct gain for
the women. It is the men who negotiate for water and are therefore the primary beneficiaries
of the irrigation agencies (Koppen 1999). Women’s rights to water are therefore derived from
the male head of the household.
Land ownership rules are set by the socio-cultural framework of the society and influenced
by patriarchal structures. This exclusion from land ownership has neither created a need or
a demand for water for productive use from women. This is an underlying historical gender
issue, which cannot change through isolated sectoral efforts. This does not imply the primacy
of the land rights struggle over the water rights one. A few spaces created in every sector will
go a long way in challenging these deep-rooted inequities. For example, a policy framework
70 Seema Kulkarni et al.

which challenges the linking of water rights to land rights could go a long way in challenging
gender inequities in access to land. For the landless women, therefore, such a policy framework
would open up opportunities of involving themselves in water based non-farm enterprises.

Negotiating for a ‘Least Worst Scenario’

Despite the limitations of each of the approaches, feminist water advocates will have to continue
using them to negotiate for the ‘least worst scenario’. However, what clearly emerges from each
set of arguments is that gender equity issues cannot be addressed in the current paradigm of
the water sector, which looks at water in a compartmentalised way and treats it universally as
a commodity to be priced without understanding the varied needs of different users. Very
often equity will come at a cost. Does it then follow that the burden would be borne entirely
by those who were thus far deprived of the water resource?
What emerges from this argument is the need for restructuring the water sector on more
sustainable, participative and equitable lines, which would provide more space for addressing
gender equity.

R ESTRUCTURING THE W ATER S ECTOR ON S USTAINABLE ,

E QUITABLE AND P ARTICIPATIVE L INES

Although it is now broadly agreed that unless strong measures in the form of pricing, cost
recovery and efficient use are introduced the crisis would further deepen. However, opening
up to private interests in itself may not bring about the desired changes. All of these so-called
self-optimising mechanisms can work well where there is a level playing field, which needs
an enabling policy framework and an interactive process between the various stakeholders. In
the past few years, the concept of integrated water resource management (IWRM) has come to
the fore as the means to ensure equitable, economically sound and environmentally sustainable
management of water resources and provision of water services. Here, we put forth a viewpoint
developed by Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) along
with grassroots movements like Mukti Sangharsh Movement and Pani Panchayat that have
evolved over the last decade or so. We also attempt to expand this discussion in the direction
of the broader gender equity and water sector restructuring. Just as we see the need to develop
synergies between the broader goals of good governance in the water sector and gender equity,
we also see the need to confront tradeoffs which have the potential to dilute these broader
concerns of gender equity in the water sector.
Gender equity in entitlements and voice is therefore argued on the basis of an equity
approach rather than efficiency or welfare approach. While doing so we recognise that women
as a category are not homogenous and therefore any operationalising of equity would require
planning based on the social and economic differentiation. Restructuring based on an integrated
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 71

water resources management allows for a shift away from the instrumental approach based
on women’s current water uses and tasks around it. Women’s active role in productive use of
water therefore becomes central to this approach.

Integration of Various Kinds of Water Resources

Planning in the water sector has failed to understand the common pool character of water.
Water has often been compartmentalised as surface water, groundwater, local water and exo-
genous water. Each of these is handled by independent departments with little or no interaction
with the other. In fact, this lack of integration is cited as one of the most important reasons
for the crisis in the water sector.
If planned in an integrated manner, the resource can be extended to a larger number of
people with a closer control on quantum of assured supply available at an appropriate time.
Integration of local and exogenous resources has the potential to overcome the limitations of
both kinds of sources. The local water harvesting efforts, if inadequate for meeting livelihood
needs of the local population, can be supplemented by exogenous water. The underlying as-
sumption here is that it is the local system rather than an individual irrigator from a designated
command which actually receives the water supplement from the exogenous system. This
creates a space for men and women, landed or not landed, to participate in the process as
users of the water resource.
Integration of various sources and planning processes based on this principle creates a
space for all in that unit, whether it is a watershed or a sub basin or basin, to participate on
equal terms. It then becomes a common resource for all those residing in that particular unit.
Citizenship, rather than ownership of land or other factors, then becomes the main criterion
for both access as well as participation in the decision making processes.
However, the principle of integration also calls for further detailing in terms of locating
an appropriate geographical/hydraulic unit. Although it is broadly agreed that a watershed
could form a unit of organisation, there are questions of whether the exogenous waters
could fit into these norms. Operationalising the principle would require further study and
experimentation.

Equity in Water Entitlements: Disconnecting Water

Rights from Land Rights—Minimum Water
Assurance for Livelihood Security
Like the resource, equity too cannot be a static concept and will vary in time and space. What
is considered as optimum use today may not be so later. It is for this reason that equitable
rights are to be considered as provisional rights subject to later study and negotiation rather
than fixed rights, which are likely to perpetuate monopolies.
The concept of equity ranges from its simplest definition within the currently designated
commands to the most complex forms of extending rights to the landless and women. In
72 Seema Kulkarni et al.

surface irrigation, these rights are accrued to those who own land in the designated commands
and rights over groundwater are restricted to those who can invest in the infrastructure in
extraction of water from under their fields. In both these cases it is almost always the men,
‘the head of the households’, who are honoured with this right. It matters little then that it
is largely the women who are working on the construction sites of the dam or labouring on
the irrigated fields. Almost never does this contribution translate into direct gains over water
entitlements for women.
Entitlement to water is a right that attaches itself to land and not to individuals, and is
linked to property that is owned rather than to the human beings who use it. Unless we
redefine the concept of rights to water as those extending beyond command areas and property
owned, it might be difficult to argue for women’s and landless households’ access to water.
Right to water, therefore, should be understood as a matter of minimum assurance to all of
the water required for livelihood needs irrespective of their ownership of assets. This is the
point of departure from other viewpoints that continue to link water rights to land rights
thereby eliminating a sizeable number of the people, especially women, from gaining water
entitlements. Disconnecting land rights from water rights provides a space for the landless
and women in gaining access to water as well as water deciding mechanisms.
However, delinking water rights from land rights has its negative side too. In fact, in some
countries like Australia, Peru and Bolivia there has been a policy initiative to delink water from
land rights making it a free commodity available to trade. However, what is proposed here is
not to make water a free commodity for trade but rather to address the livelihood concerns
of the poor and other deprived groups.
There are differences in the ways in which equity could be achieved and to what extent it
could be achieved. However, equity in access to water has to be seen as an important component
of the water sector reform strategy.
In the context of equitable access to women, it becomes important to assess the current
and potential water needs of different categories of women. Allocations will therefore have to
be based on these kinds of assessments, which form an integral part of the area resource
development plans and would differ across socio-cultural and biophysical contexts. In some
areas it may mean carrying water over larger areas to ensure equitable access to women, thereby
increasing the infrastructure investments. It therefore has to be recognised that equity comes at
a cost. Hence, policy focus cannot be merely of managing the existing systems alone but also
of augmenting and extending water supplies through additional infrastructural investment
for better livelihood outcomes for all. Here, the role of alternative technology in agriculture,
water and energy sectors would play a critical role in minimising investments and optimising
resource use to ensure equity.

Equity in Voice: Need for Expanding the Definition

of Water Users Associations ( WUAs)
At present, the water sector can largely be seen to be divided into two spheres—the domestic
water sector, usually referred to as water and sanitation, and the irrigation sphere, also referred
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 73

to as the productive sphere. The sources of water in both these spheres are common and in-
clude local and exogenous ground and surface water. The domestic sphere is almost entirely
governed by the public sector and so is the irrigation sphere. Groundwater, however, is almost
entirely in the private domain.
Two kinds of participatory organisations therefore exist based on these two distinctly per-
ceived water uses. First is the community-level drinking water committee, which comprise
largely of women, and the second is the WUAs, which comprises largely of male landholders
within the designated commands. Despite the fact that water sources are common for both
the spheres we see that decision making is never done on a common platform. Not only has
this segregation perpetuated gender roles in the water sector, it has also led to the scarcity and
mismanagement crisis in the water sector.
The proposed alternative therefore calls for an expansion of the concept of the WUA, which
is at present restricted to the management of the surface systems for irrigation purposes alone.
The domestic and irrigation spheres have to merge for better planning of the local, exogenous
and surface and groundwaters. This immediately allows space for membership to at least one
woman and one man from each household located in the concerned water unit who use water
for their daily survival.

Pricing of Water Service and Recovery of Costs

As we have seen earlier, pricing of water is a contentious issue especially in the context of
women. The economic disadvantage that women face within the household as well as the
community at large needs no further elaboration. In such a context there has to be a greater
focus on introducing measures that have a bearing of this disadvantage. The alternative would
therefore have to base itself on a distinction between basic service for livelihood needs and
extra or economic service.

The concept of the minimum assurance of water for livelihood needs is closely tied to the
concept of a basic water service that should be provided to everyone at an affordable cost
and as a matter of right. Any extra service above such basic service would conceptually
be extra service and should be tied much more closely to achieving economic efficiency
(SOPPECOM 2002).

In the case of water entitlements for single or deserted women, or women household heads,
it might in the initial stages be necessary for an enabling policy support for creating a ‘level
playing field’. This could come in the form of initial credit and skills support with a specific
policy of withdrawal in place.
The other contentious issue is recovery of costs incurred on resource development. Part of
this recovery should come out of the pricing of economic service. This could ease the pressure
on those, like women, who would use their water right essentially for meeting livelihood
needs. SOPPECOM also feels that certain measures could be introduced whereby recovery in
kind would be feasible.
74 Seema Kulkarni et al.

F INAL C OMMENTS : C HALLENGES

IN THE E MERGING F RAMEWORK

Feminist water advocates have continuously had to battle at different ends. One of these
has been to systematically link up to the design of restructuring the water sector as opposed
to drawing a list of demands within the current mainstream water resource development
paradigm in a coherent framework. There has been a tendency to highlight the relevance of
gender issues in a language that is familiar to the policy makers within the water sector. There
has also been a compelling need to link gender equity goals to the ‘legitimate’ goals of water
sector reform in order to be heard. The arguments that have taken a large amount of space
have been on proving that if given an opportunity, women can manage the resource efficiently.
The positions that have so far been taken are those that would face least resistance—a process
of negotiation for a least worse scenario rather than one which is based on changing power
equations within the sector.
The issues bothering the feminist advocates is whether equity should be argued on its
own merit or should efficiency and welfare approaches also be used to argue for independent
entitlements and voice for women. Moving gender from the periphery to the centre has been
no mean task for the advocates, particularly in this sector where demand cannot arise from
the masses of women as it is not closely linked to their realities. Demands have come up in the
domestic water sector simply because it is related directly to their current realities. Demands for
water for productive use would come up only in a changed scenario, which calls for actions at
different levels. An enabling policy framework would allow for the initiation of this process.
The question very often raised is whether it actually matters if women are left out, given the
many other sectors and initiatives that are intended to address their concerns. We argue that
it does matter, on two grounds first, because women play a central role in natural resource
development and management, for which water is a very critical resource, and they therefore
have a right to an equal say in the way the resource is developed, managed and used; and
second, because we do not consider water to be just another input into agriculture but an
independent productive resource on par with land, which has the potential of challenging
the power equations at all levels.
Better governance in the water sector in the context of gender issues, therefore, calls for a
need for synergy with issues in the water sector while attending to specific concerns of women
in the context of water sector reform. However, the need to develop a synergy between gender
concerns and concerns in the water sector should ensure that gender concerns of equity are
not watered down in the process. Policy and practice, therefore, have to steer clear of basing
themselves on gender stereotypes on the one hand and those that imagine two parallel worlds,
one of men and the other of women, on the other hand.
 Gender Issues in Water Governance 75

Note
1. Women advocates is a term that represents a stream of thinking that looks at gender equity from the
point of view of visibility of women in development. In the water sector it refers to those who envisage
women’s role in the sphere of the domestic, rather than the production role within the household
economy.

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Green, C. and S. Baden (1995). ‘Integrated Water Resources Management: A Gender Perspective’, Institute
of Development Studies, 26(1): 92–99.
Jackson, C. (1993). ‘Doing What Comes Naturally? Women and Environment in Development’, World
Development, 21(12): 1947–963.
Joy, K.J. and S. Paranjape (2001). ‘Women and Water: Relationships, Issues, Experiences, Approaches’.
Unpublished paper. Pune: Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM).
Kulkarni, S. and N. Rao (2002). ‘Gender and Drought In South Asia: Dominant Constructions and Alter-
nate Propositions,’ paper presented at a workshop on Droughts in South Asia, Islamabad, Pakistan,
28–30 October.
Razavi, S. (1997). ‘Fitting Gender into Development Institutions’, World Development, 25(7): 1111–125.
Shah, T. (2004). ‘Governing the Groundwater Economy: Comparative Analysis of National Institutions
and Policies in South Asia, China and Mexico’, paper presented at the workshop on ‘Governance Issues
in the Water Sector’, organised by the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) to commemorate
25 years of its existence, 14–19 December.
SOPPECOM (2002). ‘Restructuring the Water Sector A Framework for Restructuring of Water Sector in
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ticipative Ecosystem Management.
Vaidyanathan, A. (2002). ‘Water Resource Development, Scarcity and Conflict’. Unpublished mimeo.
Chennai: Madras Institute of Development Studies.
Vaidyanathan A. and K. Sivasubramanian (2003). ‘Efficiency of Water Use In Indian Agriculture’. Unpub-
lished draft paper. Chennai: Madras Institute of Development Studies.
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Gatekeeper Series No. 85. London: International Institute for Environment and Development,
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Zwarteween, M. (1997). ‘Water: From Basic Need to Commodity, A Discussion on Gender and Water
Rights in the Context of Irrigation’, World Development, 25(8): 1335–49.
ii Governance of Water
 Section II
Pricing, Subsidies and
Governance of Surface Water
78 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati
 5
Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms
in Indian Irrigation: Some Emerging Trends1
K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

I NTRODUCTION

The irrigation sector in India suffers at least from two interrelated problems. The first is a severe
pressure on the resources for normal operations and maintenance (O&M) as the cost recovery
from canal irrigation is extremely low and the state budgets are unable to allocate more funds
because of the overall fiscal crunch. The second is the reduction in construction funding for
new or on-going canal networks, leading to undue delay in the completion of projects, and in
turn, the rise in costs and reduction of benefits. These issues are also linked to the low price of
water. Unless urgent steps are taken to reverse these trends, such as innovative institutional
reforms, the Indian irrigation sector could be headed for near collapse or at least a situation
where it would remain much below its potential for food production. This chapter examines
two issues: (i) Irrigation subsidies and their implications; and (ii) emerging institutional reforms
in the irrigation sector.
The issue of irrigation subsidies is far more complex than ordinarily imagined. There is far
less discussion on irrigation—perhaps because the apparent magnitude of irrigation subsidies
does not compare with that for either fertilisers or power. However, water being a critical
component in Indian agriculture2, subsidies on irrigation deserve just as much attention as
the other two. Irrigation has undoubtedly been instrumental in achieving self-sufficiency in
food production, but it has come at a cost. The neglect of the rational pricing of canal waters
has resulted in rising subsidies. Public irrigation subsidies may be less of a mystery than power
and fertiliser subsidies in terms of who really benefits from them. Of greater concern here are
the ramifications of these subsidies in different spheres—like financial status of input supplying
agencies, environmental consequences, efficiency in resource use, and so on. Trends suggest
that these may have grave implications for the agricultural sector if left unattended. Hence,
there is a need for reform.
Before opening the Pandora’s Box of issues, it is essential to first conceptualise, define and
then quantify the notion of irrigation subsidy. How does one do this? In the past there have
been varying views on this issue and a whole range of estimates have been put forth. Several of
80 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

these may significantly understate the magnitude of irrigation subsidies and hence undermine
the gravity of the problem—in particular, the financial burden of these subsidies on the
input-supplying agency and the state. A major part of this chapter is therefore devoted to this
exercise. Accordingly, in the second section we discuss the concept and different approaches
to quantifying irrigation subsidy. We also present our estimates of irrigation subsidy and com-
pare them with some possible alternatives.
The next step is to link the issue of irrigation subsidies with the larger scenario of the irri-
gation sector, specifically to examine the diverse consequences of these subsidies and review
the problems that have gained currency. The third section examines in detail the impact of
irrigation subsidies on different spheres, with the fourth section summing up the state of Indian
irrigation today. Following this, in the fifth section, we spell out an agenda for reforming the
regime of irrigation subsidies with a hope that it would lead to a sustainable, financially sound
and efficient use of the resource, namely canal water. Among other things, the issues addressed
here are: What kind of pricing policy should be followed to keep the growth of subsidies under
check and ensure that irrigation has self-generated funds? What other reforms are necessary
and feasible in the area of irrigation subsidies? The concluding section wraps up the discussion
with a map of possible future reforms.

I RRIGATION S UBSIDIES

The subsidy on public irrigation is not stated explicitly by the government. It has to be deter-
mined from government data sources and is often done so by more than one method. The
method commonly employed for this purpose is based on the concept that the irrigation subsidy
can be approximated as the losses that the input supplying agency bears on account of supplying
irrigation water at concessional rates. These estimates implicitly define irrigation subsidy as
the difference between cost of supplying water for irrigation and revenue received as payment
from the users of irrigation water. However, this definition of the subsidies is incomplete and
the estimates are inaccurate for a number of reasons. First, the cost of providing the service
is not a true reflection of the cost of delivering irrigation water. Apart from the operations and
maintenance costs, and other current expenses, huge capital expenditures are incurred on the
provision of irrigation. Second, most state governments are beneficiaries of loans forwarded
to them by the Central Government. While a part of these are grants (normally one-third), a
larger part are in the form of loans (usually two-thirds). This then entails an interest burden
as well (at 8–10 per cent). Third, some scholars stress that depreciation also needs to be
taken into account, which would then reflect the consumption of fixed irrigation assets on
a replacement cost basis (Dhawan 1999). Only its inclusion will yield the true extent of the
subsidy.
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 81

Approaches to Quantifying the Irrigation Subsidy

The concept of irrigation subsidy adopted in this chapter is based on the difference in the cost
of supplying irrigation water and what the farmers pay for irrigation water as its direct price.
It is based on the perspective of the supplying agency. Accordingly, our focus is on estimating
the cost of providing public irrigation water through major, medium as well as minor irrigation
schemes and the payments made by farmers for this water. The cost of irrigation in major
and medium schemes consists of three components: (i) the capital cost, (ii) the working cost
of O&M, and (iii) depreciation.
The capital cost is incurred over a number of years. In a representative major irrigation pro-
ject, it would be quite common to find that capital costs are spread over roughly 20 years out
of which there might be some years, say the first seven years, when no potential is created and
only capital expenditure is incurred. Thereafter, some irrigation potential may be forthcoming
even as capital expenditure continues to be incurred. Gestation lags—the time gap between
expenditure incurred and irrigation potential created—vary from project to project, but are
generally longer for major projects and shorter for medium projects. Thus, in estimating the
true capital cost of each hectare of potential created, one has to adjust for this lag factor by
incorporating an appropriate social rate of discount. Depending upon value of this discount
factor, the capital cost of irrigation will differ significantly (Gulati et al. 1994). The O&M costs
are added to capital cost and then payments made by farmers for irrigation water are deducted
to obtain the public subsidy for major and medium irrigation. By this token, the minimum
subsidy on every hectare of irrigation utilised through major and medium irrigation schemes
would turn out to be above Rs 10,000 at 1997–98 prices. This is, at the national level, an average
for irrigation potential created during 1963–95, and is obviously dependent on the way one
calculates the capital cost of irrigation.
So far, the focus has been specifically on government major and medium irrigation works
covering the area of canals. It is important, however, to consider other sources of irrigation
as well and examine the extent of subsidisation through them. Minor irrigation3 has already
become ‘major’ in a sense as it irrigates a larger area than the so-called major and medium irri-
gation schemes. The notion of subsidy on public minor irrigation is difficult to conceptualise.
For one, among the various categories of ‘minor irrigation’, the largest share is of well irrigation,
which has a large number of private owners. Here, the subsidy is primarily through cheap
power supplies. The government may also provide subsidies that serve to defray part of their
capital cost for wells, pump sets, and the like.

The Approach of this Paper

In defining and quantifying public irrigation subsidy for major and medium irrigation for the
purpose of this chapter, we follow the Vaidyanathan Committee report (Government of India
[GOI] 1992a) on pricing of canal irrigation water. This committee suggested that the pricing
82 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

of canal irrigation water must cover the entire O&M expenses and 1 per cent of cumulative
capital expenditures incurred in the past at historical prices4. This can be viewed as the cost of
canal irrigation that needs to be recovered from the farmers. Deducting the payments made
by farmers from this cost of irrigation water, one would obtain the relevant public irrigation
subsidy on canal waters. The same methodology used for major and medium irrigation is
applied to public sector minor irrigation as well. Thus, the capital expenditures and the O&M
expenses of minor irrigation are grouped with major and medium irrigation subsidy to arrive
at an aggregate public irrigation subsidy in the country.

Quantification of Irrigation Subsidies

The exercise of quantifying subsidies on major, medium and minor irrigation schemes in
the country was thus carried out along the approach described above. These estimates of irri-
gation subsidy are presented in Figure 5.1. The share of the southern region (Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu) increased marginally from 23 per cent in triennium
ending (TE) 1982–83 to 24 per cent in TE 1999–2000 (projected), as did the northern region
from 27 per cent to 32 per cent during the same period. While the share of the eastern region
declined from 17 per cent to 12 per cent, the western region (comprising Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh) still has a share of around 26 per cent (see Figures 5.2[a] and [b]).
The western region has maintained such a high share possibly because the costs of canal irri-
gation are much higher in this region due to undulating terrain. It must be emphasised at this

Figure 5.1: Subsides on Major, Medium and Minor Irrigation

(1980–81 to 1999–2000)

52.2
49.4
46.6
60
44.4
44.1

Current prices
39.5

Constant prices (1981-82 = 100)

34.4

48
32.9
28.7
25.7
23.5

23.1

36
19.7
Rs billion

15.3

14.9

14.7
14.4
14.1

13.8

14.4

13.8
13.9

13.9

14.0
13.7

13.9
10.8

24
8.1
7.4
7.3
6.3

5.9
6.0
5.6
5.4
5.2
4.6

4.6
4.6
4.1

12

0
1995–96*

1996–97*

1997–98*

1998–99*

1999–2000*
1980–81

1990–91
1984–85

1994–95
1982–83

1992–93
1988–89
1986–87

1987–88
1983–84

1993–94
1985–86

1989–90
1981–82

1991–92

Source: Authors.
Notes: Irrigation Subsidy is computed as O&M + 1 per cent cumulative capital costs at historical price-
receipts of major, medium and minor irrigation.
∗ indicates estimates for these years are based on projected values. Coverage is staggered.
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 83

Figure 5.2 (a): Regional Shares in Irrigation Subsidies—TE 1982–83

Others
8%
Northern region
27%
Western region
25%

Eastern region Southern region

17% 23%

Figure 5.2 (b): Regional Shares in Irrigation Subsidies—TE 1999–2000

Others
6%
Northern region
Western region 32%
26%

Eastern region Southern region

12% 24%

point that the coverage for the computation of subsidies is not complete since information
was not available for some states during certain years.
It would be interesting to see how these estimates compare with those obtained from other
approaches, particularly those constructed from the government documents. In order to do
this, three different series are computed. The first is the government estimate drawn from
the National Accounts Statistics. The second is the approach used in this study following the
Vaidyanathan Committee recommendation that O&M expenses and 1 per cent of cumulative
capital cost must be charged as the price of irrigation water. Yet another estimate is obtained to
see what the subsidy numbers would look like if only O&M expenses were considered—so that
subsidy here is simply O&M expenses minus gross receipts. These three series in juxtaposition
(Figure 5.3) reveal that government estimates are significantly higher than our estimates of
irrigation subsidy. This is particularly true of the later years. However, our estimates are some-
what higher than the O&M method estimates, which consider only O&M costs.
Admittedly, the approach used in this chapter has its drawbacks; these estimates take into
account neither depreciation nor interest rates. However, this approach has the advantage of
simplicity. Earlier, the Finance Commissions had been pleading for recovering at least
84 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

Figure 5.3: Estimates of Subsidies on Major, Medium and

Minor Irrigation: A Comparison

72,000 Our eestimates

stimates
((Vaidyanathan
Vaidyanathan
Subsidy (in Rs million)

60,000 Government Committee

method)
at current prices

estimates
48,000

36,000

24,000
O&M method
12,000

1990-91
1980-81

1992-93
1984-85
1982-83

1994-95
1988-89

1997-98
1986-87
1987-88
1983-84

1996-97
1991-92

1998-99
1985-86

1995-96
1989-90

1993-94

1999-2000
1981-82

2.5 per cent of the cumulative capital costs, which was reduced to 1 per cent. Pure theory may
give figures of this implicit subsidy that are much higher than what is politically or even eco-
nomically feasible to charge farmers. The unanimous decision of the 17-member Committee
on the Pricing of Irrigation Water, to charge only 1 per cent of the historically accumulated
capital expenditures, with full O&M expenses of the current year, perhaps reflects that the
remaining capital expenses have to be borne by the rest of the society, maybe as a price for
food security in order to keep food within the reach of the masses. This is broadly in line with
the practice that currently prevails in most countries.

C ONSEQUENCES OF I RRIGATION S UBSIDIES

The role of irrigation in enhancing agricultural production is well established and a significant
increase in production, especially food grains, over the years can be attributed to increasing
irrigation in the country. It promotes faster adoption of High Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds,
fertiliser consumption and other inputs associated with intensive agriculture. As a result of
this package use of inputs, the yield on irrigated plots in 1992–93 tended to be 2.3 times
greater than the yield on non-irrigated plots (Dhawan 1999). Econometrically, it is not an
easy exercise to segregate the impact of each of these highly complementary inputs like water,
HYV seeds, fertilisers and insecticides on agricultural production. Although it is the combined
impact of all inputs that is reflected here, the fact is that irrigation as the facilitating factor for
all the other inputs lies at the base of this. It has thus led to the growth of self-sufficiency in
food. But the cost at which this has been achieved has not been studied in detail. Slowly but
surely, the bulging subsidies have taken their toll on the irrigation sector itself. If neglected
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 85

any further, their impact on finances, environment, and investments and agriculture as a
whole could be disastrous.

Financial and Economic Consequences

The price of canal water is pathetically low and completely unrelated to the productivity or
scarcity value of water, or the cost of delivering it. It accounts for just 8 per cent of cropping
expenses and is equal to barely 5 per cent of the average incremental production of irrigated
areas over rainfed lands (World Bank 1999b). Moreover, water charges are fixed in nominal
terms that remain unchanged for years, so that in real terms they have been falling. In most
states, the agency levying the water charges and those responsible for its collection (usually
the responsibility of the Revenue Department) are different. Partly as a result, collection has
tended to remain low. The overall loss amounts to around 7 per cent of the total planned
expenditure on all irrigation schemes. The inability to recover costs has led to growing state
revenue deficits so that currently irrigation alone is responsible for a third of the states’ revenue
deficit (World Bank 1999a). With inadequate cost recovery and inability to generate funds,
the irrigation departments have to increasingly rely on the state government to meet even
its O&M activities. Since irrigation subsidies have to be absorbed at the state level and the
budgetary situation of most states is under severe strain, it has resulted in increasing cuts in
further state expenditure on irrigation. A subsidy reduction of 20 per cent could have helped
raise expenditure by at least 20 per cent. Alternatively, a subsidy reduction of even 5 per cent
in 1986–87 would have doubled expenditure on O&M of Rs 4.93 billion incurred that year.
This would have entailed an over three-fold rise in the collection of gross revenue from farmers
in that year, that is, Rs 167 billion (Vaidyanathan 1993).

Physical Constraints
The result of curtailed expenditure on irrigation is the poor maintenance of projects and neglect
of existing irrigation systems (leading to poor quality of service) on the one hand, and the
inability to complete on-going projects because of paucity of funds on the other. These have
led to a rapid deterioration of physical infrastructure, particularly of surface irrigation facilities
and drainage infrastructure. Although this is partly due to poor design and construction, it is to
a larger extent due to the lack of adequate maintenance. Broken-down distribution systems
and siltation of canals and drains tend to reduce irrigation efficiency and lead to irregular
supply.

Wastage and Inefficiencies in Water-use

The contribution of water is generally taken to be about a quarter to two-fifths of the add-
itional agricultural production. When a farmer uses water as an input until its marginal value
86 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

product (MVP) is zero, he overexploits the resource. This leads to large-scale emergence of
water-intensive crops like paddy or sugarcane in irrigated tracts. It is well known that in almost
all of the canal commands, the actual area under paddy or sugarcane turns out to be much
more than was initially planned in the project. Surface water-use efficiency under the existing
projects in India is estimated to be as low as 40 per cent (Navalawala 1994). As against this, in
the advanced systems of the West as much as 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the water diverted
in large surface systems is available for plant use (Repetto 1986). This enormous wastage of
water during conveyance and on the field arises as much due to poor design of structures as on
account of lack of incentives to conserve water. In the absence of financial accountability and
operation autonomy, project authorities do not have any motivation to take water-conserving
measures, such as the lining of canals for supplying water, on a volumetric basis. In the absence
of large-scale investments in drainage, vast areas either become unfit for cultivation or returns
on them are much below their potential.

Inequity
A disquieting consequence of under-pricing of surface water is the intensive watering of fields
by farmers at the head, leaving the tail-enders with sparse supplies. Apart from lowering the
productivity per unit of water used, this leads to inequity. Irregular and unpredictable supply
also contributes to the inequity in the distribution of water between head and tail-enders. The
intensive water-use, particularly at the head reaches, is responsible to a significant extent for
shrinking effective command areas of the system compared to what is originally envisaged.
This is one of the major reasons why the irrigation potential utilised in canal commands is
usually 15 to 20 per cent less than the potential created. Moreover, only 26 per cent of the
villages were reported as having a government canal in 1997–98. This reflects considerable
inequity in the distribution of irrigation service and, therefore, of subsidies.

Decline in Public Investment

Rapidly increasing subsidies on canal irrigation exercise a strong negative impact on public sector
investments in agriculture. The mid-1960s saw a considerable increase in public investment
in response to the need to achieve food self-sufficiency. The 1970s were characterised by the
contribution of private investment in agriculture with the introduction of the profitable HYV
technology and also had high complementarity with public investment. The public resources
for surface irrigation were, however, spread thinly on a number of projects during the 1980s. As
many as 500 major and medium irrigation projects, at various stages of completion at the end
of the Seventh Plan, entailed a spillover cost of Rs 390 billion (GOI 1992b). These time overruns
contribute to the higher real cost per hectare of irrigation potential created. The current trend
suggests that in order to fully exploit the remaining irrigation potential of 25 million hectares
through major and medium schemes, it would take another 50 years! Even if no new projects
were undertaken, the potential of on-going projects would take two decades to realise.
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 87

‘T HE V ICIOUS C IRCLE ’ AND THE N EED FOR R EFORM

The consequences of irrigation subsidies that have been delineated above form elements of a
vicious circle (see Figure 5.4) (World Bank 1999a). The water pricing policy in India is such that
it does not even cover the cost of O&M of the irrigation systems, let alone the full capital cost
including O&M. This leads to severe financial pressure on the state since it has to absorb the sub-
sidies. The fiscal constraints of the irrigation service agency and the state leads to inadequate
budgetary allocation towards O&M of these systems resulting in physical deterioration of the
irrigation system, which affects water delivery and supply. The poor irrigation service is also
caused by institutional constraints like the lack of incentive and accountability on the part of
the monopoly of the government agency to assure quality supply. There is no link between
irrigation qualities provided, revenues generated and staff incentives. Further, there is lack of
coordination among departments dealing with agriculture and those dealing with irrigation,
within the irrigation department itself, and between agencies dealing with different types of
irrigation, such as lift irrigation, canal projects, groundwater schemes, and so on.
The irrigation departments are highly centralised and function with a top-down approach
failing to establish any linkages with the farmer-users. Lack of farmer involvement results in
inappropriate design of irrigation systems, which also leads to poor irrigation service. Farmers
are as a result dissatisfied. Unreliable supply with iniquitous distribution of water leaves many
disgruntled and unwilling to pay (higher) water rates. Indirectly, the poor irrigation service also
affects the farmers’ ability to pay, since inadequate irrigation (combined with inefficient water-
use technologies) results in low yields and incomes. The water pricing policy too may impact
incomes in another way. This has happened when severe inefficiency and wastage in water
use lead to environmental problems in the long run, which have an adverse impact on yields
and incomes. The unwillingness of farmers to pay more for irrigation services coupled with
the possible inability to do so preclude any change in the water policy in terms of raising the
water rates charged from irrigators. No policy maker would want to risk such an undertaking.
Nor is it fair to increase water rates without concomitant improvement in the quality of service.
Improvements in quality in turn are constrained by funds and the inefficiency of the input
irrigation agency. Thus, the vicious circle perpetuates.

W HAT IS THE W AY O UT ?

As far as the irrigation sector goes, we find ourselves in a Catch-22 situation. Given that
the input-supplying agency is in financial doldrums, as are the states that ultimately bear the
burden of the subsidy, it is imperative that these agencies recover the costs so that they become
financially viable. This would entail a manifold increase in water rates. To reiterate, farmers
would be unwilling to accept such a step unless they derive some benefit in terms of better
delivery of the input. For this to happen, the physical condition of the irrigation systems
 88
Figure 5.4: The Vicious Circle in Indian Irrigation

Environmental
Water pricing Low water consequences like
policy charges groundwater
depletion

Low cost recovery Low/Declining

priority in planned
Low ability funds for irrigation
to pay Inability to fund
adequately O&M
K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

Low willingness
Low to pay
incomes
Decline in
Poor O&M public
Farmer investment
dissatisfaction

Low field
efficiency

Poor irrigation Poor irrigation

service systems

Inadequate
agricultural Institutional
extension complaints

Source: Based on World Bank (1999a).

Note: line indicates weak link.
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 89

needs improvement. However, this is itself predicated on the availability of funds on the one
hand and an institutional overhaul on the other.
If the vicious circle in Indian irrigation is to be turned into a virtuous circle it can be accom-
plished only through a multifaceted reform programme. One of the elements of the vicious
circle that should be targeted is price reform with the aim of ensuring that the irrigation agency
is made financially self-sustaining with the capability of providing efficient irrigation service.
Since price reform without improvement in quality of service is inconceivable, it must be
accompanied by fundamental changes in the institutional framework. Simultaneously, good
agricultural practices and efficient water use technologies must be promoted so that excessive
use and wastage of water are prevented. How can these be accomplished?

Price Reform
Pricing of canal waters is a state subject (like power) and hence tends to differ widely across
states. In addition, prices also vary across crops within the same state and across the seasons
for the same crop. Pricing can also differ across different regions or projects within the same
state. Although there are some states like Punjab which give free irrigation water from canals,
in most states, pricing is based on crop area and the season. Since technically it is difficult and
expensive to measure water supplies on a volumetric basis to millions of small cultivators,
volumetric pricing seems to be a far cry at least in the foreseeable future.
The debate on the principles underlying the pricing of irrigation water has for long veered
round to the view that the farmers must pay at least the short-run marginal cost of provid-
ing water comprising O&M charges and a small part of the interest on the capital invested
(Rao et al. 1999). Earlier, the Fifth, Sixth and the Seventh Finance Commissions, in agreement
with the Jakhade Committee, had recommended that the pricing of canal irrigation water
should recover 2.5 per cent of the capital invested besides the working expenses. But given
the poor financial performance of canal irrigation the subsequent Finance Commissions, the
Eighth and the Ninth, recommended only the recovery of O&M expenses. However, the Tenth
Finance Commission did reiterate the need to recover at least 1 per cent of the capital cost
besides the working expenses. The Vaidyanathan Committee (GOI 1992a) was the last major
report on this subject.
In practice, however, the pricing of canal waters did not cover more than 20 per cent of the
O&M expenses in the mid-1990s. It is well known that over years the capacity of the farmers
to pay for higher irrigation charges has increased due to spread of HYV seeds, commercial and
high-value crops coming in the commands of canals and higher productivity through better
cropping operations.5 Besides, despite over-staffing, the actual expenditure on O&M per hectare
of irrigated area is considerably below the accepted norms. As against the generally-accepted
principle of appropriating as water charges between 25 to 40 per cent of the additional net in-
come generated per hectare on account of irrigation, only about 2 to 5 per cent of such income
is being collected as water rates. Therefore, at least a five-fold increase in existing water rates
may be necessary; both on theoretical grounds and from a practical viewpoint of managing the
projects. However, political will is essential to initiate this process.
90 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

The next obstacle is in the collection of water charges. Collections remain low and mechan-
isms to collect (done by the Revenue Department) are not effectively coordinated with the
irrigation agencies. Cost of collection is more than the sum collected in some states (for example,
Bihar). This speaks volumes in terms of the urgent need to usher in institutional reforms in
these irrigation agencies/departments that are saddled with enormous staff and rampant cor-
ruption. Price reforms in Indian irrigation, if they were so simple, would have been carried
out long back. The fact that the subsidy situation has worsened over time should compel us
to recognise the situation as far from simple. It is intertwined as much with the state and the
nature of politics, as it suffers from a lack of understanding of who is being subsidised and by
how much. As a result, the suggested approach of reforming the regime of subsidies is often
divorced from the ground reality and therefore remains a non-starter.

Institutional Reform
Why Institutional Reform?
In the context of irrigation subsidy reform, the preceding section brings to the fore two
points, particularly in the context of canal irrigation. First, the implicit willingness-to-pay
that the above analysis reveals is with respect to irrigation charges as imposed by the state.
However, in practice, due to the monopolistic position of the state with regard to water, actual
payments made by consumers (inclusive of ‘scarcity rent’ paid in one form or the other) may
be higher. Estimates of these payments do exist for some parts of the country (Wade 1987).
A large part of the willingness-to-pay may already be captured by these payments. Second,
higher willingness-to-pay is related to access to the services of the input in amounts and at
the time the farmer requires. As the consumer pays more, he/she also expects qualitative
improvements in supply. It is exactly for this reason that price reforms in Indian irrigation
must be accompanied by institutional reforms. Price reform is essential but not sufficient for
a well-functioning irrigation system.

Recent Efforts at Institutional Reform

A number of expert committees in India, starting with the Taxation Enquiry Commission in 1953
to the Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water (GOI 1992b), have expressed the desirability
of improving the management of irrigation systems so as to make them more responsive to
the needs of user cultivators. However, experience shows that this shall not succeed unless these
systems are distanced from political interference and also de-bureaucratised. The recent debate
on these issues among the experts all over the world has resulted in a remarkable consensus on
the need to: (a) make the project authorities financially accountable by according them
operation autonomy; (b) associate the user farmers with the decision making process in the
projects at various levels; (c) entrust the Water Users Associations (WUAs) with the tasks of
managing the systems in their area of operation as well as collecting the water charges on the
basis of some workable formula linking the rates with the quantity of water consumed; and
(d) allow private sector participation in irrigation systems’ renovation and modernisation and
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 91

collection of fees. In the following sections we focus on two major reforms: (i) setting up of
financially autonomous irrigation agencies as a part of the financial reforms; and (ii) irrigation
management transfer to WUAs.

Financially Autonomous Irrigation Agencies

Canal irrigation financing in India suffers from two distinctive problems: (i) the funding
for construction of on-going or new canal networks has been shrinking, leading to undue
delay in completion of projects, which in turn raises costs and reduces benefits; and (ii) the
resources for normal operation and maintenance are also under severe pressure, as the cost
recovery from canal irrigation is extremely low and the state budgets are not able to allocate
more funds because of the overall fiscal crunch. Less attention has been given to the potential
of domestic financial markets to provide such funding. Since the 1980s, the Indian capital
markets have emerged as an important source of funds for corporate units in the private and
public sectors. Primary capital mobilisation by private sector companies in the form of equity
and debt rose from less than Rs 2 billion in 1980 to over Rs 43 billion in 1990–91 and then
recorded a quantum jump to over Rs 260 billion by the end of 1994–95 (GOI 1996). During
this period, several state governments have also begun to tap into this domestic financial
market to finance irrigation development.
This is not the first time that such an institutional reform is being proposed. Indeed, the
working group on major and medium irrigation projects for the Eighth Plan considered the
issue of inadequate funding for projects in the Seventh Plan. Against the spill over liability
of Rs 260 billion for major and medium projects that remained uncompleted from previous
plans, the outlay was only Rs 115 billion. To enable the central government to assume a more
positive role, in 1988 the Ministry of Water Resources formulated a proposal for the establish-
ment of an Irrigation Finance Corporation to provide financial assistance to projects of national
importance in the irrigation sector (GOI 1995). Though this proposal was supported by a large
number of states, the Planning Commission did not approve it. Over the years, the states that
had important ongoing projects established autonomous irrigation finance corporations. In
South India, Karnataka’s Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited6 (KBJNL) is one of them (Gulati
et al. 2004).
In a normal course, the state budget could have supported the entire Upper Krishna Pro-
ject (UKP) execution, but then the project completion could have been anywhere from
15 to 20 years, since the state budgetary allocation of around Rs 10 billion is meant for all
major and medium projects in the state. In 1995, the government contemplated an outlay of
Rs 57.45 billion (then revised it to 82 billion in 2001) for the completion of UKP. It included
Rs 30.5 billion from market borrowing, Rs 24.5 billion from the Government of Karnataka
and another Rs 2.45 billion from internal generation.
KBJNL focused primarily on mobilising funds and completing the physical work before
2003. Encouraging support from the government’s top functionaries (like the chief secretary
and finance secretary) and having the right persons in the key positions (like executive
director, finance, with good experience) helped it to move faster in the desired direction. This
92 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

has produced three main outcomes: (a) successful mobilisation of funds; (b) less immediate
financial burden on the state; and (c) project implementation more or less on schedule. Al-
though KBJNL has made considerable progress in mobilising capital for construction, it has
not made structural reforms within the organisation, nor has it paid attention to repayment.
(Gulati et al. 2002). The organisation depends on the government’s budgetary support even
for interest and principle payment to bond subscribers and shareholders. Though KBJNL was
originally designed to be a financially autonomous body, its functioning is mainly on the
lines of a government agency. Inspite of some financial success, the main objectives of the
Financially Autonomous Irrigation Agency (FAIA) remain unfulfilled. Clearly, there is a lack of
vision among the management staff about what an FAIA can do. It also indicates inadequate
conceptualisation of KBJNL as an autonomous body. However, one more corporation known
as Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Limited (KNNL) has been formed on the lines of KBJNL, to
raise funds and manage eight irrigation projects in the Krishna basin of Karnataka. Four more
corporations are being planned on similar lines.
This is not the first attempt in India in this direction. The Andhra Pradesh State Irrigation
Development Corporation was registered in 1974 to function on corporate lines and access
private and institutional finance. But cost recovery never even approached actual expenses;
the corporation accumulated heavy losses and could not service its bank loans. It no longer
attracts bank finance due to its arrears. The Gujarat Water Resources Development Corporation,
wholly owned by the Government of Gujarat and registered under the Companies Act, engaged
in groundwater exploration, and construction and management of the public tube wells
but faced worsening financial and operational conditions ever since its inception in 1975.7
The 1994 Finance Committee suggested the corporation should be wound up (Kolavalli and
Raju 1995; Shah et al. 1995).
Four Indian states (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh) have now set up
corporations, or Nigams, that focus on mobilising funds for surface irrigation. All four states
started their corporations mainly to overcome the reduced budgetary allocations for the
irrigation sector. These corporations were broadly established on the lines of public-sector com-
panies, to mobilise funds. Emphasis was on mobilising funds from institutions, particularly
those that were directly or indirectly regulated and/or were linked to government rather than
individuals.

Irrigation Management Transfer to Water Users Associations

The Vaidyanathan Committee (GOI 1992a) recommended that on the institutional front,
user groups be involved in the management of the irrigation systems and that their role is
gradually increased from management of minors to distributaries and then to main canal sys-
tems. The preconditions of carrying out this recommendation are: that there exist WUAs who
can take delivery of water from irrigation authorities on a wholesale level and that there
are measurement devices installed to measure the volume of water at the distributory level.
At present, both these pre-conditions are not satisfied in most of the irrigation projects. As
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 93

a result, the recommendations of the committee can only be implemented in the long run,
with the gradual development of WUAs on the one hand and fixing measurement devices
on the other.
The Government has been quite slow in moving in this direction; nevertheless, a beginning
was made in the Ninth Five Year Plan to set up a working group on Participatory Irrigation
Management (PIM), which recommended that farmers’ involvement in the management of
canal irrigation works should be taken up on high priority. To start with, 2,000 pilot projects
were to be taken up to cover at least 2 to 3 per cent of the canal area irrigated in the country,
in the Ninth Plan itself. Gradually, this was to be increased to bring 50 per cent of irrigated
area under PIM. Although this required quite a bit of spade work in terms of defining water
rights, the role and jurisdiction of WUAs vis-à-vis that of the state irrigation departments,
and how the disputes would be settled, and so on, a beginning was made in some states. The
announcement of a one-time management subsidy to states for the forming of WUAs in the
Central Government Budget of 1999–2000 was another positive step in inducing institutional
reform.
Efforts at forming WUAs in India have so far been isolated attempts on a small scale.
There were 4,420 WUAs functioning in the early 1990s (before the ‘big bang’ in institutional
reforms in Andhra Pradesh). The area under their operation was, however, only 0.33 per cent
of the total irrigated area in the country (Rao et al. 1999). It has been observed in many of
these institutions in India that the main focus was the management of the irrigation systems
through the involvement of farmers. Cost recovery and other financial aspects were not the
motivating factors for such organisations. It has been pointed out (Gulati et al. 1999) that
this aspect may be of much greater importance to the future of irrigation systems since state
funds are shrinking and central government support is limited. This is true especially because
few of these WUAs have really emerged as robust institutions and most die out once external
support is withdrawn. In this context, it is noteworthy that so far the impetus for irrigation
management transfer in different states in India has come from external agencies—Indian
government policy and donor pressures (Brewer and Raju 1995). This may influence the type
of WUA and the legal framework within which these institutions operate. The need of the
hour is, however, a state-wide policy where the institutions are designed to suit the physical,
technical and socio-political framework of the individual state. One way to sustain these insti-
tutions is by making farmers co-owners of the systems through, for example, equity shares,
in a way that would allow them to participate in the management, design and construction
of the irrigation systems. This must be backed by a strong legal framework.
It is only very recently that there has been a large-scale effort at institutional reform initiated
by the states themselves. The most progressive state in this regard is Andhra Pradesh (Raju
2001) . It has taken a lead in passing an act to transfer the management of irrigation systems
to farmers’ organisations. By 1999–2000, Andhra Pradesh alone had more than 10,000 WUAs;
nearly 80 per cent of them were of minor irrigation tanks. So far, the WUAs have been set up
at minor and distributory levels. Beyond the distributory level, the WUAs manage distribution
of water and collection of dues thereof. There are indications that the institutional reforms
94 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

undertaken in Andhra Pradesh are reasonably successful in some respects (irrigated area ex-
pansion, water efficiency, small reduction in agency expenditure, users participation in oper-
ation and maintenance) although it is still too early to tell. But macro-level issues are yet to
be touched:

(i) Project-level users organisations (federation of three-tier organisations) have not been
formed.
(ii) It is feared that each project-level federation may encompass more than one administrative
district and that their ‘power’ to regulate and operate the water distribution may go
beyond the elected leaders of the state assembly. Some federation’s budget may be larger
than the budget of a minister at the state level. This is a direct threat to the elected leaders
of the local area.
(iii) Reservoir operations have to be restructured to meet the demands of the WUAs and
their federations. The agency has to provide the guarantee to supply at the agreed levels,
for which it is unprepared and finds it difficult owing to lower efficiency of the main
system and lower than designed storage level in the reservoirs.
(iv) Most importantly, the financial sustainability of WUAs. Even after more than four years
of the WUAs’ formation and functioning, they are not empowered to collect water fees
and retain the agreed portion. At any given level of the three tiers of users organisation,
to what extent WUAs can financially sustain is still untested.

Other states would do well to watch Andhra Pradesh and draw lessons from its experience.
Many states are indeed inching ahead on this line of action, most notably Rajasthan, Karnataka,
Haryana, besides Gujarat and Maharashtra, which already have an informal system of PIM.
The donor agencies, such as the World Bank, are also insisting on forming farmers groups and
an upward revision of canal irrigation water rates under their Water Resources Consolidation
(WRC) projects in states like Tamil Nadu, Orissa, and Haryana.

Direction of Change in User Involvement

Overall, it appears that the change is in the right direction. But the speed of change is slow,
and one will have to wait and examine the exact nature and design of this experiment. The
degree of success will depend upon how far the user groups get interested in managing the
canal networks, as also on how much autonomy is granted to project authorities and how
much transparency is introduced in the management of funds. Learning from the experiments
tried out so far, conditions for the success of WUA’s can be outlined (Kolavalli et al. 1997). The
result of a number of studies of Indian WUAs suggests that the major factors influencing their
viability include wide-ranging and comprehensive changes in the legal framework and policies,
autonomy of the WUAs, a new accountability of the Irrigation Department to the WUAs
and attitudinal changes in the bureaucracy (Navalawala 1994; GOI 1997). With the Con-
stitution (Seventy Third) Amendment Act passed by the Indian Parliament in 1993, the
strengthening of grass-root institutions like the Panchayati Raj, it is possible to think of trans-
ferring management to local-level institutions. The overall performance of WUAs in canal,
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 95

lift and tank irrigation in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have also been
studied. The major pointers obtained from this and other studies are:

(a) When faced with a legal fiat that water shall only be sold to groups of users, farmers
are quick to come together.
(b) The existence of some flexibility in determining water charges helps as allocation rules
in successful WUAs often differ from region to region and depend on crops grown and
corresponding irrigation schedules.
(c) External support for WUAs may be necessary to create capability. An NGO or the irri-
gation department may play this role for a limited period of time.
(d) The creation of WUAs changes the strategic position that the irrigation department
and its line agencies have had for a long period of time. The likely reactions of this set
of vested interests must be taken into account. Additionally, their experience needs to
be tapped within the new institutional framework. Although certain factors have been
identified as crucial to the success of WUAs, ultimately the key factor is designing insti-
tutions that are appropriate for a given socio-economic, legal and political context.

Full agency control is often reported as a form of management; in practice, it usually involves
some user representation, informal though it may be. Similarly, full WUA control is also rare
in practice. ‘Agency O&M, user input’ is the more common form of irrigation management.
Under shared management, agencies are responsible for O&M, but not completely. WUAs
share some O&M responsibilities while chiefly representing users. Many irrigation management
transfers today are characterised by the WUAs subsuming the responsibilities of O&M while the
state agencies continue to own and regulate the system. Another interaction system is where
the WUA not only manages the system (that is, has O&M responsibilities), but also owns
the system. The state agencies have only a regulatory function here. What model is followed
depends largely on the system level. At the river basin level, for instance, the state usually plays
a dominant role and the users, very little. For the main system level, again the state retains
ownership and O&M responsibilities, although user representation may enable them to par-
ticipate in decision making. Shared management and O&M by WUA are usually found at the
system or distributory level. WUA ownership, agency regulation is often seen as the culmination
of management transfer programmes at the distributory level. In addition to the formation of
WUAs, the ownership of canal networks starting from the distributories through the issue of
water bonds must be given priority. Another policy is the establishment of tradeable water
rights (Meinzen-Dick and Bruns 2000; Rosegrant and Binswanger 1994). This would require
investment in irrigation technology—for conveyance, metering, diversion and institutional
improvement, and would result in more efficient water-use.
It has also been suggested that individual irrigation systems be made financially autonomous,
like corporations, so that their income depends chiefly on the revenues that they collect for the
irrigation service they provide. This would provide incentive for a stricter collection of revenue
from users apart from superior services that would facilitate better recovery. Although, in terms
of efficiency these corporations would be better performers than government departments, they
96 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

are likely to be natural monopolies. It would therefore be essential to ensure transparency in

the transactions and capital expenditures of these agencies. The need to keep their expenses
transparent and under control is even more if private sector participation were introduced.
In this context, each state should have an independent regulatory commission—an Independent
Regulatory Commission for Canal Irrigation (IRCCI) like those for electricity supply, with de-
centralised agencies at the user-group level.
Institutional reforms would provide the right environment for undertaking price reforms
by depoliticising or disengaging the state from the management of irrigation systems. It would
make individual irrigation systems financially autonomous in a way that their incomes are
dependent on the revenue they collect from users of the service that they provide. Additionally,
it would enable the linking of the payments for irrigation service with the quality of service
offered by the agency in charge of the irrigation system, which has largely been absent so far.
Unless this functional link between the revenue and service and performance (Gulati et al.
1994) is accomplished, the chances of successful reforms in this critical sector will remain
very low.

C ONCLUDING R EMARKS

From the above analysis, several facts come to the fore in the context of irrigation subsidies
in India.

• Pricing of water is way below the level that any theory would suggest, be it demand-
side pricing based on the Marginal Value Product (MVP) or supply-side pricing based on
Long Run Marginal Costs (LRMC).
• The collection of charges is poor, making the actual receipts per unit of water even lower
than their price.
• The quality of service provided by irrigation agencies is not satisfactory; so the farmers
often have to resort to hiring/buying water from fellow farmers. This alternative costs
the farmer more than what he pays to the irrigation authorities indicating that he may
have the ability to pay.
• However, the farmer is unwilling to pay higher charges since he does not anticipate a
related improvement in the quality of the service and higher charges for the same quality
of service is strongly resisted.
• Raising canal water charges under the given institutional structure and quality of service
becomes a ground for contest between the bureaucracy and policy makers on the one
side and farmers and their representatives on the other. There is large inefficiency in
the input-supplying agencies, the project authorities in case of canal irrigation.

The situation offers an opportunity for reform and is surely a win–win situation for the far-
mers as well as policy makers. This can be achieved by ensuring that the quality of irrigation
 Pricing, Subsidies and Institutional Reforms in Indian Irrigation 97

service is linked to the price being charged; and that the costing of this service is transparent and
there is an effort to keep these costs down through innovative methods. Canal irrigation subsidy
can be reduced/rationalised without adversely affecting agricultural output. The capacity to
pay for higher irrigation charges is there with the farmers, and many are also willing to pay,
but they need to be assured of better irrigation service and plugging of leakages in irrigation
funds. For this, one has to grant greater autonomy to irrigation authority; involve farmers in
management and decision making; establish an independent regulatory commission; and
make the system more transparent than what it is today by allowing ‘right to information’,
especially the one related to contracts to private parties. With these institutional reforms, one
hopes that canal irrigation in India will be able to overcome not only the issue of subsidy and
recovering O&M expenses and 1 per cent of cumulative capital expenditures at historical prices,
but will also be on a sustainable path of higher efficiency—both physical and financial.

Notes
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Conference on Economic Reforms and Food
Security: The Role of Trade and Technology. A South Asia Initiative of the International Food Policy
Research Institute, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, and Indian
Council of Agricultural Research, held on 24–25 April 2002 in New Delhi.
2. This is reflected in plan outlays on irrigation. During the last 45 years, starting with the first Five
Year Plan (FYP) in 1951–52 to 1996–97, the nation has spent almost Rs 920 billion at historical prices
on irrigation. This includes the expenditure by the government and from institutional sources, but
excludes the expenditure financed from farmers’ own resources, on major and medium irrigation,
minor irrigation, command area development (CAD) and flood control. At 1996–97 prices, this figure
stands at a staggering level of Rs 2313.87 billion (GOI 1997, see Annex Figures 1.1 to 1.5).
3. Minor irrigation officially defined as projects with less than 2000 ha command area includes surface
irrigation through tanks, watersheds, lift irrigation and even small canal networks, but largely well
irrigation consisting of dug wells and shallow and deep tube wells.
4. The choice of 1 per cent of cumulative capital cost is itself highly debatable and arbitrary. But this
was decided on unanimously by the Vaidyanathan Committee based on the ‘Delphi Principle’.
5. In the case of sugarcane in Maharashtra, for example, irrigation cost per hectare as a ratio of gross
revenue from sugarcane farmers declined from 11.2 per cent in 1968 to only 5.9 per cent in 1995.
Its share in net revenue decreased from 19.3 per cent in 1968 to 9.7 per cent in 1995. In the case of
paddy in Punjab as well, the ratio of irrigation cost to net revenue per hectare has fallen from 38 per
cent to 13–14 per cent.
6. At the root of the KBJNL formation lies the sharing of the Krishna river water. The river flows through
the Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh states. In 1971, the Krishna Waters Dispute Tribunal
(KWDT) was set up to allocate utilisation levels of Krishna waters. The Tribunal reported its findings by
1973 and the states provided the answers for the queries raised by the Tribunal. In 1976, the Tribunal
said that the award (popularly known as the Bachawat Award) may come under review by May 2000 AD.
(However, due to lack of initiative from these states, the award was not reviewed and the old status
continued into 2002.) Thus a deadline was set to utilise the given water allocations by three states.
Under this Award, Karnataka is to utilise 734 TMC (20.7 million ha m) of water from Krishna river.
The Upper Krishna Project (UKP) was developed to take advantage of the award. The state government
sought World Bank assistance for UKP during 1980. The World Bank gave two credits: one expired by
98 K.V. Raju and Ashok Gulati

1986 and another by June 1997, for a total loan of Rs 5.48 billion. Meanwhile, in 1988, the state felt
the need for an authority to look into required land acquisition, which was posing a major problem
in project implementation.
7. The corporation has accumulated a loss of over Rs 700 million and depends on the government for
large subsidies to continue its operations. It faces constraints on what it can charge for its services and
cost escalation adds to the deficit every year. Nearly 20 per cent of the deep tube wells that were not
being adequately utilised have been closed down; the corporation began leasing out the tube wells to
users in 1987 to reduce costs. It had a staggering wage bill of Rs 220 million for a staff of 6,400, while
its annual gross income was only Rs 60 million.

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 6
Recovery of Irrigation User Cess
and Governance of Canal Systems
Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

I NTRODUCTION

Large canal systems have been a key component of India’s irrigation network. The emphasis
in India, post-Independence, was on attaining self-sufficiency in food grains production due
to which increase in the irrigated area was considered a means for increasing food production
and the accent was on large irrigation projects. Thus, investment in large canal irrigation sys-
tems was a key public strategy for achieving food security. This has contributed substantially
to India becoming self-sufficient in food grains production. However, over the years, the effi-
ciency of the irrigation potential created from these large canal irrigation projects has been low,
and recovering operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses from the users has also been a
problem. These projects have thus become a sort of ‘sink’, which keeps on drawing money,
without being able to provide returns on the large capital invested in these projects. This tends
to have a negative influence on new investments in the sector and investments on operations
and maintenance. The lack of recovery and poor maintenance in turn, leads to the under
utilisation of capacity (potential), inequity in irrigation, uncertainty, indifferent quality of
irrigation, wastage of irrigation water, water logging, salinity and alkalinity, besides financial
losses (Mitra 1996, Chapter 5).
This chapter looks at the problems in recovery as emanating from defects in governance.
The issue of recovery of irrigation cess in large canal systems is seen here in the context of re-
form and reinvention of public services through privatisation, public and private partnership,
and overall decentralisation and more inclusive governance and management of irrigation
systems.
From the diverse meanings ascribed to the term governance, the user in this chapter has
been viewed from two broad perspectives: first, from a multiple actor and multiple agency
point of view where state, market and civil society have all been assumed to have roles, not
only in overall governance of water—collection, storage and distribution—but also collection
and assigning of costs for each of these services in the water sector; and second, governance
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 101

as viewed in new public management (Hill and Hupe 2002: 14). Feldman and Khademian
(2002) see the governance structure as relationships created through the interaction of people
in different and reciprocal roles that are relatively dynamic; and public managers as a key
client of these interactions. In the changed environment in the 1990s, there was a call for a
changed mode of functioning of the public services, especially with regard to the need for
increased accountability of the organisations to the public and to the users. In this context,
the entire gamut of issues related to governance like the changed role of policy, monitoring
organisations and rules gained importance.
Governance is a means for ensuring coherence between the different activities that a public
agency has to undertake and the clients it has to serve. It has been suggested that for success in
the public domain, organisations must act simultaneously in a number of domains and these
actions have to be well coordinated and directed (Khandwalla 1999: 116). The new public
management emphasises the values of markets and consumer focus. In the past decade, the
concept of a ‘market’ has permeated even the domain of public services. Jorgensen (1993) refers
to two circuits of distinct markets thereby making the public organisation an organisational
entity competing with other public organisations for better appropriation, and also competing
to satisfy the customers’ needs. The interaction of the two markets is presented in Figure 6.1.
While payment by tax payers is not of a voluntary nature and they do not have incentive
to exercise strong control on the functioning of public services, they, along with other indirect
players like politicians and interest groups, need to be satisfied. Enlarging the concept of the
customer, the government organisation is seen as providing public value to the people, in
addition to providing private value to its beneficiary clients through a process of generalised
exchange which is diffused and deferred in nature (Alford 2002).
While the needs of the distant clients, such as tax payers, are more in terms of being kept
informed, it is the immediate or direct consumer who gets more importance in the new public
management. Recovery from the users is seen directly as a consideration for services rendered.
This, therefore, shifts the focus on the quality of service delivery. Yet, recovery is a function of
more than the quality of service delivery as it also depends on the performance in collection
and the willingness-to-pay of the users. The development of the attitude of payment has been
emphasised as an essential feature of the new public management. Bellone and Goerl (1992)
suggest that the willingness-to-pay by any citizen is an important indicator of civic-oriented
entrepreneurship.
The drivers of public management reform in the western countries include demand for
greater social equity, democratisation and empowerment, and humanisation of the public ser-
vice (Wise 2002). However, this does not seem to be true in India. Mascarenhas (1993) attributes
the causes of the call for public sector reform to the following:

• Significant growth of public bureaucracies into complex entities which have also failed
to deliver the goods.
• Expenditure in public services being less productive and diverting resources from the
private sector.
• The emergence of conservative political regimes.
102 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

Figure 6.1: Circuits of Market Interactions for a Public Organisation

Interested actors,
budget authorities,
politicians, interest
Politico– group, media Political
administrative support,
costs appropriation

The public
organisation

Satisfaction of
Produced Market for
needs, lack of
goods, services goods, services
complaints, fees

Clientele

Source: Jorgensen (1993).

One of the key changes in the reforms process is the change in the role of the state from
an all-powerful entity to one of the many players in the field. The concept of the hollow state
has been advanced based on premises of the important and efficient roles that other actors
are able to play, or have the potential to play. It has been suggested that there can be a sharp
rise in quality, efficiency, innovativeness and responsiveness to ‘customers’ when government
departments and agencies are de-linked from the monolithic state (Khandwalla 1999: 257). The
issue of irrigation cess recovery in this chapter has been examined from these perspectives.
The chapter is divided into seven sections. The first section is the introductory section
which provides the context and framework for the analysis. The second section explains the
rationale for recovery as stated in literature. The third section brings out the issues in recovery
of irrigation cess. The fourth section is a case study of the Mahi Right Bank Canal. The fifth
section analyses the incentives of the different stakeholders. The sixth section explores the
extent to which the newly emerging options can resolve the issues, and the seventh section
brings out a few conclusions that emerge from the study.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 103

R ATIONALE FOR R ECOVERY

The oft-stated rationale for subsidising agriculture is through its role in stimulating development
through increasing production, employment and investment; promoting risk-taking functions
of farmers; promoting increased use of new inputs; and keeping the agricultural community in
parity with the non-farming community (Gulati 1995). As a substantial portion of the canal
systems are in the public domain, subsidising these systems involves mainly bearing of the
construction, establishment and maintenance costs. However, in recent discourses of canal
management, different reasons have been advanced for proper pricing and recovery of costs.
First, the recovery of cost from canal water users should not be seen in isolation of larger
social costs of maintenance of the overall system. The negative externalities in large irrigation
systems include water logging, salinity, and the like, which are caused mainly due to neglect
of drainage (Dhawan 1985). If we are to consider the environmental effects of pollution, the
estimates of utilisation of potential created by irrigation has to be discounted because some
portion of canal command becomes unsuitable for cultivation (Mitra 1996). The emphasis on
cost recovery alone, with little relationship to specific environmental considerations, may not
provide sufficient incentives to promote efficient water use (Asad et al. 1999). The current price
of canal-irrigation water, which is highly subsidised, does not reflect scarcity value; hence, there
is no incentive to adopt methods which could make for efficient use of scarce resources (Gulati
1995). Pricing thus needs to be seen as a means of ensuring efficiency of resource use.
Second, the larger social benefits also need to be considered while considering the viability
and pricing of irrigation. The incidental benefits of canal irrigation include groundwater re-
charge, reduction in instability in farm economy, improving water availability for the civic
needs of urban and rural populations and benefits to livestock. If the benefits that accrue
from these uses are incorporated, the payments that the users of canal irrigation currently
make may even be sufficient. These incidental benefits are quite substantial and can be seen
to be directly derived from irrigation. A significant portion of the large-crop productions from
groundwater-irrigated lands in low-rainfall tracts, like those of Punjab, Haryana, Western
Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Western Maharashtra, is a result of the seeped-in canal water
(Dhawan 2000).
Third, the government policies on minimum support prices also influence irrigation as the
public-pricing support of high water-intensive cereal crops have led to their increased cultivation
(Rao 2002). Contrary to this, the outputs of water-saving crops face an un-remunerative market
and the other inputs are more of a ‘purchased and high-priced’ nature; hence a rise in irrigation
rates would be a ‘serious disincentive’ to increased production of such crops (Government of
India [GOI] 1992). The support for irrigation is thus argued in terms of a ‘strategic objective’
of self-sufficiency in food grains production.
Fourth, according to the ‘total tax’ viewpoint, water charges are only one of the many taxes
that farmers pay and have no relation to the costs incurred by the government in providing
104 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

irrigation as they only involve a fiscal question; shortfall of revenues from one source (water
charge) can be made up from other sources (other taxes) (GOI 1992). As per this view, the
extent of recovery from the users of irrigation service is immaterial as the government anyway
derives income from irrigation by way of different taxes, such as taxes on sale of agricultural
commodities, differential land taxes for wetlands and local-level mandi taxes. To counter
this, it is suggested that even though water charge is collected by the government, it can be
considered a user charge rather than a tax. Everything that the government collects need
not be a tax because if this is the case then it implies that there is no subsidy in any sector
(ibid.). It is argued that there is a clear distinction between tax and non-tax revenue, as water
is a key input to crop production and higher water charges can also increase productivity
by contributing to more efficient water use. In the case of irrigation services provided by the
public-irrigation systems to individual users, the latter can be identified and the magnitude
supplied to each can be measured; and a user charge for this good/service is feasible and
justified (ibid.).
Fifth, the means of subsidising agriculture are either through high prices for produce or
through low prices for inputs. Low user fee for water is seen as a means of subsidising agriculture.
The advantage of the mechanism of low prices for inputs is that benefits are derived by the
farmers only in proportion to the use of other inputs, including land (Gulati 1995). This, how-
ever, also ensures that the subsidy is cornered by those who have access to land and other
agricultural inputs like fertilisers and pesticides. Subsidisation of canal water also adversely
affects equity and is biased against farmers who use other sources for irrigation. Farmers cur-
rently pay much more for other sources of water—as much as a third of their produce for tube
well water (GOI 1992). In such a case, subsidisation of canal water will further enhance the
advantage of farmers who are fortunate enough to be located within the command area of
the canal systems. Canal irrigation-based agriculture gets a disproportionate bulk of input
subsidies and it is argued that ‘not charging for irrigation water is the biggest fraud on dry
land farming’ as it prevents the resources from reaching the dry land farmers (Gulati 1995).
Subsidy for canal irrigation also has the impact of favouring water-intensive crops like paddy
in Punjab or sugarcane in Maharashtra.
While all the above views convey some element of reality, the perspective that has become
dominant is that subsidisation has to be reduced and at least a large proportion of the costs,
particularly O&M costs, need to be recovered directly from the users. It could be argued that
higher recovery would lead to better management of the canal system, which in turn would
lead to higher doses of public investment and also boost private investment (see Chapter 5).
Low levels of recovery lead to inadequate allocations for maintenance and repairs, resulting in
deteriorating quality of services. Poor quality of services has a tendency to reinforce the vicious
circle of low recovery rates as the users may not be willing to pay for inadequate services.
Low recovery also leads to low resource mobilisation, which in turn leads to slow growth in
irrigated areas and new schemes (GOI 1992). Therefore, an effective strategy for recovery of
costs is considered essential for the quality of service and overall viability of canal systems.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 105

I SSUES IN R ECOVERY OF I RRIGATION C ESS

Recovery of irrigation cess is dependent on the pricing of services and the extent of recovery,
which is ensured by the effective mechanisms for recovery. Pricing for water services is seen
as a key element in cost recovery in canal-irrigation projects. Objectives for water pricing also
include: (i) economic efficiency, so that water is allocated to its highest value uses; (ii) financial
sustain-ability, to enable water management agencies and enterprises to cover development
and O&M costs, and earn a reasonable return; (iii) income redistribution, to sectors or groups less
able to pay than others; (iv) social concerns, in order to deliver water services to all regardless
of willingness-to-pay; and (v) environmental sensitivity, to maintain water quality and mitigate
third-party impacts (Asad et al. 1999).
The perceived value of water in different uses determines the willingness-to-pay. However,
the willingness-to-pay differs across sectors. At the margins, prices should be equal otherwise
trading could enhance total surplus to society. But water is also essential for life, and has
higher values for domestic purposes. Thus, there is generally higher marginal value of water in
domestic and industrial use, and hence the willingness-to-pay is higher (Easter 1992). However,
total water required for drinking purposes is only 2–3 per cent, and apart from the quality and
transportation costs the domestic price should be close to zero given that the current water
price for irrigation is only about Rs 0.30 per 10,000 litres. The principles of cost recovery imply
that higher rates be charged for domestic and industrial demand and lower rates for irrigation.
The taxation principle suggests that the farmers’ capacity to pay should be taken into account
in determining the water pricing. Based on these principles, the Government of India (1992)
has suggested that the rate be fixed around 5 per cent of the gross value of produce for food
crops and 12 per cent for cash crops. But the rate as a percentage of value has been coming
down over the years.
Under-pricing of irrigation services is argued to have caused problems like major misallocation
of water (at least in economic terms), wasted water resources, serious debt burdens or fiscal
deficits for the government agencies charged with water management responsibilities and
poor service delivery to users (especially the poor) (Asad et al. 1999). However, economic ra-
tionality (marginal cost pricing/cost-based approach or taxation-based approach) is not the
only factor to determine water pricing. Political as well as other factors often count more than
economic rationality.
Another approach often discussed for encouraging efficient usage of water is volumetric
pricing. Pricing, especially on a volumetric basis, is also suggested as an instrument of con-
servation (Meinzen-Dick and Mendoza 1996). The implied logic is that if the price of water-
use exceeds the price of conservation, users will reduce consumption. Volumetric pricing is
preferred over pricing on the basis of area. However, area is a poor basis for calculating levy
as it does not account for differences in cultivation seasons, need for non-consumption uses,
different requirement of crops, quality of water supply, and so on (GOI 1992). The quantitative
measures like area under irrigation fail not only to give an accurate measure of the quantity of
water but also bypass entirely the question of quality or irrigation, which depends on timing,
106 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

quantity and control over supply (Bharadwaj 1990). Irrigation needs vary across regions and
according to uses—for example, in the south it is meant to meet full irrigation needs, while in
the Indo-Gangetic plain it may be used only for protective irrigation (Dhawan 1986). While
volumetric pricing may have several benefits over area-based pricing, it requires several pre-
conditions to be fully operational and successful. It has been suggested that some of these
constraints, such as high transactions costs, be circumvented by opting for volumetric supply
to groups of farmers rather than supplying to individual farmers. A system of water rights
has been proposed as an alternative to volumetric pricing (Rosegrant and Binswanger 1994).
It is suggested that in accordance with a conceptual, practical and political perspective, the
appropriate approach for ensuring that the scarcity value (that is, opportunity costs) of water
is transmitted to users is to clarify property rights and to facilitate the leasing and trading of
these rights (Asad et al. 1999: 25). This entails creating the necessary conditions for water
markets to emerge.
The objective of cost recovery involves a focus on increasing revenue as well as contain-
ing costs. Methods of increasing revenues include increasing service area, increasing focus on
fee collection, which involves employing carrot and stick measures, and agreeing to undertake
collection in kind (Oorthuizen 2003). Incentives for quick payment include discounts for early
payments and penalties for delay in payment. However, the legal environment has not been
supportive. The irrigation acts of different states have not empowered either the state govern-
ments or groups or associations to stop water supply to water fee defaulters due to which irri-
gators continue to get water supply inspite of non payment of water fees (Raju 1995). This
implies that in the absence of adequate legal support, cost recovery may not be possible.
The quality of service provided to the users is of direct relevance to the recovery of costs.
On the one hand, maintaining quality of service requires investment in O&M, while on the
other hand, farmers receiving a better quality of service would be better placed to pay the
water charges. It is argued that users will be willing to pay provided that they are assured of a
better quality of service including quantity, duration and schedule of water supply if the rules
are fair, if they are not asked to bear the burden of high costs of public inefficiency, and if
there is a concern for keeping the costs down (GOI 1992). The quality of irrigation services is
poor because maintenance of the canal system is poor.
The resource allocation for maintenance of canals is limited as it is treated under non-plan
expenditure (Bharadwaj 1990). Proper maintenance is also essential for an equitable supply
because unless upstream canals are well maintained the downstream farmers can derive no
benefits, and this might lead to the problem of ensuring cooperative action between different
villages (Reddy 1998). Most of the states in India not only have inadequate O&M expenses on
large projects, but also spend most of the funds allocated for O&M on establishment costs,
such as staff salaries and other administrative expenses (Gulati et al. 1994).
Canal irrigation has some characteristics of public goods and some of private goods, as some
of its benefits are not excludable. Hence, a two-part tariff—a well recognised principle of public
utility pricing—is suggested for canal irrigation such that all land in the command pays a flat
annual fee on a membership basis which entitles members to claim water and gives them the
benefits of other facilities like roads and groundwater recharge; and a variable fee is linked to
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 107

the actual extent of service (volume or area) used by each member (GOI 1992). A two-part tariff
may be useful as it appears to be fair and it may also induce efficient resource use. However,
the specific mechanism of administering the two-part tariff needs to be developed, taking en-
forceability of the system into consideration.

M AHI R IGHT B ANK C ANAL : A C ASE S TUDY

The Mahi Right Bank Canal (MRBC) is one of the three large canal irrigation projects in Gujarat
(the other two being the Ukai Kakrapar project and the Narmada project), irrigating over 485
villages in the Kheda and Anand districts and covering an area of 212,694 hectares (ha). The
system consists of a diversion weir constructed across the river Mahi at Wanakbori in 1985,
and the Kadana reservoir (in the Panchmahal district) in the year 1978–79. Although stated as
a perennial river, the system does not have much water, especially during the summer months.
The main canal is lined and is of a length of 73.6 km with a capacity of 198.10 cumecs (cubic
metres per second). The total length of the branch canal is 223 km of which 218 km is lined
and the length of the distributaries, minors and sub-minors stretch up to 2,362 km.
The organisational structure of the MRBC project is given in Figure 6.2. The project is
managed under the control of the Superintending Engineer (SE) located at Nadiad. The SE is
assisted by the Executive Engineers of the Anand, Petlad and Nadiad divisions and four Deputy
Engineers who report to the Executive Engineers. There are four to five Section Officers in
each sub division who report to the Deputy Engineers. These Section Officers look after fixed
areas and they oversee the function of Work Assistants who in turn are responsible for two
to three minors. The Chowkidars who manage the actual distribution at the field level report
to the Work Assistant. Thus, there is correspondence between the hydraulic system and the
institutional structure (see for details Ballabh et al. 1992).
The recovery aspect is looked after by the office of the executive engineer. The recovery
Mamlatdar reports to the Executive Engineer. The mamlatdars are in charge of overseeing the
activities of the Naib Mamlatdars and the recovery Talatis. The demand for recovery is based
on the demand form, which uses the data from the chowkidar’s outlet book. In the demand form,
the area, rate and total charges are mentioned. These are prepared by the Work Assistants based
on the Red Book maintained by the chowkidar. The bills are prepared by the Work Assistants
and presented in the next season to the irrigation recovery mamlatdar at the Division level.
This is in turn passed on to the irrigation recovery Talati who is finally responsible to collect
the irrigation charges.
A comparative idea of the O&M costs, billed amounts and actual recovery can be realised
from the data of the past five years as presented in Table 6.1. The total recoverable amount
for the year is a very small proportion of the total O&M costs. This indicates that if the system
has to become sustainable, the rates need to be much higher and then the recovery system has
to be capable of recovery of higher amounts. However, the present system is not even able to
recover completely the small amount currently due.
108 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

Figure 6.2: Organisational Structure of the Mahi Right Bank

Canal Irrigation System

Table 6.1: Comparative Figures of Recovery and Costs in MRBC

(Rupees in lakh)
Recoverable amount Total recoverable O&M Recovery for Recovery/O&M
Year for the year amount cost the year cost (%)

1999–00 176.31 1,603.78 1,857.02 125.79 6.77

2000–01 9.96 1,487.95 1,832.51 53.30 2.91
2001–02 100.80 1,535.45 1,976.28 102.95 5.21
2002–03 216.35 1,648.85 2,013.13 205.19 10.19

Source: Office of the Superintending Engineer, Nadiad.

Table 6.2 provides the information related to recovery of water charges from 1992–93 to
2002–03. It can be seen from the total that, over the period of a decade, the total-outstanding
amount to be recovered from the farmers is steadily increasing. It can also be noted that there
 Table 6.2: Recovery of Irrigation Fees in Mahi Right Bank Canal
(Rupees in lakh)
Demand for Total recovery Actual recovery as Actual recovery as
Previous recovery for required for Actual recovery percentage of demand percentage of total
Year outstanding the year the year for the year for the year demand for recovery Waivers
1992–93 949.44 292.64 1,242.08 132.79 45 11
1993–94 1,109.29 314.87 1,424.16 210.98 67 15 6.31
1994–95 1,206.87 289.35 1,496.22 239.05 83 16 0.42
1995–96 1,256.75 277.76 1,534.51 252.89 91 16
1996–97 1,281.62 211.90 1,493.52 163.27 77 11
1997–98 1,330.25 294.15 1,624.40 277.94 94 17
1998–99 1,346.46 294.73 1,641.19 213.72 73 13
1999–00 1,427.47 176.31 1,603.78 125.79 71 8
2000–01 1,477.99 9.96 1,487.95 53.30 535 4
2001–02 1,434.65 100.80 1,535.45 102.95 102 7
2002–03 1,432.50 216.35 1,648.85 205.19 95 12

Source: Data was collected from three divisions of MRBC namely Anand, Nadiad and Petlad.
110 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

are year-to-year variations in recovery as a proportion to irrigation charges for a particular

year and a systematic trend is not observed. In about a decade, the total outstanding amount
from the farmers has increased from about Rs 9.5 crore in 1992–93 to about Rs 14.32 crore in
2002–03. This is particularly alarming in the context of under reporting of the irrigated area
both authorised and unauthorised in MRBC (Ballabh et al. 1992). This shows that the actual
demand for irrigation-cess recovery would have been far greater than those indicated by official
statistics. This means that increasing water charges alone are unlikely to have any impact on
existing water users and collections.
This is because the existing water cess, which is presumed to be very low, is not fully collected
from the farmers. Any increase in water cess is therefore more likely to increase the tally of the
recoverable amount without having any impact on the actual recovery. Our efforts to correlate
the aggregate performance of the canal system and recovery performance also did not lead to
any conclusive result. Yet, it was noticed that during some years recovery was much better
than in others. It is surprising to note that in the drought years 2000–01 and 2001–02, the
recovery was much better than in the previous years. In these two years, unauthorised users
were also relatively less than the previous years. It seems that the canal managers allocated
water to those areas where the authorised demand for water was greater. The case of MRBC
brings out two significant points:

• Efforts should be made to design an appropriate strategy to recover water charges at the
existing rate before it is increased.
• Fluctuations of collections over the years suggest that proper accountability is not built
in irrigation cess collection.

It is left to the system managers and their will to collect irrigation charges. There is thus
a strong need to build a system with appropriate incentives/disincentives for collection of
irrigation cess.
Thus, it can be concluded that, in the present context, improving the recovery system is of
more immediate concern than increasing water cess.

I NCENTIVES OF K EY S TAKEHOLDERS IN THE R ECOVERY P ROCESS

As seen in the previous section, the efficacy of the entire process of recovery is dependent on
the actions of several individuals within the organisation, and without appropriate strategy
and proper incentive alignment the recovery of water charges are unlikely to improve. While
the organisation may require individuals to act in a specified manner, an individual may find
it more beneficial to do something else. Hence, the incentives of the different players in the
process need to be elaborated, especially to understand the consequences of changes in rules
and policies.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 111

Incentives Facing Recovery Talatis

In the recovery process, the talati occupies a key role in terms of actual collection of the dues
from the farmers. The talati is also responsible for maintaining the records of payments and
outstanding. Although in Gujarat, in most of the projects, the collection of fees is done by
the irrigation department, the Mahi-kadana and Ukai-Kakrapar projects are exceptions where
the appointment of talatis is done by the department but the talati reports to the mamlatdar,
who is appointed by the revenue department.
In the MRBC, there are 42 talatis for 600 villages. This implies, in work terms, that about
2 lakh farmers are to be met, for whom at times 25 years of records may have to be verified. Up
to 7,000 accounts have to be maintained season-wise by each talati. Each account also has to
maintain details of season-wise irrigation delivery, bills and crops. Owing to these high levels
of calculations involved, the actual details may not be available with the talatis all the time.
Therefore, records are not maintained due to the huge quantum of work. The talatis have to
show a reasonable level of collection as specified by the executive engineer. However, they
do not have any material incentive to exceed this performance level. They are not provided
any cash incentives for better performance. Promotions are also very gradual and rare—in fact
several of the talatis have served throughout the life of the project as talatis and do not expect
any promotion.

Incentives Facing Recovery Mamlatdars

The mamlatdar is the head of the recovery unit in a recovery circle and reports to the executive
engineer of the concerned division—even though the area under his recovery jurisdiction may
exceed the service delivery area of the concerned executive engineer. Mamlatdars are appointed
by the revenue officer of the district and he derives his pay from the irrigation department
during his posting in the department. Generally, the posting of the irrigation department is
regarded as a ‘punishment posting’ and the mamlatdars do not have much incentive to perform
their functions effectively. While the recovery unit is based at the division head quarters, the
unit is typically isolated from the rest of the division. As one official put it in an interview with
the first author: ‘Their work and their culture are totally distinct from the rest of the department and
hence they remain separated.’ The executive engineer tries to exercise some control by setting
targets for recovery for the recovery unit. The authority of the executive engineer is however
tenuous. The effectiveness of recovery is also based partly on the initiative shown in correcting
and updating the available data and the mamlatdar has nothing to gain by performing well
in terms of improving the efficiency of recovery. Sometimes, retired persons are appointed
as mamlatdars or the position is given as an additional charge due to which the functioning
suffers even more. This was evident to us on a visit to the recovery unit in Nadiad. It was found
that the Naib mamlatdar had gone out with one of his senior talatis to meet the mamlatdar,
apprise him about the activities of the recovery unit, and more importantly get his signatures
112 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

on some documents. As the mamlatdar at Nadiad was holding additional charge, he did not
find time to come to the recovery unit. The implied logic for persisting with the system is that
the establishment of recovery action is legally still vested with the revenue authority, which
is the collector, and the appointment of a revenue mamlatdar in the irrigation department
facilitates action.
Thus, the mamlatdar has no incentive to ensure that the revenue collection goes up. He
either looks at it as a temporary posting from where he desires to go to a better location, or as
part-time work (additional charge). With such a person at the head of the recovery unit, the
entire objectives of the unit are prone to be distorted.

Incentives Facing Field Level Staff

(Chowkidars/Karkoons/Work Assistants)
The task of managing the flow at the field level is done by the karkoons, work assistants and
chowkidars. Their tasks include collection of demand forms from the farmers in advance and
submitting them to the section officer, and later on ensuring that the water flow is in accordance
with the demands stated by the farmers. These field-level staff have to ensure that in case some
farmers use water in violation of the earlier stated demand, the excess land thus irrigated has
to be noted and a written statement or ekrarnama has to be taken from these farmers.
However, the field-staff categories have their own history. Work assistants are an intermediate
cadre created by the government, as opposed to the traditional karkoons in government
offices who do table functions. Many of them were appointed 15 to 20 years ago for a ‘work
charge’ function, which has now been converted to the designation of ‘work assistant’. The
responsibility under work charge was the execution of work; now the work assistants have
the responsibility of managing flows of water in the fields as specified. The chowkidars, on
the other hand, were earlier appointed as labourers but later made permanent , and hence are
now utilised as chowkidars. As they are retiring, their numbers are reducing. The chowkidars are
Rojamdars (permanent daily wage employees), whose functions are operating gates, controlling
flow of water, assisting karkoons and so on. They are Class IV employees.
The success of the irrigation system largely depends on the working of these employees. The
collection of demand forms is an important task, especially as majority of the farmers do not
give their forms. After repeated extensions of the dates for submission of demands, the far-
mers are coaxed by these field-level staff to submit the demand forms. Still, about half the
usage is by farmers who do not submit the demand statements on time. The field staff has to
ensure that the actual irrigation is recorded. However, the system does not seem to have ad-
equate safeguards to ensure accountability of the field staff to record irrigation data properly.
The work assistants/karkoons report to the section officer who supervises their functions. These
field staff-have no chance of promotion and there is not much incentive for them to perform
their tasks properly. In fact, it might be financially beneficial for a work assistant to allow a
farmer to take water without prior information and not record the information if the farmer
pays him a bribe.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 113

Incentives Facing Section Officers

The section officer is an important key component of the entire irrigation delivery system as he
forms the key link between the field-level staff and the central staff. This is especially true with
regard to the function of recovery and demand estimation as the demand gets consolidated
and the bills get issued at this level. However, the officers who function as section officers
provide the greatest variety in terms of the nature of appointment, qualifications and levels.
There are three categories of section officers. The first category of section officers are those
who were earlier appointed as overseers (meant to assist the section officers) and who are
Class III employees. The second category, the Additional Assistant Engineer, who also works
as section officer, is a diploma holder in engineering and is also a Class III employee. The third
category of section officers consists of the graduate civil engineers who are Class II employees.
The section officers, apart from those who are graduate civil engineers, have little chance of
promotion beyond the section officer’s level. They have the responsibility of monitoring the
activities of the work assistants and chowkidars, consolidating the demand in their areas and
also planning for water release in the fields. Thus, most of them also do not have any incentives
to improve the recovery of irrigation charges.

Incentives Facing Higher Level Officers—Deputy

Executive Engineers, Executive Engineers
and Superintending Engineer
The higher officers of the department are responsible for coordinating the irrigation demand
estimation, the water collection and the recovery. The executive engineer and superintend-
ing engineer are Class I officers, while the Deputy Executive Engineer is a Class II officer. The
executive engineer has the task of overseeing the processes of recovery as well as the distribution
of water. The Superintending Engineer’s task is largely administrative and limited to giving
directions to the project, while the Executive Engineer is the actual authority responsible for
implementation of work.
The recovery is done on a revenue-record basis and not on command basis. The recovery
unit is the village. The beat of the engineering section is canal-wise, while the recovery talati
functions on village or shej (which is a collection of villages for which the talati is respon-
sible for recovery) basis. Hence, it is difficult for the Deputy executive Engineer to know how
much dues are pending from the sub-division. The officers report that even if they get the
information about specific defaulters from a region, they find it difficult to enforce recovery
by withholding irrigation services to these specific fields, as they lack control over field to field
delivery. Even if the department in alliance with the recovery unit initiates legal action against
the defaulters, the officials are at times under political pressure to provide water and collect
dues later. While the officials do not get any personnel benefits from enforcing collections,
they can accumulate political goodwill by not initiating any forced collection activities. If the
collections are reasonably high (as they are in MRBC), the pressure from the secretary or the
chief engineer may not be high.
114 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

Incentives Facing Farmers

While the incentive of the officials to collect is very vital, the incentives of the farmers to
pay are also very important in the recovery process. Some officials claim that the farmers are
habituated to debt and are used to waivers. The record of rights is generally not updated and
even though the land may be registered as one plot, the actual holding may be in several
hands. Hence, even if the part owners of a plot are willing to pay, they may not benefit from
it if the others do not pay. Therefore, unless the mutations of the land are periodically done,
some of the ‘willing’ farmers also may not pay.
It is reported that in some cases, farmers give money to the talati for bogus slips although no
money is deposited in the real account. Even if the talati is caught and charged, the recovery
of that farmer is not settled till the corruption case of the talati is finalised. It is reported that
larger farmers pay more regularly because they are concerned about their status and would
like to avoid the frequent visits of talatis to their houses for recovery. On the other hand, it
is suggested that in the case of small and very poor farmers, the threat of coercion may be
counterproductive. The officials also report that there may not be much difference in payments
between the farmers at the head and tail-ends of the projects (even though there may be a slight
difference between the head and tail-end in terms of quality of service). The stated reason is
that the farmer in the tail-end is very dependent on the canal water supply and he has often
different crop varieties or sowings which ensure that his requirement does not clash with the
timings of the head-end farmers.
One of the methods used for reducing the level of defaulters in the project is mention in the
record of rights. In case of non payment, the arrears are recorded in the land-rights register.
This process is presumed to have an impact in selling, mortgaging and obtaining loans from
the institutional sources. This has to be preceded by the serving of a due notice to the farmers;
the procedure, however, is quite cumbersome and generally not resorted to. Moreover, farmers
also do not have any incentives to pay irrigation charges because the irrigation department
has not developed any effective instrument to exclude those who do not pay irrigation charges
year after year.
Summing up, the case analysis of MRBC about irrigation cess demonstrates that the
institutional structure design for the recovery are not appropriate on many counts. First,
management of the recovery unit is characterised by dual control. While the appointment
of the mamlatdar from the revenue division does take care of some legal eventualities, the
irrigation department may find it difficult to enforce any clear strategy of recovery within
the current structure. These officers are generally not concerned about the demands made
by irrigation officers. They seem to be more accountable and loyal to their parent revenue
department than to the irrigation division. They stay for short periods of time and do not
have any incentives to improve the system. Second, the recoverable amount and recovery
both depend on lower level functionaries such as Work Assistants, karkoons, chowkidars and
talatis. These lower level functionaries also have very poor positive and negative incentives for
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 115

recording, updating and maintaining proper records. In the absence of good information, it
is no wonder that not only is there underreporting of the irrigation area but also problems in
the recovery of the dues. Third, the revenue department has been brought in to help the irri-
gation department in the recovery process and overcome legal issues, but the provisions of
revenue collection have rarely been used to recover the irrigation charges. Fourth, the farmers
also do not have any incentive to pay and make sure that the recording is done properly since
the irrigation department has not found any mechanism to exclude those who do not pay
from the benefits of irrigation.

N EW P ARADIGMS AND A PPROACHES

Various approaches have been suggested to improve the governance of canal irrigation sys-
tems including recovery of water charges. These approaches vary from involving Water User
Associations (WUAs) in participatory irrigation management (PIM), to privatisation of canal
irrigation systems and private–public participation in various combinations and levels. This
section tries to assess how these approaches could influence the process of recovery.

Participatory Irrigation Management

Participatory irrigation management (PIM) is being suggested as the cure for several ills. The
earliest attempts at PIM started in the 1970s as attempts to organise farmers at the outlet level
in a bid to improve water-use efficiency and increase the realised irrigation potential. One of
the measures in PIM is to involve the users and their groups in the management of distribution
as well as in the recovery of irrigation fees. This could encourage the farmers to be more active
in ensuring the updating of records as well as collecting the fees by enforcing peer pressure.
The greatest advantage of the involvement of farmers or groups of farmers is that (even if the
current dichotomy between delivery and collection is maintained) the farmers are a common
party who will be aware of the distribution as well as payment. Therefore, this should be able
to increase the area reported, the proportion of area irrigated after prior application, and so on.
However, many such issues are merely conjecture as the mechanism of how to involve farmers
in the process need to be evolved. The few efforts in this regard, especially in MRBC, have
been in the nature of experiments, which have had a large allocation from the department in
terms of personnel and the like and were not preceded or accompanied by any drastic change
in the role of the irrigation department.
It has been argued that a participatory approach need not cause delays in construction—what
does take longer is the lead time, before construction starts, of about seven to nine months
for the establishment of farmers organisations (Wade 1981). Some studies have found an
improvement in the performance of canal systems on several indicators after being turned over
116 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

to Water User Associations or WUAs (Naik and Kalro 2000). Pant (1999) finds an improvement in
terms of improved water-use efficiency, higher rates and profitability of WUAs in Maharashtra.
However, the high costs to be incurred by the government on repair and renovation of the
existing canal systems before turning them over to the water users is proving to be a major
constraint for PIM (Parthasarathy 2003). The need for a minimum level of rehabilitation work
has also been evinced in other states like Madhya Pradesh where PIM has been attempted
(Pangare et al. 2003). The implementation of PIM has also been impeded by the lack of a
favourable legal environment. While irrigation acts vary across the states in terms of content,
coverage and implementation, in general, the acts on which the operational guidelines are
based provide little support for management transfer (Raju 1995).
The two main models of PIM implementation in India are the large-scale impact model
through policy changes as in Andhra Pradesh (see Box 6.1), and the model of scaling up
through NGO interventions as in Gujarat (see Box 6.2).

Box 6.1: The Andhra Pradesh Experiment in PIM

The Andhra Pradesh experiment in PIM focused on large-scale impact through policy level changes,
facilitating the creation of more than 10,000 WUAs in the state. Although PIM is reported as having
resulted in a slight increase in recovery (by about 20 per cent), the major impact is stated to be in terms
of increase in the area irrigated (mainly through a better access for the tail-end farmers). However, this
increase in area has not apparently resulted in increased revenues because of underreporting of the
area cultivated due to a nexus between the farmers and the officials (who collect the area statistics).
Yet, in some cases, the WUAs have not had much impact because of the absence of participation as
the contractors have been masquerading as WUA presidents in order to appropriate the funds pre-
sently available for the purpose.
Source: Reddy (2003).

Box 6.2: DSC’s Experience in PIM

Development Support Centre (DSC), an NGO, has been one of the main implementing agencies for
PIM in Gujarat. DSC was able to cover 17,767 acres across 66 villages under PIM in Gujarat by the
year 2002. In these villages, DSC has also been able to mobilise a fund of Rs 7.2 lakh from the farmers
for rehabilitation works (of a total of Rs 63.7 lakh). The response of minor level committees has been
encouraging and the organisation has also started forming distributory level committees.
Source: DSC (2003).

The first model has had a wide impact but is facing some teething problems. In contrast,
the WUA promoted by the NGOs through the mobilisation of farmers and involving them
have relatively performed much better and consistently over a period of time. However, the
number of NGOs with such mobilisation capability are very few and they operate in a limited
area, thereby limiting the rate of scaling up.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 117

Financial Autonomy
Financial autonomy is one of the measures suggested. However, if we look at the proportion
of the O&M costs currently met, the component of complete financial autonomy seems far
off. But the financial autonomy is expected to unify the tasks of distribution of water and
recovery of water charges to provide positive and negative incentives both to the farmers
and the department to increase recovery. This is expected to remove some of the problems
associated with the duality in control of the distribution and the recovery aspects.
In order to improve the incentive structure, it may be necessary to reorganise the present
formation such that it is more responsive to the farmers needs by making the irrigation
departments financially autonomous bodies (Gulati et al. 1994). Financial autonomy is
argued to have the double effect of providing an incentive for increasing the agency income
as well as an incentive for reducing costs (ibid.). Financial autonomy is supposed to bring
not only accountability towards the clients, but also provide opportunity to the users to bring
about suitable changes in crop mix dictated by market conditions (Mitra 1998). Yet, mere
financial autonomy may not lead to improvement in performance, as was seen in the case
of the Karnataka’s Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited (KBJL). The focus of KBJL was more on
generating resources and completing the construction on time, while it failed to improve on
service delivery, overall irrigation performance and financial sustainability (Raju et al. 2003).
Financial autonomy may not be a panacea for all problems as is assumed in the recent enthu-
siasm for irrigation management transfer.
Financial autonomy has not given rise to the behavioural changes that had been anti-
cipated in theory. Agencies confronted with a change towards financial autonomy may not
be more accountable to the users or improve the services (Oorthuizen 2003). Social and pol-
itical relationships may shape a set of accountability relationships that would be different
from financial accountability relationships. It is argued that among the multiple relations
shaping accountability, financial relations need not be the most important one (ibid.). The
assumption that farmers in large systems would take up responsibility of construction of
field channels and management below the outlet level has not been validated in practice
(Parthasarathy 2003). Financial autonomy could even lead to increased inequity between the
head and tail-ends, as financial prudence may favour increased focus on upstream areas at
the cost of the downstream areas (Oorthuizen 2003). Thus, the effect of financial autonomy
has been confounding as far as the initial impact shows, and this phenomenon needs to be
studied in detail.

Privatisation
Privatisation, as a broad term in the background of the water sector, can be understood to be
an increased involvement of groups such as the private–corporate sector that involves irrigation
118 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

companies, consultancy outfits and firms, WUAs and NGOs, and also the general public through
water bonds floated by the governing bodies (Saleth 1999). In the context of cost recovery,
collection is one area where the private sector can be involved and this can be facilitated if
the farmers’ income is enhanced due to irrigation (Easter 1992). It is also argued that the most
desirable configuration of private sector participation involves simultaneous participation of
private agencies in various facets of irrigation development and management (Saleth 1999).
Taking the broader definition of privatisation, it would imply a sort of multi-stakeholder
approach, which would try to fit each agency into an appropriate role as per its capacities.
However, keeping in view the clout of certain multilateral agencies, the government and large
lenders, the partnership is bound to be unbalanced. On the other hand, privatisation at the
secondary level has also been suggested as a means for improving efficiency of distribution
and use, and cost recovery (Ballabh et al. 1992).
Privatisation, in the context of recovery, implies private provision of a part of the service
or the complete irrigation service itself and, in this case, privatisation of the recovery function
itself. Given the current built-in dependence on the revenue department for recovery, there
needs to be a change in the legislation to facilitate any such operation. Privatisation would
especially deal with the problem of lethargy of the mamlatdar as the recovery in charge would
have strong incentives to recover in a private set-up.

Private–Public Participation
The concept of public–private participation tries to allocate the most suitable roles to the
different entities involved in the irrigation process. This has been suggested in the proposed
outline for the management of the Sardar Sarovar Project (GOI 2004). Under this, the role of
the government department has been outlined as financing the construction of the main canal
network and operating and maintaining the main canal and branch canals. The irrigation
department is also envisaged to have a supervisory role in the process of water allocation and
the design and construction of the distribution network and also in the revision of irrigation
charges. The private sector is supposed to have the role of financing the construction of the
distribution network, operating and maintaining the canals, and also collecting the water cess
from the WUAs or farmers. The WUAs are supposed to finance, construct and maintain the
local distribution channels, undertake water distribution in collaboration with the private entity
and collect irrigation charges from individual farmers. Effective public–private partnerships
would also require the presence of regulators to resolve disputes, set reasonable level of tariffs
and set service standards and penalties for deficient service (ibid.).

Decentralisation and Privatisation of Irrigation Bureaucracy

One of the methods of getting over the ‘large organisation’ problem (as in the case of the irri-
gation department) is by devolving the larger goals of the organisation into specific objectives at
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 119

each of the lower levels. It is suggested that management by objectives (MBO) can be as effective
for the government sector as for the private sector (Rodgers and Hunter 1992). MBO consists
of good management practices in government, participation in decision making and objective
feedback (ibid.). The more direct approach is to try and break down the larger organisation
into smaller units. According to one view, reforms need to focus on minimising the monolithic
feature of bureaucracy and breaking it up into bodies, which remain accountable for the pubic
purpose (Khandwalla 1999: 257). The assumption behind breaking up larger organisations into
smaller manageable units is that smaller units are better at managing innovation (ibid.: 96).
There could be different methods for achieving this outcome. The state could reduce its role
either by fragmenting its monolithic organisations, or by transferring specific activities to
autonomous bodies or private organisations (ibid.: 97).
The importance of the consumer is also most important in the literature on total quality
management (TQM). As it is the consumer who is to be served, the dimensions of quality have
also got to be understood from the perspective of the consumer. The extension of the TQM
concept to the public sector, however, needs some modifications. Swiss (1992) suggests that
while traditional TQM emphasises control over inputs, in the government system it may be
equally relevant to look at the outputs. As opposed to the for profit sector, it is suggested that
in the government sector the stress is on inputs and processes that represent short-term busi-
ness assessments, and therefore focusing on government processes is likely to lead to goal dis-
placement (ibid.).
In the context of recovery, decentralisation would essentially mean looking at the recovery
and distribution aspects at lower levels, particularly at the level of the section officers. While
this may necessitate certain changes like the merging of the boundaries of distribution and
recovery, the decentralised structure may be able to help overcome one of the major problems
of duality.
Thus, the ‘reinventing the government’ literature has focused on innovative approaches to
control the services including privatisation, contracting, focusing on the consumer, breaking
up the monolith of the government agency and devolving objectives to the operational units.
However, the entire concept of new public management has been criticised as being flawed,
simplistic and merely involving the superficial repetition of current practices (Williams 2000).
It is also argued that there are considerable differences between public and private organisations
in terms of the services they provide, the clients they serve and the activities they perform, and
hence there should be caution in borrowing ideas and principles across sectors (Haque 2001).
Terry (1993) has questioned the use of the private enterprises concept of an entrepreneur in
public administration as it does not go well with democratic values. On a different plane, it is
argued that there is nothing ‘new’ because the ‘old’ is a mere stereotype. Lynn (2001) argues
that the perceptions of the old bureaucratic paradigm are at best a caricature and disregard
the true value of traditional management that extended more respect for law, politics, citizens
and values than the new customer-oriented ‘managerialism’ and its variants. Also doubtful is
the assertion that these cosmetic changes work. It is suggested that trying to influence the
120 Manoj T. Thomas and Vishwa Ballabh

policy making of the agency by imposing procedural requirements on the agency’s decision
making process may not work if the agency does not support it. Spence (1999) finds that agencies
are able to construe the new requirements narrowly and use their substantive discretion to min-
imise the policy effects of the new procedures. The hollowing out of the state may leave voids
because the other requirements may not be realistic. For instance, the community social organ-
isation on which the hollow state wants to devolve some of its responsibilities is either not
present, or if present lacks the capability to deliver services or effectively administer projects
(Fredericksen and London 2002). Notwithstanding these criticisms, these approaches have not
been tried out to de-bureaucratise the irrigation system. Given the enormity of the problem
and near total bankruptcy of canal systems in India, there is a need to look at more innovative
approaches to make irrigation bureaucracy functional both in terms of performance and
recovery of irrigation cess.
The approaches discussed above are not mutually exclusive. Rather they are to be considered
as complementary to each other. For instance, decentralisation may be a prerequisite for effect-
ive implementation of PIM.

C ONCLUDING R EMARKS

The recovery of irrigation has been a matter of concern, debate and discussion. Researchers
and policy makers have advocated increase in canal water price for improving efficiency of
water user. However, in this chapter, it has been argued that increasing of water charges is
unlikely to have any beneficial impact either on the efficiency or the viability of the canal
system because only a portion of the irrigation-cess is collected every year. In the literature
on the subject, it has also been argued that irrigation recovery is correlated with quality of
services. However, our effort to correlate the performance and actual recovery in different
years in MRBC does not corroborate the above hypothesis.
The new approaches and paradigms to improve the management of canal irrigation, such as
PIM, privatisation, private–public participation and decentralisation in the context of water
cess recovery in canal irrigation is also discussed. Except PIM, the other approaches have not
been applied at significant scales. Even in PIM, there is a wide variation both in terms of the
performance and collection of irrigation charges. The WUAs promoted by the irrigation agency
have a tendency to revert to low-level performance whereas those promoted by the NGO’s have
greater capacity to improve efficiency of canal water-use as well as revenue collection. These
new approaches suggested may have a positive impact of recovery. This is likely to happen
through better data management, better coordination of the process and improved incentives
for the different actors in the process to contribute to the objectives of recovery.
 Recovery of Irrigation User Cess and Governance of Canal Systems 121

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 7
Irrigation Water Pricing:
Analytic of Competing Sources
R. Parthasarathy

I NTRODUCTION

In recent years, community management of water resources is believed to have significant

potential in addressing stagnating agricultural productivity in the command areas of major
irrigation projects. One oft cited reason for this is that existing irrigation systems are misman-
aged and in a state of serious disrepair. The breakdown, it is argued, can be seen most vividly at
the village level where government administration of water delivery has become so ineffective
that in most cases farmers do not receive an adequate and timely supply. There is enough
evidence to support this. Alternatively, irrigation is mismanaged such that too much water has
led to problems like waterlogging, salination and soil degradation. There is, thus, a growing
consensus that the solution to these problems is in irrigation management transfer (IMT), that
is, turning over control of irrigation management to the end-users: the farmers.
The participatory irrigation management (PIM) solution to the mismanagement problem,
while ingenious in many ways, is not without its share of difficulties. First, many village com-
munities are neither prepared nor have necessary experience in the operation and maintenance
(O&M) of canals. Further, in most states, there are no concerted post-turnover capacity building
exercises. The complexities of conjunctive use of water in a given basin are yet to be sorted
out. There is, however, conflicting evidence whether the Water Users Associations (WUAs) can
deliver water effectively and collect water charges so that the system will become self financing
and less burdensome for the government. Second, it is not always clear who actually controls
the allocation of water and who receives the benefits when WUAs manage the resource, having
implications on the extent to which water charges collection could be handled by WUAs.
Questions of rights to water and equity in access based on land tenure status and locations
of plots in the canal network remain to be resolved. Third, there are multiplicity of uses for
canal water and a diversity of claimants both within and outside the WUA. Thus, conflicts over
rights to the resource can potentially proliferate seeking of mechanisms for resolving disputes.
Ultimately, the resolution of such problems will depend on whether village communities and
 Irrigation Water Pricing 125

their WUAs can be empowered to make and implement decisions that enable an efficient,
equitable and sustainable use of the resource. One of the crucial tests is the pricing of water,
both for the sustainability of the decentralised administration as well as use-efficiency of the
resource. This chapter aims to analyse some of these issues. After this brief introductory section,
the second section presents an overview of the issues involved in pricing of water. Based on the
data and information collected over the three-year period of PIM programme implementation,
an analysis on the dynamics of fixing water rates by the newly formed WUAs is presented in
the third section. The fourth section discusses the response to the hike in water charges by the
members of the WUAs and the issues involved in levying higher than the government’s water
charges by the newly-formed WUA. The last section presents the summary.

I SSUES IN W ATER P RICING

Central to the newer methods being tried out to manage water resources is the objective of
maximising irrigation efficiency. Earlier studies (Caruthers 1981; Choudhury and Ali 1989;
Maloney and Raju 1994) have suggested that one of the ways of maximising irrigation use
is through improved maintenance of the irrigation systems. An estimate from Pakistan sug-
gests that the marginal benefits to past and prospective O&M investments in canals and tube
wells are significantly greater than unity; suggesting the need to allocate more funds for O&M
investments of these components of the irrigation system (Choudhury and Ali 1989). It is as-
sumed that with better care and maintenance not only will savings of water be brought about
but also timely water availability and equity among farms will be ensured. For these objectives
to be fulfilled, increases in the O&M outlay are only a necessary but not sufficient condition.
In the contemporary situation where government intervention is viewed as the last resort, to
argue for an increase in government O&M outlay can be justified only if there are sufficient
returns to incremental investments.
One of the alternatives to the demands on government funds for O&M works is recovering
at least part of the costs through user charges. The Irrigation Commission of the Government
of India recommended in 1972 that water rates should be so fixed that irrigation works do
not become a burden on the state exchequer. The National Water Policy 1987 also stated that
the water rates charged should be adequate to cover the annual O&M cost and a part of the
capital cost of the project. In the early 1980s, the average annual revenue from the water rates
covered about 8 per cent of the annual O&M costs in Gujarat. The Irrigation Department of
the Government of Gujarat then appointed an expert group in 1985, which recommended a
gradual increase in the water rates such that by 1991–92 the revised rates would cover about
33 per cent of the annual O&M costs. In 1988, the Gujarat Agriculture Commission too
endorsed this recommendation. So far, the experience in Gujarat (as in many other states in
India) is that the government has neither been able to charge an economic price for water
nor even raise the water rates fixed in 1981. On the other hand, cooperatives set up by non-
126 R. Parthasarathy

governmental organisations (NGOs) have shown that farmers can and are willing to pay a
significantly higher amount than the government rates for irrigation water.
Perhaps due to this experience, WUAs have been given the responsibility to fix water rates
under the new PIM programme in Gujarat.1 Implicitly, the expectation is that the WUA will
be able to do what the government could not for a long time. Indeed, some of the WUAs have
revised the water rates. Yet, in areas where there are active water markets, the price fixation
appears to be not only a dynamic process but also a complex one. The evidence presented
in this chapter shows that revising water rates upwards is not merely a question of political
will, as is commonly believed, but there are strong economic factors which need to be taken
cognisance of.

Relative Importance of Different Irrigation Sources

One of the features of the new WUAs being formed in Gujarat is the higher water charges
levied by them than what the government charges. Some of the associations like those in
Thalota2, Tranol3 and Lakshmipura4 have revised the water charges. Salient features of these
PIM projects are presented in Table 7.1. Among these WUAs, the one in Thalota had initially
fixed the highest rate, which was then two-and-a-half times higher than that of the government
rates.5 While Lakshmipura fixed a water rate that was 30 per cent more than the government
rate, Tranol charged a flat one-time rate of 20 per cent of the water charges and created an
O&M fund. Except in Tranol, there has been considerable discussion on the hike in water
charges adopted by the WUAs.
Admittedly, the government water rates are abysmally low, however, the analytic of pric-
ing of water appears to be complex. Partly, the complexity arises due to the existence of other
sources of water like tube wells and partly due to the general attitude that water is a ‘free good’
the government supplies. In the case of the irrigation systems in north Gujarat like Daroi and
Dantiwada, the supply of water for irrigation purposes is only during winter and occasionally
one or two waterings are given during the monsoon season. Even during winter, full irrigation
has been rarely possible, usually the number of waterings being two or three. It is pertinent,
therefore, to determine the relative importance of the different sources of irrigation in the
PIM project villages.

Water Pricing: Competing Sources

In a scenario where the canal water charges are based on area and crops and the tube well
charges are higher than the canal water, as the number of waterings from the canal increases the
marginal utility of additional watering should be positive, while the average price (per watering)
declines. However, in most of north Gujarat’s villages, farmers do not view marginal utility
only by the cost parameter. This is because the water supply by the ‘tube well companies’6 is
considered not only to be reliable but also efficient in terms of revenue. Further, many studies
 Table 7.1: Basic Characteristics of the PIM Project Villages, Gujarat

Name of the Projects/Details Thalota Lakshmipura Chandrawadi Tranol Kunjrav Digas

Name of the System Daroi Dantiwada CMIP Mahi Canal Mahi Canal Ukai
Project Location Visnagar, Patan Mahendrada, Anand Anand Hansot,
Mahesana Junagadh Bharuch
Presence of NGO Yes Yes Yes No No No
Males 703 2145 1492 2261 3278 2004
Females 726 2236 1489 2227 3883 2001
Population 2331 7717 4198 6674 7161 6084
Workers Male 607 1858 1317 2046 1887 1845
Workers Female 550 1597 1168 1712 1312 1548
Number of Households 456 1316 752 1358 1134 1213
Cultivator 347 748 549 694 601 582
WUA Member 210 174 222 168 91 169
Date Of WUA Registration 2 Feb. 1996 18 Dec. 1995 21 Oct. 1995 30 Nov. 1996 2 Jun. 1998 29 Nov. 1995
Turnover 16 Dec. 1996 19 Oct. 1996 Not yet 30 Nov. 1996 Not yet 31 Jul. 1997 (part)
Total PIM Command Area (ha) 224 245.68 463 355.57 296 921.05
Total Cultivated Area (ha) 759.38 3533.39 3293.56 1382.06 941 4841.14

Source: Household survey, 1997–98.

Irrigation Water Pricing
127
128 R. Parthasarathy

have shown output response to groundwater to be higher than that of canal water due to better
control in terms of reliability, intensity and timings (Dhawan 1990). For crop cultivation,
when the timeliness criterion is not met, the marginal utility of additional watering may
sometimes be negative. For the supplier, however, as the number of canal watering increases
the incremental cost is zero, while the average cost declines. In order to reduce the average
cost of water, an increase in number of waterings is only a necessary condition, the sufficient
condition being the efficiency in water distribution.
Admittedly, by selling the canal water the WUA has helped reduce the perceived monopoly
power of the government as the seller. However, in the process it is competing with another
source that is an oligopoly. Thus, as a seller, the WUA behaves as if it is operating on a flatter
demand curve than the tube well companies. In fact, when both the sellers (WUA and tube well
companies) become competitors, there is a stimulus to expand the utilisation of their respective
products (water) by selling more, since additional revenue is an addition to net profit.
Theoretically, the competition between the two sellers in a community of irrigators will
force competitive pricing of water. However, the community was found to circumvent this
outcome for the following reasons. In the north Gujarat situation, the two sources of water
are not equally endowed. Further, the water users know only too well that the underground
aquifers might dry up or the cost of repairing the tube well will be expensive, and that the
reservoir, when full, will increase the availability of the canal water thereby making water
from the two sources a substitutable product to some extent. Hypothetically, therefore, till
the time they become near-perfect substitutes, the more assured water source will command
a higher price than the other. Perhaps it is this aspect that contributes to the resentment
among the WUA members to the price hike of canal water. The other reason for the reported
resentment is attitudinal.

F ARMERS ’ R ESPONSE TO W ATER R ATES H IKE

In Thalota, over 74 per cent of the irrigators use both the canal and tube well waters (see Tables 7.2
and 7.3). For some members, the logic of paying a higher rate to the WUA than what the
government charges for water is not clear. It is also not clear as to why they should pay more
to the WUA when an improvement in the reliability of water supplies is beyond its control.
Importantly, there is a question regarding the possible uses of the profit the association makes.
Under the Societies Act it seems that the WUA cannot distribute the surplus income among
its members except for sharing some fixed portion (12 per cent or 15 per cent) as dividend.
Therefore, some members have started questioning the very parameter that is commonly
understood to improve the financial viability of the association. This indicates a need to
think of alternatives to the present arrangement of registering the WUA under the Societies
Act, preferably by introducing suitable legislation with respect to incomes and disbursements
of the WUAs (for a detailed discussion on the aspect of legal registration, see Maloney and
Raju 1994).
 Irrigation Water Pricing 129

Table 7.2: Mean Values of Land Area (in ha) by Sources of Irrigation, Thalota

Canal Tube Well Well Canal + Tube Well Canal + Well All

Average Command∗ 1.85 1.60 1.14 2.33 2.68 2.25

No. of Member Farmers 18 18 1 188 10 251
Irrigated Land∗ 1.85 1.24 1.18 2.59 2.68 2.26
No. of Farmers 20 55 7 192 10 301
Land Owned 1.66 1.24 0.91 2.48 2.80 2.19
No. of Farmers 19 51 5 186 10 287
Land Cultivated 1.88 1.33 1.26 2.70 2.88 2.36
No. of Farmers 20 55 7 191 10 300

Source: Household survey, 1996.

Note: ∗ Some farmers have reported other sources.

Table 7.3: Percentage Distribution of Households by Communities and

Sources of Irrigation, Thalota

Details Canal Tube Well Well Canal + Tube Well Canal + Well All

Patels 15 40 14 55 100 52
No. of Farmers 3 22 1 107 10 157
Thakores 85 51 86 38 42
No. of Farmers 17 28 6 73 127
Others 9 7 6
No. of Farmers 5 13 18
Total Number of Farmers 20 55 7 193 10 302

Source: Household survey, 1996.

The response to the hike in water charges is also varied among the different community
members and by the size of their land holdings. A majority of the landholders who use both
the canal and tube well belong to the Patel community, who also have a higher than average
size of land in the village.7 Ninety per cent of the farmers who depend exclusively on the
canal are from the Thakore community. The maximum impact of the hike, therefore, is on
the Thakore community farmers, though the incidence is somewhat equal on farmers from
both communities. Expectedly, the opposition to the hike is by and large from the members
of the Thakore community. Other irrigators and the NGO (Development Support Centre)
that quoted the prevailing water rates of the tube well and argued a case for raising the canal
water charges apparently did not put forward a convincing argument. Even among the users
of the tube well and canal, not all were happy with the raise in the canal water charges. This
was because not only were the expected incremental returns to canal water zero (unless the
number of watering increases) but the additional cost for tube well irrigation8 was also zero.
So why incur additional cost for canal irrigation waters when marginal returns are asymptotic
towards zero?
130 R. Parthasarathy

As Shah (1993) points out, water prices charged by owners of ‘electric water extracting
mechanisms’ (including tube wells) are much higher even in Gujarat’s water abundant areas
and when compared to states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil
Nadu. Shah’s analysis suggests the possibility of lowering the tube well water rates as and when
the number of watering from the canal improves.
In fact, in Thalota, the tube well water rates fell when canal water rates were increased. This
was because as the number of canal waterings increased (to four against the usual one or two)
during the 1997–98 winter season, their dependence on tube well water decreased. As a result,
the tube well command area declined by 50 per cent. There were also changes in the method
of levying water charges by the tube well ‘companies’. For wheat crops, for example, tube well
companies shifted the basis to the number of watering actually used by the farmers. Earlier,
the companies used to charge 1,036 kg of wheat (at an average harvest price of Rs 6.25 per kg)
per hectare of land per season, irrespective of the number of watering; and, on an average, wheat
crops required six waterings in the north Gujarat region. While the rate per watering remained
the same, the total expense for the farmer declined sharply. The total income for the tube well
companies too declined. In fact, with the prospect of canal supplying the required number of
watering increasing, it was expected that the tube well water charges would decline. However,
farmers did not want this to happen. (For details on the performance of tube well ‘companies’
see Table 7.4.)
Indeed, farmers were keen to evolve a reserve price for tube well waters to protect the com-
panies. As a result, they decided to avail of at least two to three waterings from the tube well
and use it in conjunction with canal waters.9 This was intended to reduce the loss of the tube
well companies since the fixed costs (of the companies) have to be met in any case.

In many parts of north Gujarat, where tube well depths can go up to 400 meters and invest-
ment per WEM [water extraction mechanism] up to Rs 5 lakhs, pressures to maintain high
utilization rates and cover the fixed costs have resulted in various forms of price discrim-
ination. These pressures have enormously increased after the introduction of progressive
flat power charges in June 1987, which have rendered all the costs of tube well operation
into overheads. The standard practice has been to charge a lower price (Rs 30–45 per hour
for 75 hp [horsepower] motor) during kharif season when the water demand function is
highly elastic; and twice as much or more for rabi and summer (Rs 60–75 per hour) (Shah
1993: 64).

However, the elasticity of the water demand function is not only dependent on the monsoon
but also the performance of the canal. Therefore in Thalota, though the unit price of tube
well water is higher than that of canal, the water charges recovered by the companies were
found to be lower than their operating costs in some cases. What happens if the tube well
companies cannot cover the operational costs? The shareholder farmers contribute to make up
the loss. The justification for this strange phenomenon of members contributing to the losses
of a ‘company’ is that in other ‘normal’ years, they receive all of the profits the companies
make in proportion to their share, and therefore the irrigators view a ‘bad’ year as a trough
in business cycle.10
 Table 7.4: Performance of Select Tube well ‘Companies’ in Thalota, North Gujarat

Name of the Companies

Details Bhavani Kameshwar Mahakali Balchand Parbat
I. Year of Inception 1981 1975 1974 1981 1998
No. of Partners 33 17 23 29 2
Horsepower of Electric Motor 52 52 45 52 52
Depth of Tube Well Motor (meters) 420 415 425 420 420
Depth of the Tube Well (meters) 650 650 650 650 610
Potential Command Area (ha) 50 38 25 38 36
Length of Underground Pipelines (meters) 2500 3000 3500 2500 3500
Total no. of Benefiting Farmers (1997–98) 100 93 73 6 –
No. of Non-member Farmers (1997–98)1 31 15 39 6 6
% of Partners who are Members of WUA 90 72 100 100 100
% of Tube Well Command Serviced by Canals 90 30 80 90 20
II. Actual Irrigated Area (ha)
1995–96 20.00 20.00 23.00 39.50 –
1996–97 30.00 28.00 24.50 33.50 –
1997–98 24.00 36.50 14.00 12.00 7.00
Actual Water Charges Paid/hectare (Rs) (1997–98)2
Cotton (5) 2,592 2,333 2,592 2,210 2,592
Castor (7) 3,628 3,266 3,628 3,084 3,628
Bajari (8) 4,147 3,732 4,147 3,525 4,147
Mustard (4) 3,836 3,836 3,836 3,836 3,836
Wheat (6) 6,532 6,532 6,532 6,532 6,532
Lucern (12) 6,220 5,599 6,220 5,288 6,220
Fennel/Isabgul/Others (5) 2,592 2,333 2,592 2,210 2,592
Tobacco (12) 6,220 5,599 6,220 5,288 6,220
(Table 7.4 continued)
(Table 7.4 continued)

Name of the Companies

Details Bhavani Kameshwar Mahakali Balchand Parbat

III. Cumulative Capital Expenditure

Since Inception on
Well 81,000 96,000 189,000 147,000 274,000
Pumpset 30,000 30,000 100,000 40,000 125,000
Pipeline 40,000 50,000 56,000 50,000 260,000
Others 60,000 105,000 5,000 42,000 27,000
Other Capital Expenditure 211,000 275,000 350,000 280,000 686,000
Operation and Maintenance Cost Rs (1997–98) 30,000 NA NA 12,000 Self
operated
Salary of Operators Rs (1997–98) 9,000 – – 12,000 11,000
Electricity Charges Paid Rs (1997–98) 26,000 26,000 22,500 26,000 26,000
IV. Total Revenue (1997–98) 72,000 21,000 21,000 30,000 NA
Total Expenditure (1997–98) 65,000 – – 50,000 NA
Gross Surplus 7,000 21,000 21,000 –20,000 –
Expenditure/hectare 1,300 – – 1,316 –
Revenue/hectare 1,440 553 840 789 –
Profit/loss per Hectare 140 553 840 –527 –

Source: Household Survey, 1996. The Household Survey was conducted as part of the larger study ‘PDR on PIM in Gujarat’ supported
by the Ford Foundation, New Delhi.
Notes: 1. Non-beneficiary farmers are those who are merely buyers of water. Partners are those who have purchased ‘shares’ of the
tube well ‘company’. Members are those partners who have availed of tube well water.
2. Figures given in the parentheses indicate number of watering. Each watering takes 25.92 hours to irrigate one hectare of
land. The data pertains to the agricultural year 1997–98.
 Irrigation Water Pricing 133

Following this practice, neither the company nor its members are unduly concerned about
what happens when the price of tube well water falls in any given year. Perhaps the concern
will emerge if adequacy of canal irrigation supplies is evident over a prolonged period. What
is more important is the fact that the sellers’ monopoly power (as a result of being efficient
and dependable water suppliers) will decline with an increase in the performance of canal.
This is a cause for concern, at least for the managers of the tube well companies. Given the
complex web of identifying who the seller is, all farmers who have bought higher than an
average number of shares in the tube well company also behave the way the (managing)
seller behaves by contributing to the loss. Further, some of the sellers who did not have their
lands near the pipeline were found to buy water from other sellers. In an extreme case, one of
the sellers was also found to sell water to another seller who then supplied to his clients. As
a result, even a seller is sometimes found to gain and lose at the same time when the prices
rise. There is also a social angle to this phenomenon. In most cases, the partners and the
large shareholders have strong familial or caste ties. In any case, the dominant reason for this
behaviour is the fact that tube well water is a surer hedge against poor monsoon, while canal
water is undependable.
In fact, the Thalota WUA is evolving price responses that are similar to those observed in
areas that have developed water markets. In Tranol (south Gujarat), for instance, there were
problems of inadequate water availability to the tail portions of the minors and sub-minors.
In all, there are 12 wells in the command area, of which five are located in the tail portions of
the minors or sub-minors. All these wells are being used as conjunctive water sources to canals.
There are some interesting variations with respect to the number of users of well water in the
core command area and those using water from wells in the tail portions of the canal. About
35 farmers buy water for two watering from the seven well owners, paying Rs 20 per hour per
watering to irrigate the crops after the canal water rotation ends, whereas, about 80 farmers
in the tail portions use well water for about four watering at the rate of Rs 30 per hour per
hectare. These farmers pay an average of around Rs 10 more per watering per hour than the
prevailing canal water rates. However, there are seasonal and yearly variations in the number
of watering given to crops from the wells and the water rates. These variations are directly re-
lated to the fluctuations in the water availability through the canal system. The year-to-year
variations in water supply from the canals are, however, linked to the level of water available
in the reservoir, and some of the Indian rivers are found to vary radically ‘[in] a ratio of ten to
one between a good year and a bad year being not uncommon’ (Berkoff 1988). Variable water
supplies evidently lead to varying performances of the users associations and also influence
the demand pattern of the users and their preferences.

C ONCLUSION

Water management is embedded in a wider social and economic environment in which

the irrigators live, such as production relations and social and political networks, including
tenancy relations, in which formal and informal water user institutions operate. This context
134 R. Parthasarathy

sets both the constraints and opportunities in institutionalising water management decisions,
particularly determination of price for water. This chapter analysed a classic case of ground-
water supplementing surface water and highlighted the resultant dynamics of price
determination.
Admittedly, the government water rates are abysmally low, but to argue for a raise by quoting
the tube well water rates was found to have major difficulties. There are two important points
that have relevance for the policy makers. First, the improvement in the number of waterings
per se was not found to increase its marginal utility; the timeliness of supply and sufficient
availability of water together were found to be important. Second, while the inconsistent canal
water supply makes the tube well water appear as a surer hedge, the tube well companies on
their part have displayed enough flexibility in determining their water rates. Pricing, evidently,
is the mechanism that can neutralise the differences due to quality between the two sources
of irrigation. In the resultant price war, it is the more reliable water source that was found to
command the patronage of the irrigators.
What is important is the fact that for most members of the WUA, the logic of paying a
higher rate than what the government charges was unclear. The lack of clarity partly stemmed
from their realisation that the WUAs formed in isolated portions of a canal system cannot
contribute to the improvement in the reliability of water supply.
As Shah (1993) has pointed out, pricing of irrigation service is a major device to regulate
the distribution of gross irrigation surplus between users and suppliers of water. Evidently, an
appropriate pricing can evolve only when it is associated with regulatory effect, either on the
users or on the use to which water has been put to. Clearly, there is a difference between the
two sources in their ability to perform the regulatory function. The present water distribution
style of canals has limited scope to be discriminatory to the extent that it is difficult to cut off
water supplies, even to the defaulters.
In this context the tube well ‘companies’ offered an important lesson as to how to discrim-
inate the market and ensure control over water-use. Taking advantage of the pipelines, the
seller was able to convey water to the needed field (blocking other outlets on the way), thereby
ensuring economy over use. Perhaps, it is this ability to discriminate the market that provides
the ‘company’ the power to recover water charges promptly; and canal irrigation could not
do this so far. This aspect was also found to ensure equity in water distribution among the
irrigators who belonged to different castes and social and economic classes.
Upward revision of government water rates, therefore, is not merely a question of political
will as is commonly believed. The interdependency among users in a basin and other (con-
junctive) sources of irrigation certainly appear to become more pronounced in future. This
implies that all water users within a scheme will become increasingly dependent on the local
leaders and their effectiveness in defending an assured and reliable water supply at the basin
level negotiations. This probably will emerge as a key factor in determining the water rates,
be it for government-supplied canal water or water supplied through tube well ‘companies’.
Obviously, water-use upstream and downstream of a scheme affects intra-scheme water-use
and management.
Meanwhile, the newly-created WUAs are trapped in the classical chicken-and-egg syndrome.
While fixing water charges higher than what they pay to the government is crucial for their
 Irrigation Water Pricing 135

financial health, the WUAs are presently ill-equipped to influence the water delivery schedule.
At least, in areas where the newly-formed WUAs are operating in formal water markets, only a
reliable water supply can justify a hike in the water rates among its members. This obviously
adds new dimensions of viability of WUAs while operating in the formal water market.

Notes
1. Since 1995, a PIM programme is being implemented in Gujarat that aims to transfer the management
of irrigation below the outlet level to newly formed users’ organisations. In the first phase, 13 pilot
projects have been identified in different regions of the state. In five of these pilot projects, NGOs are
involved in planning and implementation of the programme. The role of the NGOs is to mobilise and
equip the farmer members to manage the WUA and guide them during the various stages of functioning.
The participating farmers not only operate and manage the WUA, but also make a fixed contribution
towards the initial expenses of repair and rehabilitation of the system. The other responsibilities of
the WUAs include allocation of water and collection of demand forms and water charges from the
members.
2. The Thalota pilot project is a part of the Dharoi Right Bank Canal Project. Since 1979–80, the Dharoi
project has been irrigating 45,550 hectares (ha) of land in the five talukas of Kheralu, Visnagar,
Mehsana, Sidhpur and Vijapur in Mehsana district. The Thalota pilot project encompasses the entire
command area of the Branch Canal Number 2 (D2T), which is a distributory of the right bank canal
of Dharoi Dam on the river Sabarmati. A direct outlet from the D2T and its four sub-minors, DSM 1,
DSM 2, DSM 3 and DSM 1/1 irrigate a total of 224 ha. The government during the years 1972–76
constructed the canal network in Thalota. The canal started functioning in 1979–80; however, water
was available only for two years after which the canal fell in disuse.
3. The total command area of the Tranol Sub-Minor is 355 hectares but due to kuchcha watercourses, only
185 hectares are being irrigated. The sub-minor has 14 outlets with each outlet having a committee. A
representative from each outlet-committee is a member of the 15-member executive committee. The
fields of Kunjrav farmers are clustered together and thus can be irrigated from the same outlets. The
main crops are tobacco (80 per cent), rice (10 per cent) and horticultural crops like bananas, lemons
and chillies.
4. The pilot project covers the command area of Lakshmipura Minor, a minor of the distributory 13-L
that branches out from the Gadh branch canal, which is a part of the Dantiwada Irrigation project.
The minor is 2,347 meters long and has eight outlets. It aims to irrigate 245.68 hectares of land, about
75 per cent of which falls in Lakshmipura village and the remaining 25 per cent in the adjoining
village of Vagdod. Lakshmipura residents own most fields lying in the head-reach area of the minor
and fields located at the tail-end belong mostly to Vagdod farmers.
5. The upward revision of water charges took place subsequent to a PRA exercise undertaken by the NGO
working on this project during the monsoon season of 1997. Subsequently, the water rates have been
brought down and for the kharif season of 1998, the rates were barely 50 per cent higher than the
government rates.
6. The joint ownership of tube well is locally referred to as ‘tube well companies’ in north Gujarat. These
companies have varying number of partners and they contribute to the equity capital in different
proportions. Water is transported through underground pipelines. Importantly, there is no difference
in the price charged for water to all categories of users. The share-holding members, however, have
preferential claim to water over other buyers of water in years of scarcity (for details, see Shah 1993).
136 R. Parthasarathy

7. It was reported that historically the land ownership in the village had been fairly even. However,
among the castes other than Patels, the family size had always been higher, which eventually led
to fragmentation of lands. Also, marriages and other functions which are expensive led these com-
munity members to sell or pledge lands mostly to the Patels. Thus, presently, the land holding appears
unequally distributed and with the advent of irrigation in the village, the income inequality has also
widened.
8. The additional cost is zero because the tube well companies charge on the basis of crops, area cultivated
and for a given season irrespective of the number of waterings.
9. It is interesting to note that none of the companies were found to have reserves or surpluses in their
account. Each year, the net profits were distributed among the members and as a matter of principle
the companies do not carry forward either profits or losses to the succeeding accounting year.
10. In cases where the tube well companies do not have large number of shareholders, the owners have
evolved their own strategies of minimising the losses. Of the five tube wells in the canal command,
three were leased out at the rate of Rs 18,000 (42 hp), Rs 20,000 (52 hp) and Rs 25,000 (62 hp).
A combination of factors has led to the determination of the lease amount. They are the service
area of the tube well, the types of crops grown in the tube well command, the distribution of land
according to the tube well pipeline network and the distribution of farms in the tail portion of the
canal command.

References
Berkoff, D.J.W. (1988). ‘Irrigation Management in South India: The Approach of the National Water Man-
agement Project’, paper No. 88/2d, London: ODI/IIMI Irrigation Management Network, December.
Caruthers, I. (1981). ‘Neglect of O&M in Irrigation–The Need for New Sources and Forms of Support’,
Water Supply and Management, 5: 53–65.
Choudhury, A; Muhammad and A. Mubarik (1989). ‘Economic Returns to Operational and Maintenance
Expenditure in Different Components of the Irrigation System in Pakistan,’ paper No. 89/1d, London:
ODI/IIMI Irrigation Management Network, June.
Dhawan, B.D. (1990). Studies in Minor Irrigation with Special Reference to Ground Water. New Delhi: Common-
wealth Publishers.
Maloney, C. and K.V. Raju (1994). Managing Irrigation Together: Practice and Policy in India. New Delhi:
Sage Publications.
Shah, T. (1993). Groundwater Markets and Irrigation Development: Political Economy and Practical Policy.
Bombay: Oxford University Press.
 8
Resource, Rules and Technology:
Ethnography of Building a Water
Users’ Association
Esha Shah

I NTRODUCTION
Development interventions in the last decade or so have projected community-based
associations as the basic unit for natural resource governance. Building community-based civil
society associations has hence been a central aim of these development interventions. Civil
society is generally understood to embody a larger role of community-based collaborations
as a substitute for flawed government programmes (Eberly 2000). That means that although
civil society acquires it’s meaning only when juxtaposed with two other social entities—state
and market (Chandhoke 2003)—the notion of community has an overriding influence on
the notion of civil society. What is important here is to point out that implied in the term
‘civil society’ are activities and associations that are not only community-based, but are also
voluntary and free.
This chapter aims to capture the dynamics of the building of civil society. Building civil soci-
ety refers to the situation when a community-based association is not voluntarily created by
its members but is formed as an initiative from the government and funding agencies. The
chapter is a case study of an irrigation association formed among farmers irrigating their land
from a tank located in the Bijapur district in north Karnataka. The tank was constructed with
the World Bank’s assistance in 1989 with a view, among other things, to explore different
approaches to form Water Users Associations (WUAs).
I will first review the debate that considers community as an arena either ‘for consensus’ or
‘of conflict’. I shall then argue that the debate on community overly focuses on social relations
and gives scant space to the structuring influence of ecological and technological materiality
in shaping the contours of community formation. This chapter is an attempt to capture the
dynamics of building civil society—formation of community-based WUAs—through the
means of understanding the interplay between the structuring influence of ecology and
newly-introduced technology and farmers’ agencies in strategically transforming resources,
rules and technology.
138 Esha Shah

C OMMUNITY : A RENA FOR C ONSENSUS OR C ONFLICT ?

Formation of users or stakeholders associations have come to dominate development policy in

the current times. These associations are envisaged to perform a variety of development tasks
ranging from education to health care; natural resource management is not an exception. These
development efforts assume a pre-existing community upon which civil society associations
are expected to be built. Development agencies are, thus, confronted with a pertinent question:
what constitutes or defines a group, a collectivity or a community? Let us take a quick look at
the most influential notions of community debated in social and political theory followed by
a review of notions employed in development efforts towards building civil society.
One can largely identify two modes or approaches in social and political theory to define
the constitutive aspects of community formation. The first and more popular approach builds
its theory by emphasising the ‘consensus’ or ‘shared’ aspects, whereas the second approach
projects ‘conflict’ or ‘contestation’ as constitutive aspects of the shaping of a community. The
early theories on community or collectivity were based upon consensual foundations. Emil
Durkheim’s conscience collective or mechanical solidarity existed on the totality of shared
beliefs, rules, morals and sentiments. Following Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, the community
is regarded to have enduring social identity and solidarity. In general, the continuity of com-
munity is ensured by passing down of shared norms, customs and traditions from generation
to generation.1
Another classical tradition in social theory dichotomises and contrasts community—as an
arena for shared values, norms and traditions—from civil society. In the social theory, following
Ferdinand Tönnies, community is contrasted with civil society; such a contrast is then liked with
transition from tradition to modernity. Tönnies contrasted the real and organic (Gemeinschaft)
form of living together in community based upon familiarity of relations, solidarity and
belongingness from the mechanical (Gesellschaft) and superficial (the space of civil society or
society) form of coming together based on the convergence of interests. Community in this
construction is synonymous with traditional society based on the relations of trust that are
replaced with relations of contracts with the advent of modernity.2
Yet another influential voice, considered as the theoretical godfather of civil society, Alexis de
Tocqueville, described civil society as ‘civic associations’. These associations are voluntary and
serve a larger social purpose by harmonising conflicting demands of individuals and common
social good. For these thinkers, society is made of sub-units—Tocqueville’s ‘associations’ and
Durkhiem’s ‘little aggregations’—which are building blocks of the larger social order. In fact,
for these theorists, civil society is an ethical ideal that elevates common good over private
self-interest.3
The conflict theory, on the other hand, emphasises clash of interests rather than the con-
sensus of values. Following Karl Marx and Max Weber, conflict theory propounds that value-
consensus is an illusion perpetuated by ideology and power that form differences among
individuals and groups. Communities are thus formed of various interest groups always ridden
with conflicts.4
 Resource, Rules and Technology 139

It has been time and again pointed out that development policy for civil-society building—
formation of community-based associations—gives overriding importance to consensus (Manor
1998). Upholding the reincarnated version of social capital, one of the important aims of
development agencies is to support and create shared networks, norms and trusts among the
members of a community to reduce poverty and to solve common problems. The second such
concept that has inspired development planning is the Habermasian notion of communicative
rationality. In his deliberative democracy model, Jürgen Habermas proposed that through argu-
ments and counterarguments—deliberations—rational and reasoned consensus could be built
among the opposing viewpoints. What needs to be done for building this consensus among
interest groups is to institutionalise appropriate procedural means so that various opposing
views can be expressed and the better argument can then come into play.
A great deal of emphasis is now placed on development planning, on developing appropriate
procedural means for the creation and functioning of users associations. For instance, several
Indian federal states are in the process of developing legal framework for participatory irrigation
management (PIM) originally initiated by multilateral funding agencies in many cases. At the
core, PIM is meant to involve WUAs in taking over irrigation management at various levels
from the government. Detailed procedures are being developed—such as criteria for group
membership, roles and offices, choice of office bearers, conduct of meetings, record and account
keeping—in order to legally institutionalise the formation and functioning of WUAs.5 Similar
to the Habermasian notion of communicative rationality, users associations are expected to
provide democratic space for the articulation of differences and resolution of opposing inter-
ests among various actors through deliberations and rule-making. All these in order to build
consensus for the common good in the community.
The development discourse on common-property resource-management, overridden with
the concerns to craft sustainable institutions or to build civil society associations, has thus been
heavily influenced by the consensus theories. What is inbuilt in the notion of communities
formed and sustained due to consensus is also a belief that consensus ensures common good.
There is an inherent value in arriving at consensus because it leads to the fulfilment of common
interests for all (Kapoor 2002). Sustaining long-standing common property institutions has an
inherent value because in their absence the common property resources would be unsustainably
used up. Creating and sustaining community-based institutions is thus considered a prime
aim for the development planning (and not democratisation) of resource utilisation.

B EYOND C ONSENSUS AND C ONFLICT :

W HAT R OLE COULD E THNOGRAPHY P LAY ?

It is the contention of this chapter that from the perspective of Third World politics, there
is a major gap in both consensus and conflict theories, that is, insufficient attention given
to materiality (ibid.). The analysis of the inner dynamics of the community—consensual
or conflictual—is almost entirely focused upon relations among human beings. Either the
140 Esha Shah

institutionalisation of rule making and rule implementing are largely assigned the structuring
influence on behaviour of participants, or it is determined by the politics of contestation. The
structuring influence exerted by material conditions—ecological or technological—has largely
been ignored in both the theorisations. Productive practices, organised across time and space,
have also been ignored.
In this regard, there is a need perhaps to draw attention to the tradition of ethnographies
that have provided rich information on the physical, social and organisational aspects of
resource management. In the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, several ethnographies came
out that gave central focus to the interplay of social and material aspects of resource utilisation.
The most famous of these studies pertain to the Balinese Subak (Geertz 1980), comparison
of wet and dry cultivation in Morocco and Bali (Geertz 1972), Kulo of Nepal, Zanjera of
Philippines (Coward 1980) and Pul Eliya of Sri Lanka (Leach 1971), and more. More recently,
Mosse (1997) has shown how the ecology of water flow shapes political and social organisation.
I have discussed elsewhere (Shah 2003) how technology structures social relations in tank
irrigated areas.
Thus, there has been enough ethnographic literature to show how ecological and techno-
logical aspects are inseparably intertwined with social and political organisation. This chapter
hopes to extend the tradition of eco-techno-social ethnographies to critically and reflexively
look at the implementation of development policy.

T HE T ANK

This chapter presents a case study of a newly constructed irrigation tank located in the dry
region of north Karnataka. The tank poses two paradoxes. After its construction, while the
Minor Irrigation Department (MID) attempted to form a WUA in the tank area, the farmers
refused to organise into an association by claiming that water stored in the tank belonged to
the government and hence only the MID should manage and maintain the tank. The farmers’
assertion regarding the tank goes against the uncritically accepted assumption in development
planning that members of the community are always eager to overthrow the state management
of their resource. The second paradox pertains to the fact that although the tank is located
in a water-scarce region, the water stored in the tank is under-utilised. I shall explain later in
more detail how the second paradox partially explains the first one.
The tank was constructed with assistance from the World Bank. The work was started in
1986 and completed in 1989, except for the canal work. Irrigation in the head-reach started
in 1991 and in the tail-end in around 1994. The designed atchakat is 330 hectares (ha), but
only 220 hectares was being irrigated at the time of the fieldwork in 2000 (see Figure 8.1). The
bund is 1,062 m long and a maximum 10 m high. The right bank canal (RBC) is 4.32 km and
the left bank banal (LBC) is 4.92 km long. Each canal is designed to irrigate 165 ha. The canals
run on the opposite edges of the atchakat. The tank is constructed at the meeting point of two
seasonally flowing streams that converge into one on the downstream side of the dam. The
 Resource, Rules and Technology 141

Figure 8.1: A Schematic Map of the Atchakat and Approximate Location

converged stream, known as halla in the local language, passing through the middle of the
atchakat, is dry much of the year but flows during May to October. The average annual rainfall
in the region is between 600–700 mm. Both the sluices are fitted with a shutter attached to
a threaded rod and operated with a gearbox and a key spanner. The gross storage capacity of
the tank is 1.7 million cubic metres (mcm), of which 1.5 mcm are live storage capacity.
The tank was constructed as a part of the Karnataka Tank Irrigation Project with financial and
technical assistance from the World Bank as a part of the scheme that eventually constructed
65 new tanks in Karnataka. The Staff Appraisal Report of the World Bank declared that, ‘the
reason for constructing new tanks is to experiment with new planning and design criteria,
the effect of which would be carefully monitored and evaluated. Lessons learned would
subsequently be applied to the modernisation of existing tanks’ (World Bank 1981). Increasing
farmers’ participation in the operation of tank irrigation systems was one of the objectives
of the project. Exploration of different approaches to the formation of WUAs was declared
142 Esha Shah

as one of the important project components (World Bank 1981). The Staff Appraisal Report
proposed the formation of a Tank Irrigation Committee (TIC) immediately after construc-
tion of a tank. This was sanctioned in consultation with the Irrigation Department ‘before
finalising the design of the Tank Irrigation Project’ (ibid.). As regards the TIC’s role in water
management, it was mentioned in the report that after the construction, at least twice a year
before each irrigation season, local staff of the irrigation department would consult and agree
with the committee on scheduling water delivery for the coming season (ibid.). The TIC was
also envisaged to take part in the design and planning of a tank before its construction, in
addition to the operation and management of the infrastructure and water delivery after
construction, although the MID would retain the charge of physical structures. The report
cautions that experiences with farmers’ organisations for irrigation, however, have generally
not been encouraging in India or in most of Asia (ibid.). The Karnataka Tank Irrigation Project
was among the first experiments that aimed at the formation of farmers’ irrigation associations.
No channels were created, even on paper, for farmers to participate in the design process. The
design of crucial tank aspects remained the domain of technical experts.

‘Of Course, This is Government’s Water!’

The social environment in this tank posed several surprises. In the first few days of my fieldwork,
I was flooded with a long list of complaints, mutually-contradictory story lines about water
distribution in the atchakat, about disputes among farmers and about disputes with the MID
and its officials. It also became clear that there was an absence of imposing hierarchy in the
irrigated area and also a locally recognisable authority in charge of tank management.
The landholding pattern in the atchakat suggests a degree of horizontality in terms of the
socio-economic profile of the farmers. While historically-privileged groups usually own lands
in the head-reaches of tanks6, in this tank a substantial number of Lingayat farmers own land
in the lower reaches of the canal and even in the tail-end. The RBC irrigates land belonging
to 86 farmers out of which 33 are Lingayat and the rest belong to the Other Backward Classes
(OBC) and lower castes. Out of 33 Lingayat landholders, only two farmers own land irrigated
by the second outlet. Outlet numbers three and four do not irrigate Lingayat land. Outlet
numbers five to nine irrigate lands belonging to 15 Lingayat landholders. The rest of the lands
belonging to 16 Lingayat farmers are either irrigated by outlet number 10 or are located in the
tail-end. The pattern is similar on the LBC side. The LBC runs 7 feet below ground level in the
head-reach, a point discussed later in the chapter. Hence, part of the lands in the head-reach
cannot take water from the canal. The tail-end benefits more from the LBC. Twelve Lingayat
landholders, out of a total of 65 farmers on the LBC side, have their lands irrigated by either
outlet numbers one or two. The size of landholdings is also not significantly skewed between
higher and lower caste landholders. All farmers on the RBC side own less than 2 ha, except
three Lingayat farmers who own between 3 ha and 4 ha. I must also clarify that the pattern of
landholdings may not remain constant over time. At the time of the study, the tank was
only a decade old. The landholding pattern in the atchakat remains the way it was before the
 Resource, Rules and Technology 143

construction of the tank. Once the benefits of having land in the head-reach are fully realised,
it is very likely that even here the historically privileged groups may gradually take over the
head-reach land.
However, at this point of time, the landholding pattern and absence of hierarchical social
arrangements to manage irrigation suggested that the landholders in the atchakat share a degree
of socio-economic similarity although they might be from different caste backgrounds. This
is certainly not to suggest that all farmers equally participate in irrigation matters or that all
farmers are equal. There are some farmers in the atchakat who are more powerful than others.
But this difference in power and status has not (yet) manifested itself in an overarching structure
of authority, which institutionalises (usually discriminatory)7 rules of water distribution. It is
a matter of speculation whether differences in power and status will result into hierarchical
(and discriminatory) water management institutions or not once the tank is older. However,
despite a degree of socio-economic horizontality among the irrigators, a democratically organ-
ised farmers’ collective has not emerged in the irrigated area in the last decade despite the
MIDs efforts to create one.
What forms the background of the first paradox is the absence of authority, either hierarchical
or democratic. It is paradoxical that while the MID attempted to form a WUA, farmers refused
to organise into an association despite a degree of socio-economic horizontality among them
and instead declared that the water stored in the tank belonged to the government and hence
the government should manage the water distribution. In explaining this paradox, one would
also need to explain why the irrigated environment is marked by conflict and chaos. Farmers
have presented elaborate stories about internal disputes, the destruction of physical structures,
fights among farmers and disputes with MID officers.

Outlet Stories
Almost all original outlets8 on the RBC have been destroyed and several new pipe or open
outlets have replaced them. Each new outlet has been installed to bring water exclusively to
one piece of land whereas the designed arrangement had been so that a few farmers would
have shared water from one outlet via a common field channel. Farmers from all castes and
economic backgrounds have participated in this process, although the method adopted for
installing a new outlet has varied depending upon the status and power of the person, and
correspondingly the degree to which the new outlet is concealed. The higher caste, influential
farmer has simply destroyed the outlet and let the water flow into his land through an open
channel (see Figure 8.2), while the small landholder has installed a pipe outlet, nicely concealed
in the canal bed or canal wall. The former has not even bothered to install any mechanism to
control the water flow. As long as the main sluice in the bund is open, water would continue
to flow into the newly made field-channel.
There were several contradictory accounts about ‘who has destroyed the outlets and why’.
Many farmers told me that all the new outlets were made with MID permission. MID officials
denied making new outlets, or giving permission for making new outlets or even modifying
the existing ones. According to one farmer’s version of what happened, the MID asked the
144 Esha Shah

Figure 8.2: An Open Channel Taking Off from the Main Canal

contractor to make the canal and all the outlets that were marked on the map. However,
because some farmers did not agree to the proposed locations, the outlets were not made at
the time of constructing the canals. The contractor installed them later by breaking the canal
walls, but did not repair them.
MID officials discard this story as bizarre. The last and most novel explanation was that
women who regularly come to wash clothes and utensils, broke the canal walls (presumably
only where outlets were existing) and even the outlets.
The purpose here is not to determine what actually happened but to find out what gen-
erates this discrepancy between the actual design on paper and practice, between what is
conceptualised and what is actualised. I shall argue that the design of water distribution
structures is based upon the assumption that farmers would organise themselves into an
organisation and would then collectively manage the water distribution. The design of water
distribution structures thus presupposes the existence of farmers’ organisations.
Controlling the size and number of outlets and restricting the capacity of field channels
can reduce diversion of more water than the share allocated for the prescribed cropping
pattern. The size of the outlet and field channel can be restricted corresponding to the size of
 Resource, Rules and Technology 145

the irrigated area in two ways. The first way is to provide a bigger pipe and field channel and
reduce the number of days for which the field channel will run. The second way is to provide
water for all seven days and restrict the outlet size for daily supply. In case of the latter option,
field channels are designed to run at their full-discharge capacity every day. The full-discharge
capacity in this scenario would be the summation of daily irrigation needs of all land to be
irrigated by that field channel. Hence, no rotation in the command of one outlet is needed.
This option would be more appropriate for paddy cultivation where water, as per the preferred
practices of farmers, is applied more frequently. The former option, namely to provide a bigger
sized outlet to supply water once in a few days, implies that the outlet is operated and the field
channel is run only a few days a week to provide the irrigation needs for the whole week. In
this case, again, no rotation is observed among the land irrigated from one outlet.
The outlets in this tank area are designed for the capacity somewhere in between the two
options discussed above because irrigation is not needed every day for dry crops. In fact, for
wheat and white jowar, (sorghum) irrigation is effectively needed only once a week. In this
tank area, each outlet is designed in such a way that rotation within the command area of the
outlet is unavoidable. It requires collective management of an outlet, which farmers seem to
be resisting.

Collective Action
Many farmers, and even MID officials said that farmers settle scores by not cooperating in
sharing the common irrigation resource. Farmers themselves explained the lack of cooperation
by saying that in their tank the rule ‘jiski lathi usaki bhains’9 prevails. Even in the language of
some farmers, the orderly, collective management of the water resource is being arbitrarily
opposed. Let us examine a couple of cases in which the cooperation is resisted.

(i) One farmer owning land on the downstream side of a field channel, through which he
was supposed to receive water from the common outlet, complained that the upstream
farmer stopped tank water to flow through the field channel passing through his land.
This, he claimed, was because he refused to give the upstream farmer water from his
bavi (shallow open well). The downstream farmer approached MID officials and when
even they could not resolve the conflict, he was given permission to dig a separate
channel to his field from the main canal. While talking to me, the tail-end farmer gave
a number of contradictory explanations about how the upstream farmer stopped water
flow through field channel ranging from ‘he broke the field channel’ to ‘he broke the
diversion chamber’ and finally to ‘he blocked the diversion chamber’. We found that
the diversion chamber and the field channel were both intact and that neither was
blocked nor broken.
The upstream farmer confirmed my hunch that the downstream farmer simply wanted
a separate outlet channel for himself and had invented the whole story. But the MID
official had a different story to tell. According to him, there was a conflict between both
146 Esha Shah

farmers over the issue of halla water. The upstream farmer wanted to lift halla water
(which flowed one plot below the land of the downstream farmer) with a diesel pump
and wanted the downstream farmer to give permission to pass the pipeline through
his land, which the downstream farmer refused because he was worried about how it
would affect his land. The upstream farmer then approached the MID to intervene.
The MID also refused to give permission to lift water from the halla. I later found out
that all farmers having land close to the halla have been lifting water from it, but MID
officials denied this was happening. The MID official told me that farmers have to take
permission to lift water from the halla and those who were lifting water have been doing
so since the time before the tank was constructed, as no new permissions had been
granted. This was a different story than what the MID officials told the upstream farmer
when they refused to give him permission inspite of the upstream farmer producing
a recommendation letter from the local Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). The
MID official explained to me that the permission could not be granted because the
upstream farmer’s land was within a distance of 300 m from the tank embankment and
any digging in this area could potentially endanger the structure. The MID official also
told me that the downstream farmer could not in principle refuse to give permission to
let the pipeline pass through his land as long as the pipeline was kept 3 feet below the
surface. When I spoke to the upstream farmer he was not aware of the MID’s rule that
no digging can be allowed within the distance of 300 m of the dam structure despite
the fact that the dispute has been going on for two years. The MID official also said that
it all depended upon the discretion of the officer in charge who interpreted the rules;
and even if the actual distance was more than 300 m, the official could refuse to give
the permission on the ground that the digging could be potentially dangerous to the
embankment.
(ii) Another farmer refused to allow a field channel that would have irrigated 80 acres of
land on the downstream pass through his land. The farmer’s reason was that the chan-
nel would have passed through his land, but it would be 5 feet (1.6 m) below ground
level. As a result, he could not take water from the channel and would also lose part
of his land. He tried to negotiate with the MID that if he were allowed to lift the water
by pump he would allow the field channel to pass through his land, which the MID
refused. Consequently, the farmer refused to give permission to let the field channel
pass through his land, depriving the downstream 80 acres of irrigation.

In my opinion, an attempt to dismiss these conflicts as simply personal problems between

disputing farmers would be seriously misleading. The environment of rule making in which
irrigation infrastructure was designed and implemented had a major role to play in generating
these conflicts. The attitude of MID officials is a major reason why such conflicts have not been
resolved and, in fact, are getting worse. The upstream farmer could have easily been informed
about the rule that no digging was allowed within a distance of 300 m from the dam. MID’s
rule making, which does not seem to be very participatory in nature, is generating a fair deal
 Resource, Rules and Technology 147

of frustration amongst farmers. In another context, a farmer described the MID officials in
derogatory terms and said, ‘they make rules and laws for others and they themselves never
follow them’. Stories were afloat with fairly detailed speculation about how much money
MID officials swindled during the time of the construction of the tank. Several examples of
poor quality construction—canal leakages from the cross drainage structures, canal lining
made with inferior stones, stones directly fixed on the soil instead of on a layer of jelly,
heavy seepage from the earthen embankment, inferior quality of stone revetment on the
embankment—were shown to me. Farmers also exchanged stories about how engineers fought
among themselves when they could not amicably share the bounty given by the contractor.
Even a couple of MID officials themselves, on one occasion said, ‘thank goodness, farmers
just use harsh words and do not beat us up as it happens in (large) dam areas’. In my opinion,
by circulating stories about money swindled by the MID officers and questioning their
moral standing, farmers keep MID’s authority of rule making, interpreting and enforcing in
perspective.
However, what raises a major contradiction in farmers’ attitude towards the MID is that
inspite of the fact that the MID officers are part of the problem, farmers still expect the MID to
play a crucial role in problem solving. Ultimately, it is the MID which is the only recognisable
authority in the irrigated area. When I asked the disputing downstream and upstream farmers
about how the dispute on halla water between them could be resolved, they said that only the
MID could resolve it, because only the MID has power to ‘make or break’. At the peak of their
dispute, which even came to blows, the upstream and downstream farmers even went to the
police station, but the police refused to register a case. Both of them refused to recognise the
authority of the panchayat that did try to intervene.
The upstream farmer’s argument was that if the halla water belonged to the government and
if he could not access it through the downstream farmer’s land, then by the same token the
downstream farmer could not have tank water passing through his land, as that too belonged
to the government. The opinion that water stored in the tank belongs to the government was
echoed in different ways and not only in the specific context of this dispute.
During a casual conversation at a teashop with a group of farmers, I was asked to tell them
something about other tanks I had visited. I described some of the tanks I had visited but
told them in detail about a particular tank that I have discussed elsewhere (see Shah 2003).
In this tank area, a farmers’ organisation had been managing water distribution for the last
two decades. The organisation here not only came into existence entirely due to the initiative
of farmers themselves but also had been successful in streamlining water distribution and
management. When I described the association’s practices in detail among a group of farmers,
some were impressed, some surprised, but most remained sceptical. The discussion drifted to
why farmers in this tank area do not organise and manage water distribution on their own,
make their own rules, settle their disputes and prevent interference of MID officers. A couple
of them laughed saying, ‘if government withdraws from managing this tank, the tank would
be empty in two days and all infrastructure would disappear’.
148 Esha Shah

These incidents hint at the nature of farmers’ expectations from state institutions. This
ambivalent nature of farmers’ expectations from state institutions has been discussed later in
the conclusion to this chapter.
What is important here is that this game of part cooperation and part conflict between
state agencies and farmers has to be understood in the context of farming practices followed
by the farmers in a certain ecological and social context. MID’s efforts to organise farmers into
an association to ensure collective management of water distribution have largely ignored how
productive resources, such as land and water, are used in the first place. An overemphasis on
creating and sustaining rule making and rule following more often than not ignores culturally
specific forms of resource utilisation and farming practices.
In the following section, I have examined the mismatch between the designed method of
water distribution, which pre-supposes the existence of an irrigation association, and farmers’
agricultural practices. I have also examined the consequences of this mismatch for water util-
isation practices, ultimately resulting in unused water in a tank located in a water-scarce region.
To me, destroying outlet structures and not following water distribution rotation marks
the rejection of the manner in which the resource utilisation is mediated through the MID’s
policy as well as a rejection of technological designs.
This pattern of destroying and/or radically modifying the irrigation infrastructure is not
new in this region. In the famine years of 1898 and 1899, peasants of Bijapur filled up a newly-
constructed tank with sand and stones saying that it would breed mosquitoes (Indian Irrigation
Commission 1901–02). The tank had no productive value for them. A second newly-constructed
tank remained unused during the same period. Farmers’ lack of acceptance of newly-constructed
tanks in the dry tracts of Bombay and Karnataka became an important issue of inquiry for the
Irrigation Commission (ibid.). A special inquiry, after a lengthy interrogation of Anglo-Indian
officers, revealed that the farmers did not consider black cotton soil fit for irrigation and feared
that their lands might be damaged, and hence rejected tank irrigation.
Although destroying a tank and destroying outlet structures to modify and alter them are
not the same, the underlying thrust of non-acceptance of a certain form of irrigation method is
the same. In the following pages, I show how ‘designed’ water management mismatches with
culturally and materially-specific farming practices, which, as I will argue, have been primarily
organised to avert risk and generate security by diversification. In the next section, I discuss how
farmers use various sources of water and how they rotate different crops on different types of
land. Stringently designed water rotation rules, which have been designed for two important
purposes—to solicit farmer’s cooperation in collective management of the tank resource and to
mitigate water scarcity that is endemic in the region—generate a serious discrepancy between
the cropping pattern that the designs can support and the pattern that farmers have been
following for long. The making and breaking of rules and farmers’ attitudes towards collective
management have to be evaluated in the context of the productive practices followed by the
farmers and the functional purpose for which irrigation is provided.
 Resource, Rules and Technology 149

Productive Base of Water Management Practices

Land and Labour
Land in this region appeared to be water-starved. Especially after walking kilometres through a
parched, dry landscape where mercury shoots up to 45°C, I presumed that water input in any
form for agriculture must be welcome. It is not so simple, as the following discussion shows.
Farmers in the tank area use other sources of water for irrigation besides tank water. Shallow
groundwater slowly seeping through the pervious geological formation is tapped through open,
shallow wells. Such wells are known as bavi in the local language. Bavi water has been the main
source of irrigation in this region for centuries, and reservoir or tank irrigation, historically, has
not been as popular in this region as in other parts of Karnataka. The landowner has proprietary
rights of water from the bavi on his land. Sharing bavi water with surrounding landowners is
not unknown but the main method of bavi irrigation is individual land property oriented.
The risk of cultivation in this water-parched dry region is significantly high. Failure of rain
for several consecutive seasons is not infrequent and makes the threat of famine real. Memories
of famines are an integral part of this region’s cultural and social landscape (Vasavi 1996).
Farmers follow intricate methods of cultivating various types of lands located at different
places, with a variety of soil characteristics, endowed with varied water-retention capacities
and irrigation facilities as a means of risk aversion.
For example, a farmer who has land in the middle-reach of the LBC may own as much as
four different types of land with varied productive capacities within and outside the atchakat.
Two types of dry/unirrigated land plots (called melatto in local language) are located outside
the atchakat, probably several kilometres away from the village. Melatto land is of two (or
more) types. The most inferior type is generally not invested with scarce labour to level it, and
only rain-fed crops such as navane (millet) or groundnut are planted there during the rainy
season. The productivity of this land may be as low as 1:2 seed to grain ratio even during times
of good rain. The other type of melatto land with a slightly higher amount of black soil, if
levelled, could have a higher water-retention capacity. Here, either rain-fed wheat or white
jowar are planted with fewer seeds per row or in single rows during the rainy season. Some
other farmers have a third type of melatto land with a bavi, which they may have partly
levelled, and which is planted with wheat or white jowar in the rainy season with double-row
planting or with double the number of seeds per row as compared to the inferior melatto land.
The unlevelled land of the same piece is planted with a low-planting density of wheat, white
jowar, navane or groundnut. The same farmer may have two different types of irrigated lands,
one located in the atchakat and the other just outside the atchakat with a bavi. These two
types of lands are usually planted with wheat or white jowar in the rainy season, with single
or double row planting, and cotton in summer, depending upon the reliability of the water
source (either a tank or a bavi). In addition to managing all these different types of land, he
may even occasionally be sharecropping some other farmer’s land.
Sharecropping in this region has a reverse-economic connotation than in paddy-growing
areas. Generally, economically stronger farmers take weaker farmers’ lands for sharecropping.
150 Esha Shah

Those who cannot afford to invest enough labour and capital in their lands because of the
absence of a male member in the family, or illness, or some other social or economic problem,
give their land out for sharecropping. The sharecropper, in return, gives them half the
produce.
Land in this region is relatively abundant. Labour and water are scarce resources. Labour is
the most important and reliable productive force; it needs to be invested in the most effective
and productive way to avert the risk of grain scarcity. The time and labour of farmers in this
region are invested in dispersed geographical locations, with varied intensities during different
seasons, including the irrigation season.
Furthermore, tank irrigation is not a question of life and death for farmers in the atchakat
in the same way it is for a paddy-growing farmer of a paddy-irrigating tank. Tank irrigation
certainly is an important resource and can assure higher output if reliably available, but even
without tank irrigation the crop can survive 40–60 per cent of its planting intensity, and those
with a bavi can even reap more. On the contrary, without irrigation, paddy farmers would
have nothing to plant. Farmers in this tank atchakat do not wait for the tank to receive enough
water before sowing their crops. Both white jowar and wheat are unfailingly sown before a
particular date called jowar tithi (a specific date as per the local agricultural calendar). In no case
is the sowing delayed beyond this date. Those farmers who do not plant their crops on this
date forego cultivation of white jowar that year. The tank generally has received some water
by this date; however, it usually receives water up to full tank level only after the sowing is
complete. Farmers’ decisions about cropping patterns, especially the choice of the crop and
cropping intensity, are, therefore, independent of the timing of water availability in the tank,
although the output of the produce will be finally affected by it.
Agricultural practices in this region have gone through transformation and so have farmers’
attitudes. However, certain elements of socially and culturally organised farming practices
aimed at averting risk still remain unchanged. They continue to remain in the backdrop of
productively organised agriculture upon which transformation or change may manifest. One
such risk-averting strategy is to save and invest labour in the most effective way. Another such
strategy is to diversify agriculture to lands with diverse water retention capacities and fertility.
Farmers manage several types of lands on which different types of crops, including those
cultivated entirely for the market, are rotated and irrigated with diverse sources of water. A
similar pattern of farming is followed even in the tank atchakat.

Water
Farmers consider tank water to be cold compared to bavi water. They believe that if white
jowar and wheat are irrigated entirely with tank water, the yield will be less than if irrigated
intermittently at least four times with bavi water. Only those farmers who have a bavi grow
cotton in the summer, even if the tank has enough water. Onion is irrigated only with bavi
water and fruit orchards, such as lemon, are not irrigated with tank water at all, otherwise the
fruit may fall prematurely. During the time of my fieldwork in February 2000, farmers were
 Resource, Rules and Technology 151

quite worried about the incidents of pest attack on wheat and white jowar. They felt that pest
attacks had dramatically increased in recent years. When I visited the tank again in December
2000, farmers were in a panic because wheat and white jowar were massively attacked by pests
during flowering time. There was a craze to buy and sprinkle pesticides. The farmers I spoke
to estimated that at least half the crop had been lost, if not more. It was believed that the
overuse of tank water had increased susceptibility to pests along with the cool climate during
the flowering time.
Farmers in this region routinely included climatic factors such as cloud cover, lower or
higher than normal temperature, morning dew and the general level of humidity in the air
in their analysis of crop yield and pest control. Cloud cover, they believe, during flowering
time increases susceptibility to pests and reduces yield. Morning dew and higher humidity
than normal reduce need for irrigation. Wheat and white jowar are strictly not irrigated if the
weather is cloudy during the flowering time. Dry climate and enough sunlight are needed
during the flowering time for a good yield of white jowar and wheat. On a similar line, farmers
also believe that because there is always flowing water in the canals, the microclimate is cooler
in the atchakat than outside of the atchakat, which reduces yield.
For example, a farmer explained to me that he has two pieces of land in the atchakat. He
got six to seven bags of white jowar per acre from the land located in the LBC tail-end, whereas
he received seven to eight bags per acre on the land irrigated with the RBC. The land on the
RBC side was planted with double the number of seeds per row than the land on the LBC side.
According to the farmer, the produce on the RBC side was half the produce because planting
density on the RBC side was double that of the LBC side. He explained that the microclimate
on the RBC side was too cool during the flowering time, which considerably reduced the yield.
His land in the LBC tail-end benefited from both assured irrigation and a dry climate during
the flowering time and hence had a good yield. Cotton especially is irrigated at least four to
five times with bavi water in order to avoid pest infestation. Another farmer got 25 bags of
cotton from 0.8 ha of land on the RBC side, which he irrigated with bavi water and fertilised
with green manure. He got only 40 bags (when he had expected 100 bags) from 2 ha of land
on the LBC side, which he irrigated only with tank water. According to him, he would have
received a yield comparable to that of the LBC side if he had applied 20 litres of pesticides.
Farmers here use at least three sources of water—tank, bavi and halla—to support intricately
orchestrated cropping patterns in their carefully divided pieces of land in the atchakat. Out of
320 ha of atchakat, 260 ha use either bavi or halla water in addition to tank water and only
60 ha exclusively depend upon tank water. Many farmers routinely bring water from the bavi
located outside the atchakat to atchakat land (see Figure 8.3). An approximate break up of the
number of farmers using different water sources is tabulated in Table 8.1.
Not only are different types of crops rotated on different types of land, but different water
sources are used for different crops. A family of four brothers have 4.4 ha of irrigated land in
the tail-end of RBC. They rotate different crops in different parts of their land. One part is
sown with white jowar and wheat in September or October, before jowar tithi, irrespective of
whether the tank has received enough water or not. Both wheat and white jowar survive on
rain until mid-November when the tank sluice is generally opened for irrigation. In case the
152 Esha Shah

Figure 8.3: Water from a Bavi Located Outside the

Atchakat being Brought to Atchakat Land

Table 8.1: Number of Landholders Using Different Sources of Water

Total Number of Landholders Only Canal Canal + Bavi Canal + Bavi + Halla Canal + Halla

86 on RBC side 26 56 1 3
65 on LBC side 20 30 13 2

tank has not received enough water by then, only part of the crop survives on rain and bavi
water. In any case, at least 40 per cent of the crop can be reaped. After harvesting jowar and
wheat, this piece of land is kept fallow until March, and during mahanavami (a local festival)
in mid-March cotton is sown here and harvested in September or October. Cotton is irrigated
with bavi water and supplemented with tank water. In another piece of land sunflower is sown
after the cotton seeds have sprouted—15 days after sowing of the cotton—and harvested three-
and-a-half months later. This piece of land is then kept fallow until September for wheat and
white jowar. The source of irrigation is not that crucial for sunflower but it is usually irrigated
 Resource, Rules and Technology 153

with tank water. Another small piece of land is sown with millet in August or September
and onion during June to October. The millet is entirely rainfed while the onion is entirely
irrigated with bavi water. After harvesting cotton, onion is transplanted to a part of this land
in December and irrigated with only bavi water.
All these different types of crops have varied irrigation needs depending upon the type of
soil, its levelling, rain and other microclimatic factors already mentioned. Generally, white
jowar and wheat need irrigation at least once a week and during the entire crop period they are
irrigated with bavi water at least four to five times to avoid pest attacks. Cotton needs water
once a week during March, April and May and later once in 15 days when the rain starts; it is
irrigated with bavi water and intermittently with tank water depending upon pest problems.
Onion needs irrigation 15 times and is irrigated only with bavi water, but some farmers irri-
gate it with tank water two months after transplanting in case of shortage of bavi water. Sun-
flower needs water once a week for the first two months and tank water is used as long as
it is available. This discussion shows that farmers rotate different pieces of their land with
varied fertility, irrigation and labour needs for both types of crops, grown either entirely for
subsistence or for the market.

Rejection of Water Rotation Rules

What is presented here is a simple and comprehensible version of how farmers rotate different
crops according to varied irrigation needs. For the sake of simplicity, how farmers rotate dif-
ferent types and amount of land for different crops is not taken into consideration although
it strongly influences irrigation demand. Nevertheless, one gets an idea that adjusting the
amount and timing of water demand with the availability is not as straightforward as the ad-
vocated rotation model may suggest.
This discussion clearly shows that the careful investment of labour and select rotation of
different types of crops on different types of land are the key elements in organising diverse
types of agricultural land within and outside the atchakat. Diverse forms of labour investment
leave farmers with a much lower degree of leverage to follow a stringently time-bound irrigation
schedule. The irrigation schedule does not capture the nuances of their cropping pattern. In
my interpretation, the making of separate field channels for each piece of land is actually a
rejection of the rotation model adopted in the project, which, as per the design, implies an
inflexible rotation schedule. The farmers’ dependence on tank water is not complete. In fact,
their organisation of the productive environment is not entirely dependent on any one en-
vironmental factor, least of all tank water. Let us examine the proposed rotation schedule in
more detail.
Both the RBC and the LBC have 10 outlets and each outlet irrigates 10–15 ha of land owned
by four to five farmers. The water distribution schedule, as per the design on paper, was planned
to a minute detail: What time each piece of land would receive water during a particular irri-
gation day during the rabi or kharif season. As per the design, outlets were supposed to be
operated continuously from morning till evening. Each outlet would have received water for
two hours a day during which time water should be rotated among the lands irrigated by that
154 Esha Shah

outlet. At the time of fieldwork, most farmers had levelled only a part of their irrigable land,
and did not irrigate all their levelled land during one season. The amount of land each farmer
actually irrigates changes every season depending upon the land s/he has levelled and other
factors such as her/his financial and labour investment capacities.
The farmers are thus contesting the choice of the water distribution and rotation method.
The farmers, at least those in the head-reach, rejected the rotation model, called the warabandi
model, as engineers had explained to them. They referred to the warabandi system as a ‘close’
system10, meaning that the outlets are provided with lockable gates, rotation is observed
among all the outlets and among land irrigated from one outlet. Farmers in the head-reach
opposed outlet gates when the outlets were being fixed on the RBC and asked for, what they
called, an ‘open’ system, meaning a system with piped outlets without gates. This would have
allowed them to irrigate their land at any time they wished. Tail-end farmers, on the other
hand, especially those who grew cotton in summer, preferred gated outlets expecting that it
would result in less wasteful water-use in the head-reach. The MID imposed a condition that
unless all farmers agree to follow the warabandi rotation schedule—rotation among all the
outlets and also among the land irrigated from one outlet—and form a WUA, they would not
provide gated outlets.
What difference would gated and un-gated outlets make? Some head-reach farmers argue that
if there are a limited number of outlets it does not matter if there are gates or not, as a rotation
schedule has to be followed in principle among the land irrigated by one outlet; hence the
rotation schedule should be the focus of dispute rather than the gates. But the summer crop-
growing tail-end farmers hope that gated outlets that can be locked and unlocked will reduce
wastage of water. Tail-end farmers are more worried about wastage than higher withdrawal of
water in the head and middle reaches; they complain that upstream farmers would not bother
to close the outlet after they finished their irrigation. Head-reach farmers, on the other hand,
fear that the lockable outlets will severely curtail their freedom to irrigate their lands as per
their timings and as per their choice of crops.
In my opinion, the amount of water withdrawn from the canals is hardly an issue here.
Unlike paddy, semi-dry crops do not respond to a higher quantity of water; in fact, excess
irrigation can even damage them. Freedom to irrigate as per their timing and as per their crop
choice is, therefore, the key issue.
The conflict thus seemed to be between a system that could provide enough flexibility in
terms of irrigation timings and a system that could provide security of water availability in
the tail-end. However, the cropping pattern in the tail-end is not radically different from the
one followed in the head-reach. The availability of bavi water, the size of landholding and
the general economic condition of the farmer, and not the availability of tank water alone,
decides whether s/he would grow a summer crop or not. A small farmer with 1 ha of land in
the mid-reach without bavi water never grows onions, sunflower or cotton in the summer,
even if his neighbours do so and even if the tank has enough water. The planting intensity of
wheat and white jowar and yield in the tail-end are also not affected by tank water availability
or timing.
 Resource, Rules and Technology 155

Also, when the tank has excess water (explained below), lack of water is hardly an issue.
The lack of water in the tank has a significant impact only on summer cropping. Only those
who have a bavi grow cotton, but they also cultivate cotton only if the tank has at least 3–4
feet of water at the beginning of March. In this way, both the availability of bavi and tank
water decides the possibility of summer cropping. Especially when the tank has excess water
after the white jowar and wheat are harvested, the availability of tank water does not have a
decisive impact on summer cropping either in the head-reach or in the tail-end.

Excess Water
Signs that the tank had excess water were evident in the month of February when white jowar
and wheat were a few days away from being harvested. Just before the harvest, when irrigation
had stopped, water at full canal capacity was being discharged into the halla, and remained
unused. Farmers, whose lands were located outside the atchakat, complained that while their
lands suffered serious water scarcity, almost 3 feet of water from the tank was discharged un-
utilised. The reason was fishery. In the month of June every year, the contractor throws seeds
in the tank. The fish have to be harvested before the month of April when the first rain starts in
this region. It is not easy to harvest unless the water level is reduced to 3 feet. Hence, canals
full of water were flowing into the halla.
Two reasons can account for the non-utilisation of tank water. First, as already explained,
farmers use other sources of water to support a diverse cropping pattern and use tank water only
to irrigate wheat and white jowar. Farmers, particularly on the RBC side, prefer bavi to tank
water for certain crops such as cotton and onion. A few rounds of irrigation with bavi water
are considered necessary even for white jowar and wheat to prevent pest problems. Farmers
without bavi do not cultivate a summer crop at all (even if the tank has water). Second, some
parts of the head-reach on the LBC side are not able to use tank water because the LBC runs
below ground level. A further explanation for this is given below.
The local geology plays a key role here.11 On the western side of the halla, the RBC side,
there is a geological formation of layered, pervious stone extending for 3 km that can yield
good water in a bavi. On the eastern side of the halla, the LBC side, the same type of geological
formation is available only for 1 km. The RBC side has 54 bavis whereas the LBC side has only 25,
although both canals are designed to irrigate the same amount of land. Moreover, the RBC
side has better quality black-cotton soil, whereas the soil on the LBC side is alkaline and sandy,
mixed with small stones. Finally, the bavi water on the LBC side is more alkaline than on the
RBC side. The RBC side is, therefore, better endowed than the LBC side hydro-ecologically.
This has generated a difference in the cropping pattern between the LBC side and the RBC side.
Very few farmers grow cotton on the LBC side. Those who grow cotton need more tank water
in order to leach out the salt accumulated in the soil as a result of irrigation with alkaline bavi
water. Hence, ideally, the tank should have been designed in such a way that the atchakat on
the LBC side benefits more than the RBC side, if equity and also optimum use of water had
been the considerations. But on the contrary, the sluice connected with the RBC is deeper
156 Esha Shah

here than on the LBC side. It provides water for a longer duration than the one on the LBC
side, although both canals as per the design irrigate the same area.
There are ways in which the discrepant distribution of resources between the LBC and
the RBC has been reinforced. For the first 2 km the LBC runs almost 7 feet below ground. It
comes to ground level with 3 feet depth for 0.5 km and then again runs below ground before
emerging at the ground level half-way through.
Both the abovementioned, locally-specific parameters have influenced the tank water util-
isation pattern and resulted in excess water in the tank.

C ONCLUSION

The previous discussion throws several issues pertaining to civil society formation.

• First of all, farmers’ expectations from the state institutions seem ambivalent. Notwith-
standing the MID officers’ high-headedness farmers continue to have latent expectations
from impersonal state institutions to create rules and to create structures that can
potentially prevent arbitrariness and ensure justice. Simultaneously, on the other hand,
they are equally active in destroying and modifying irrigation infrastructure by means
of which certain rules for water sharing are imposed. This contradiction points out
that the role of state institutions cannot be evaluated in black and white. It is neither
only a benevolent benefactor nor just a monstrous adversary. It is perhaps part of both
the problem and the solution. Those who consider development as a discourse that
subjugates and disciplines people often tend to romanticise localism and community.
‘Local’ is considered as the arena for resistance against the hegemonic dominance of
the state. Rule making is the means by which the state imposes its dominance. Hence,
what is resisted in the local arena are externally made and imposed rules. What this case
study shows is that in reality the politics around resource management could be a mixed-
game between the state and the local, partly conflictual and partly cooperative. None of
the players—the state or the local—emerges powerful clearly, either to dominate or to
resist. Inspite of the conflicts generated by the procedural rule-making of the state and
its role in generating conflicts, farmers still seem to be supporting the structuring role
of such rule making.
• It is also a contention of this chapter that the development policy is overly focused on
building institutions, organisations, associations and forming procedural formalities for
rule making and rule implementing. Verbal means of communication are given sole
importance in forming these associations and organisations. The structuring influence
exerted by ecological and technological aspects is almost entirely neglected in the policy
designs that are heavily influenced by the models of deliberative democracy based on
communicative rationality. This case study shows that farmers’ attitudes towards col-
lective management of water distribution infrastructure is heavily influenced by the
 Resource, Rules and Technology 157

way technology is designed and the way productive resources of land, labour and water
are employed in farming activities. Technology non-verbally codes the way resource
is shared, distributed and utilised. No amount of institutional arrangements based on
stringent rule making and rule following, negotiated through verbal communication,
could alleviate or transform the way technology structures and shapes the modalities of
resource sharing. Both consensus and conflict find their articulation on the bedrock of
ecological and technological materiality.
• This case study also shows how everyday reality of resource sharing shapes certain prac-
tices, norms, values and traditions that are not only culturally and socially embedded
but also informally followed. These practices and traditions are based as much upon
shared and common realities of resource utilisation, as upon sites on which, as Chatterjee
(1998) argues, the politics of democratisation is articulated. That means that not the
formality of associations and organisations but informality of culturally and socially
accepted practices provide the space for consensus to build and/or for conflicts and con-
testations to be expressed. Ultimately, social change may not be brought about through
formalisation of associations but through negotiations that take place in informal and
legally undefined spaces.
• The previous point leads to another important issue pertaining to the formation of
civil-society organisations. The farmers’ resistance to get organised into an association,
which reportedly does not seem to be so unique in the case of this tank, raises important
questions. What will follow when the association formation is not voluntary and free—
the fundamental characteristic of civil society formation—but induced or imposed by an
external agency? To what extent can externally orchestrated and planned development
method really be made organically indigenous? Is incompatibility between the planned
and the actual just a gap between the theory and the practice? In development planning,
this gap between theory and practice is expected to be bridged by farmers’ participation
in an organised form in the planning and implementation process. The farmers refusing
to organise into an association generates a serious caveat in this planning process. It also
refers to the points discussed above, to the role of informality in generating practices
and traditions. The notion of participation expected to take place only through formal,
associational channels thus needs a serious reconsideration.

Notes
1. See Rhoads (1991) for a larger discussion on consensus in social system.
2. For further discussion on community and civil society see Kaviraj (2001).
3. See for larger discussion on civil society debate Eberly (2000) and Kaviraj and Khilnani (2001).
4. See Rhoads (1991) for a detailed discussion on conflict in social systems.
5. Various papers published in Hooja et al. (2002) discuss PIM and its users in water management in
detail. Others have also critically discussed these aspects of users associations as new forms of social
engineering (see Manor 1998; Mosse 1999).
6. This is discussed in detail in Shah (2003).
158 Esha Shah

7. As discussed in case of other tanks. See Shah (2003).

8. An outlet is an opening in the canal from where water is taken to fields.
9. This is a proverb in Hindi that literally translates as, ‘the buffalo belongs to the man with a stick’. It
can be interpreted to mean, ‘the brute force of power decides the course of events’.
10. Farmers used the words ‘close’ and ‘open’ in English to describe two different types of systems, as
they perceived them.
11. A local expert, known as water diviner, explained this to us.

References
Chandhoke, N. (2003). Conceits of Civil Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Chatterjee, P. (1998). ‘Community in the East’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33(6): 277–82.
Coward, E.W. (ed.) (1980). Irrigation and Agricultural Development in Asia: Perspectives from the Social Sciences.
Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press.
Eberly, D. (2000). ‘The Meaning, Origins, and Applications of Civil Society’, in D. Eberly (ed.), The Essential
Civil Society Reader: The Classic Essays. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Geertz, C. (1972). ‘The Wet and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco’, Human Ecology,
1(1): 23–39.
——— (1980). ‘Organisation of the Balinese Subak’, in E.W. Coward (ed.), Irrigation and Agricultural
Development in Asia: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press.
Hooja, R., G. Pangare and K.V. Raju (eds) (2002). Users in Water Management. New Delhi: Rawat
Publications.
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Debate for Third World Politics’, Alternatives, 27: 459–87.
Kaviraj, S. (2001). ‘In Search of Civil Society’, in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani (eds), Civil Society: History and
Possibilities. New Delhi: Foundation Books.
Kaviraj, S. and S. Khilnani (eds) (2001). Civil Society: History and Possibilities. New Delhi: Foundation Books.
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of the Cambridge University Press.
Manor, J. (1998). The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization. Washington D.C: The World Bank.
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ization of a Tank Irrigation System in Tamil Nadu’, South Indian Studies, 3(January–June): 1–88.
——— (1999). ‘Colonial and Contemporary Ideologies of Community Management: The Case of Tank
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 9
Crafting Institutions for Collective
Action in Canal Irrigation: Can We
Break the Deadlocks?
Vishal Narain

I NTRODUCTION

This chapter argues that there is a need to revisit the paradigm of participatory irrigation
management (PIM) in India. The experience with the establishment of Water Users Associations
(WUAs) in several states over the last two decades suggests that WUA establishment is not
necessarily the answer to the ills of the irrigation sector. Instead, attention is needed on the
potential for reform through WUA establishment; this requires explicit attention to the design
of canal irrigation systems. For WUA establishment to be a meaningful reform strategy, it
needs to be supported by efforts at reorienting the irrigation bureaucracy and reform at the
main system level. Besides, an assessment of the participatory nature of irrigation management
requires an understanding of social and power relationships that shape accountability rela-
tionships and influence the extent of participation amongst civil society in WUA governance
and decision making processes.
The chapter argues that further research on WUAs and PIM need to locate them in the
broader context of decentralisation in a number of agrarian resource sectors, as well as pay ex-
plicit attention to notions of rights and entitlements. These issues will need critical attention
in the debates on PIM in India in the years to come.
This chapter is divided into five sections including this brief introductory section. Section
two discusses the concept, context and rationale for participatory irrigation management.
It describes the major constituencies for PIM India. Section three briefly reviews the major
lessons learnt in India so far, in the context of PIM. Section four makes a case for research on
Water Users Associations (WUAs) in the context of parallel decentralisation for a number of
activities that are often closely related, or those that overlap. Research on PIM needs to explicitly
address the implications of design, social and power relationships, and rights and entitlements
in irrigation. The final section (section five) suggests a new approach towards PIM; it argues
that PIM should be debated and discussed in the larger agrarian context and local social and
160 Vishal Narain

power relationships. This approach will help in setting up more realistic goals for the PIM and
its impact on water-sector reforms.

T HE C ONCEPT OF P ARTICIPATORY I RRIGATION M ANAGEMENT

In most developing countries, the state has typically made huge investments in large-scale
canal irrigation; it has also played a predominant role in managing and operating these sys-
tems. In recent years, however, there has been a trend towards state disengagement from the
irrigation sector with a greater role envisaged for non-state actors, particularly farmers. This
trend has been referred to as Irrigation Management Transfer, Irrigation Management Turnover
or Participatory Irrigation Management (Turral 1995; Brewer et al. 1999; Economic Development
Institute [EDI] 1998).
Conceptually, these terms could be seen as indicating different levels of farmer involvement
in state-managed irrigation systems (Meinzen-Dick 1996). Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT)
refers to programmes that shift responsibility and authority from the state to non-governmental
bodies; thus, it implies a rolling back of the boundaries of the state. Participatory Irrigation
Management refers to programmes that seek to increase farmers’ direct involvement in system
management, either as a complement or substitute for the state role. It ‘refers to the involvement
of irrigation users in all aspects of irrigation management, and at all levels’ (EDI 1998).
In practise, however, these terms are often used interchangeably. Activities classified as
PIM or IMT normally take the form of the establishment of farmers’ groups called Water Users
Associations, water user groups, or farmers’ organisations for irrigation. These WUAs are then
encouraged to take over functions pertaining to operations and maintenance of irrigation
systems at different levels.
The emphasis on PIM can be traced back to the realisation that the performance of irri-
gation systems had been less than satisfactory because the farmers were not involved in the
management. With huge investments in the irrigation sector in most developing countries, it
was felt that irrigation (mis)management was a problem of social engineering, rather than that
of technical engineering. There was an assumption that irrigation systems were well-designed
technically, and required essentially an organisational structure involving farmers to make
them work. As put forward by Wiener (1976):

Engineering is not the fundamental problem underlying irrigation development in the LDCs
(less developed countries). Engineering principles are known and can be adapted, but the
major problem, however, is to discover ways to utilise farmers more effectively in operations
and maintenance and development programmes which will create rural transformation.
Rural transformation essentially requires changes in farmers’ behaviour, motivations, and
expectations, which is hardly possible until institutions exist to provide them with improved
production possibilities and incentives.
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 161

A similar sentiment was echoed by Lowdermilk (1986): ‘Without active participation of

farmers, irrigation systems can never be efficient or cost effective’. A justification was also built
on grounds of reorienting the bureaucracy. ‘Farmers need a countervailing power and a voice
to assure that their needs are met by those who should be more accountable to them’ (ibid.)
This emphasis on ‘crafting institutions’, that originated in the 1970s, has dominated the
discourse on PIM right through the turn of the century. From farmers’ participation in the
1980s, a shift took place to emphasising self-governance in the 1990s. The literature of the 1980s
came mainly from sociologists and anthropologists who emphasised farmers’ participation. In
the 1990s the main contributors were political scientists and the new institutional economists
who emphasised the evolution of appropriate structures for governance at all levels.
In the Indian context, from participation in the early 1980s, the dominant themes became
organisation in the later 1980s and finally, turnover and self-governance in the 1990s (Maloney
and Raju 1994). With the wave of economic reforms sweeping through in the 1990s, the
major ideas were privatisation, decentralisation, and private management.1 At the turn of
the century, PIM came to be considered as the most essential irrigation related paradigm for
the 21st century (Hooja and Joshi 2000). IndianPIM, the Indian Network on Participatory
Irrigation Management, gave a call for the speedy universalisation of PIM in India, as if it
were a ‘one size fits all’ answer. PIM has come to be seen as some sort of ‘mantra’ for curing
the ills of the irrigation sector.

The Constituencies for Participatory Irrigation Management

The factors that have led to trends towards PIM are now well understood. They have been
led by growing pressures on state finances, pressures from multilateral and bilateral donors,
local action on part of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and a belief in the potential
of community-based forms of natural resource management. In the Indian context, the exact
mix of circumstances and compulsions that have prompted PIM initiatives have varied from
state to state. However, broadly, these reforms have been driven by pressure from funders and
donors, an urge to reduce the financial burden on state governments and through some interest
and lobbying on the part of NGOs.
There have been three major constituencies in favour of PIM: academics, NGOs and multi-
lateral organisations. These, through pressure or persuasion, have created a fourth constituency,
namely governments. These four actors have been the drivers of recent trends in India and
elsewhere, even as the relative significance of each has varied.

The Academic Constituency

Among academic circles, there have been two schools of thought that have been instrumental in
advocating for the building of farmers’ organisations. The first was the Development Sociology
group at Cornell University, whose scholars, such as Norman Uphoff (1986) emphasised farmer
participation as a way out of the poor irrigation management performance trap. The second
162 Vishal Narain

school emphasising crafting institutions has comprised rational choice theorists Ostrom
(1990, 1992) and Tang (1991, 1992) at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis,
Indiana University.
The fact that communities are capable of crafting their own rules for resource appropriation
has been used as evidence to demonstrate the potential of community-based natural resource
management. Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues have used terms and concepts developed in
the rational choice body of work to explain the emergence and survival of local institutions
for collective action in irrigation. Concepts such as rent-seeking, free-riding, opportunistic
behaviour, rules-in-use and transaction costs are used to explain the persistence and superiority
of farmer-managed collective institutions over bureaucratically managed ones.2
This view about the survival of collective institutions has influenced thinking in favour
of ‘crafting’ collective institutions. This approach, however, is somewhat simplistic since it
assumes that having a set of rules-in-use in essence implies that there is conformity, and this
alone is enough to allow a collective institution to flourish. Further, most of the analysis has
been based on indigenous farmer-managed irrigation systems; the replicability of this analysis
to government-managed irrigation systems, however, has been questioned (Hunt 1989). In the
Indian context, this has found expression in states such as Maharashtra, where the existence
of the phad system3 has been advocated as an argument in favour of scaling this trend up in
large-scale canal irrigation systems.

The Policy Constituency

Among policy circles, there has been an emphasis on a ‘territorial perspective’, emphasising
control over and management of natural resources by those whose lives depend on them, and
who, by virtue of their proximity to these resources, are considered to be in the best position to
do so (Korten 1984). Meinzen-Dick (1996) describes this process as a convergence of a number
of policy trends, namely, decentralisation, privatisation, participation and democratisation.
Decentralisation attempts to improve the management of natural and fiscal resources by moving
both decision making authority and payment responsibility to lower levels of government.
Privatisation refers to the transfer of ownership of resources from the public sector to groups
or individuals. Participation and democratisation seek the involvement of citizens affected by
programmes, for social goals of empowering local people and goals of improving programme
performance.
The emphasis on community has also stemmed from a disillusionment with two alternative
approaches to resource allocation and management, the state and the market (Agrawal and
Gibson 1999). With the spread of democratic political structures and the emphasis on par-
ticipation, unrepresentative development and conservation projects have come to be seen as
unattractive and impractical. The failure of bureaucratic, centralised approaches to natural
resource management has compelled governments to experiment with decentralised, ‘par-
ticipatory’ approaches.
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 163

More specifically, in the case of canal irrigation, it has been argued that when government
agencies assume irrigation management functions that farmers could otherwise handle
themselves, it results in higher financial and social costs (Groenfeldt 2000). It is argued that
irrigation users have stronger incentives to manage water productively than a government
bureaucracy does. When management is decentralised to users, they can respond more quickly
to problems or changes in the system. Irrigation Management Transfer has, thus, come to be
seen as a way of relieving governments of financial burdens and improving productivity and
sustainability of irrigation systems (Kolavalli and Brewer 1999; Kloezen 2002).
In India, this has had a clear, visible effect in terms of a strong lobby for IMT among policy
circles. IndianPIM, the Indian Network on Participatory Irrigation Management, has sought
steadily to advance the practice of PIM across irrigation systems in the country. The assumption
that introducing PIM could cure all ills in the irrigation sector seems to have been implicit
here. It has now become fashionable for members of the State Irrigation Department to wax
eloquent about the merits of Participatory Irrigation Management at annual PIM conferences.
This gives the impression of a ‘feel-good-factor’ about PIM.

The NGO Constituency

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at different levels have helped to amplify the role
and auspices of local, indigenous and community groups (Shepherd 1998). In India, this
role has been played by NGOs such as Viksat and Development Support Centre in Gujarat,
Samaj Parivartan Kendra and Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management
(SOPPECOM) in Maharashtra and, more lately, Sahayog in Karnataka.
The critique of NGO involvement in this sector in India is that it has been highly localised
and unable to produce reform beyond a very local scale (Shashidharan 2000). NGOs have
lobbied for PIM, without mobilising sufficient support for the same among the farmers
(Mollinga 1998). In some cases, they have been able to influence policy formulation and
change, as in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka. However, they have been constrained in
their ability to produce reform on a scale larger than a very local one. In Maharashtra, this was
often because of the absence of support from the government (Narain 2003). In Karnataka,
Sahayog has played a positive role in garnering support among the farmers in building a
constituency for change. In Gujarat, there has been a questioning of the role of NGOs in the
PIM process. Should NGOs essentially carry out pilot projects, or should they seek to inform
policy change?

The Multilateral Constituency

While academics and NGOs have glorified community-based management, donors and
multilateral agencies have responded by diverting huge sums of money to support community-
based conversion (Agrawal and Gibson 1999). In India, organisations such as the World Bank,
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation (JBIC) and the Ford Foundation have played an important role. The World Bank
164 Vishal Narain

has mandated for the creation of WUAs in its Water Resources Consolidation Projects (WRCP).
The JBIC has urged for WUA formation in Orissa.
Multilateral and bilateral organisations have also played a role in propagating models of
IMT. In the 1980s, this was the ‘Philippines model’, popularised by the Ford Foundation that
found an echo in efforts in Gujarat and Maharashtra (Mollinga 2001). More recently, this has
been the ‘Mexico Model’, popularised by the World Bank.4 This model has found reflection
in the so-called ‘big-bang approach’ adopted in Andhra Pradesh.
Unfortunately, however, as noted earlier, there has been an assumption of a one-size-fits-
all blueprint approach: an implicit assumption that PIM is a solution regardless of local social
and technological conditions. There is a tacit assumption that models can be lifted from one
setting and planted in another, regardless of the difference in context. State governments
have responded by showing efforts at PIM with little clarity on what policy goals they need
to accomplish.

P IM IN I NDIA –W HAT ARE THE L ESSONS

FOR G OVERNANCE IN THE W ATER S ECTOR ?

In India, a number of states are at different levels of policy formulation and development for
formation of WUAs. Andhra Pradesh legislated on farmer participation in 1997, followed by
Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in 2000. Orissa drafted its own Act in 2002, after a review
of acts in several other states. Several states have amended existing legislation, while others
simply provide for registration of WUAs under existing Acts.
These Acts, while they seem neatly crafted, are very ambitious. There is an implicit
assumption that social engineering can be carried out through legal engineering, by designing
laws that put in place such organisational structures. More than anything else, the passing
of these Acts and the drafting of these legislative provisions seems to serve as testimony that
state governments are keen on PIM, and, more often than not, this enables them to garner
moral and financial support from bilateral and multilateral funders and donors.
What seems lacking largely, and has been somewhat missed, is a stronger reflection of
what the formation of WUAs should achieve. The modus operandi of irrigation reform itself
has come to be seen as the formation of WUAs, with little clarity on how these would bring
about irrigation reform. As in the state of Haryana, there has been very little reform through
WUA establishment and little change in water management and distribution practices (Narain
2003).
While in some other countries, such as Mexico, the establishment of WUAs was part of a
broader agenda of neo-liberal reforms in the wake of the past dissatisfaction with the over-
engagement of the state in several sectors, the integration of the irrigation-reform process with
overall efforts at structural transformation has not happened in India. The WUA establishment
has been an ad hoc, haphazard activity, isolated from mainstream efforts at agrarian change,
social transformation and development.
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 165

In this section, I will argue that the present disenchantment with PIM is the result of four
governance deadlocks or ‘impasses’ that need to be broken. These are:

• the impasse of changing control relations;

• the impasse of resistance;
• the impasse of scale; and
• the impasse of participation and power.

The Impasse of Changing Control Relations

There seems to have been an impasse or a governance deadlock in so far as the impacts of
PIM on changing control relations between the users and the bureaucracy is concerned. In
Karnataka, the approach led to very limited functions being devolved to users (Mollinga 2001).
In Haryana, the process of WUA formation resulted in no significant change in control relations
between the users and the bureaucracy (Narain 2003). In Maharashtra, where the IMT model
did result in a change in control relations, it was for the very same reasons opposed by segments
of the bureaucracy (ibid.).
While the idea behind PIM should be to build new partnerships and empower, this has
not happened. Real power has continued to vest outside the WUAs, technically in the main
system and institutionally with the Irrigation Department, while WUAs simply perform
functions handed over to them by segments of the state bureaucracy. They have continued to
be dependent on and accountable to the bureaucracy and perform the functions assigned to
them, with no change in control relationships. This would run counter to the professed goals
of decentralisation and devolution of power.
Andhra Pradesh’s big-bang approach seems to have lost ground given that after the first term
of the WUAs, their function was taken over by the State Departments. The representation of
WUA no longer has their functioning power. Doraiswamy et al. (2003) note several weaknesses
of the reform programme in Andhra Pradesh. They observe that elections to the WUAs have
not been conducted with drought identified as the only reason. They also point to a general
jeopardisation of the functioning of WUAs.
This gives rise to an important question about the spirit of reform. Here, policy makers need
to address themselves to the wider issue of whether WUAs are being created simply as arms
of the bureaucracy, or are they a mechanism for securing a fundamental change in control
relations (Narain 2000, 2003). Are we building WUAs primarily as a means of accomplishing
irrigation agency objectives, or are we also seeking to devolve technological and organisational
control to user groups?

The Impasse of Resistance

Related to the above point is the next factor: the impasse of resistance. This impasse results
because even as the four constituencies identified in section two of this chapter have maintained
an interest in PIM, the two other segments—and the ones most closely affected by it—namely,
166 Vishal Narain

farmers, and the irrigation bureaucracy have shown little interest or support to the notion in
most states. In some cases, in fact, there has been resistance.
An important critique of the process of PIM in India has been that the process of WUA
formation has been a slow and haphazard one, driven largely by the availability of external
financial resources for state restructuring programmes (Ballabh 2002). Powerful groups and
sections of the irrigation bureaucracy have tended to maintain the status quo, as evidenced in
the case of Maharashtra (Narain 2003). In some states, such as Haryana, WUAs have remained
little more than arms of the bureaucracy (ibid.). They suffer from a number of problems,
such as reliance on government funds, a confusing policy environment and a half-hearted
commitment of the state government. Neither the farmers nor the irrigation bureaucracy seems
to be particularly keen on the idea, for the basic reason that WUA formation under the present
warabandi5 system means little to changing water management and distribution practices.
Farmers have been the recipients of policy reform and have not been involved in their
formulation (Mollinga 1998; Doraiswamy et al. 2003). This is particularly true in states like
Gujarat. This state has been known for its rich variety of institutional forms: the fact that
they did not come up in the canal irrigation sector throws up a big question mark on whether
farmers wanted them in the first place (Narain 2003).

The Impasse of Scale

The scale of PIM has been very limited geographically (ibid. 2000). In states where there have
been efforts at WUA establishment, it covers a very small segment of the irrigated command
area. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, the first states in India to have a critical mass of effort
in organising management turnover, while NGOs have made a significant contribution to
organising management turnover and effecting policy change, they have been unable to act
beyond a certain, limited scale (Shashidharan 2000; Narain 2003). At the other end of the
spectrum, Andhra Pradesh’s big-bang approach to reform is said to have made very little
difference to water distribution and management practices (Jairath 1999).
In the last decade, substantial attention was devoted to the question of whether the approach
should be bottom-up or top-down. Evidence now seems to suggest that the important debate
about WUA formation is not so much about bottom-up versus top-down, big-bang or pilot,
as it is about what we want farmers to do through the process of WUA formation. There is
clearly a need to come out of the bottom-up versus top-down debate. That debate is, in the
longer run, immaterial. Instead, policy makers contemplating the WUA establishment need to
address themselves to this fundamental question: what is it that can be changed through WUA
formation? What do we want to change by forming WUAs? This requires explicit attention
being paid to the design of canal irrigation systems. For instance, the warabandi system of irri-
gation has a different potential for reform than does the shejpali6 system (Narain 2003).
The second issue in the impasse of scale concerns the geographical level at which WUA
formation is carried out. For a WUA formation that is carried out at the lower levels of the sys-
tem to be effective, it needs to be matched by more effective management of the main system.
This requires a reorientation of the irrigation bureaucracy at higher levels of system operation,
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 167

rather than passing the buck for mismanagement on farmers below the outlet. The point
that Wade and Chambers (1980) raised about managing the blind spot in canal irrigation is
as relevant today as it was a few decades ago. In Haryana’s warabandi system, for instance,
forming WUAs below the outlet, as has been the case, is meaningless, given that control and
management problems are located above the outlet. Reform in the warabandi system requires a
system where over-appropriation of water at higher system levels can be checked. This requires
also greater attention to whether routine maintenance functions such as de-silting and de-
weeding along the canal can be checked and carried out. Forming WUAs there below the outlet
in that case simply amounts to evading responsibility for main-system management.

The Impasse of Participation and Power

The final impasse that we have been unable to break relates to a subject that has hitherto
received scant attention. It has been assumed that WUA formation itself is ‘participatory’ in
nature. This approach assumes a simplistic notion of community, as a homogeneous whole,
with the collective representation of users’ interests. This is far from the truth. WUA formation
often leads to a strengthening of existing patterns of power relationships as WUA governance
and decision making processes often tend to be dominated by the village elite. This leads to
an alienation of WUA members from governance and decision making processes. Instead of
widening the net of participation in decision making, WUA formation could continue to limit
that scope. This governance deadlock can be broken only if measures at developing WUAs are
matched by measures for accountability in these institutions of local governance. Otherwise,
PIM will remain a misnomer for irrigation-management reform.
Unravelling the patterns of community-based natural resource management requires an
unpacking of the concept of community; to recognise community not as a homogeneous
whole, but as comprising a number of actors tied, and at the same time, segregated, by power
relationships (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; Kumar 2002). An appreciation of the effect of the
formation of community-based organisations on social and power relationships is essential in
order to understand the extent of participation among different groups, as well as to understand
the creation and working of accountability relationships in local governance structures. Power
relationships in local governance shape the exercise of accountability relationships. This trend
will need all the more attention given the recent trend towards decentralisation in several
agrarian resource sectors.

U NDERSTANDING P ARTICIPATORY I RRIGATION M ANAGEMENT

IN AN A GRARIAN C ONTEXT OF I NSTITUTIONAL P LURALITY

For a more accurate understanding of the social effects of PIM, research needs to focus on
studying WUAs in the wider context of agrarian relationships. The current efforts at forming
WUAs need to be seen in the light of wider policy trends in a large number of agrarian resource
168 Vishal Narain

sectors that have a bearing on agrarian structure. Particularly, there is a need to focus on WUAs
as seen in the broader context of local governance, in which the interface of these associations
with other structures of local governance needs to be at the centrestage.
As noted above, a number of states are at different levels of policy formulation and imple-
mentation for establishing WUAs in large-scale irrigation. At the same time, following the
73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India, efforts are being made to strengthen the village
panchayats-units of local self-government at the village level. The Act entrusts management
of the sources of drinking water to the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). In a parallel move,
India has launched the Swajaldhara scheme, which seeks to expand the coverage of villages
with safe-drinking water and sanitation and entrusts the management of water to village water
and sanitation committees. Thus, there are, in principle, three different organisations with
stakes in water management at the village level.

Implications for Agrarian Structure

The plethora of organisations at the village level has an important bearing on the agrarian
structure, in particular, for social and power relationships and for the exercise of accountability.
It is possible that the same people, comprising the village elite, occupy key positions in the
governance bodies of all the organisations, the WUAs, the water and sanitation committees,
forest protection committees (FPCs) and the village panchayats. In that case, decentralisation
would simply strengthen existing power structures, possibly to the effect of excluding a number
of other users. Under these circumstances, an important objective of decentralisation—namely,
that of widening the net of participation in decision making—stands not accomplished. This
means that efforts at decentralisation produce results that are counterproductive. Too much
decentralisation in many agrarian sectors at the same time defeats its own purpose.

Accountability in Local Governance

The effect of decentralisation on social and power relationships is important from a perspective
of examining the exercise of accountability in local governance. Narain (2003) found that the
location of WUA leaders in village networks that allocate resources and inputs enables them
to evade accountability to WUA members. With parallel efforts at decentralisation in many
agrarian resource sectors, there is a possibility that decentralisation creates new centres of con-
trol with the exclusion of a large segment of users from decision making processes. There is,
on the other hand, a possibility that there are changes in wider constitutional accountability
that will force new arrangements and allow more cross-checking and obligatory rights which,
for instance, will force people to pay their fees.7

Unit of Decentralisation
The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India (1992) that entrusts a greater role for vil-
lage panchayats in local-water management throws up a series of interesting issues vis-à-vis the
interface of the PRIs with WUAs in canal irrigation. The first issue relates to the appropriate
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 169

unit of decentralisation. An important issue engaging the attention of scholars and academics
is whether decentralisation should be carried out at the level of a political boundary such as a
panchayat, or at the level of a hydraulic boundary such as a minor watercourse or a watershed.
Administrative and hydraulic boundaries do not coincide (Narain 2000).
The other issue relates to the social scope of participation that decentralisation at each of
these levels entails. It has been found in Haryana, for instance, that the possibility of the WUAs’
functions being transferred to the panchayat was fraught by important considerations of power
and perceptions of dominance and stratification (ibid. 2003). The jaats, the agriculturists, that
were strongest numerically, socially and politically, revealed a strong resistance to the WUA
functions being handed over to the panchayats. This was because, agriculture, and hence,
irrigation was seen as the domain of the agriculturists; however, the panchayat is an elected
body with representation from different segments of the population. Reserving irrigation-
management functions with the WUA was seen as a means of limiting power sharing with
other segments of the population.

Interface with Other Forms of Social Organisation

The interface of WUAs with other forms of social organisation extends beyond the interface
with formal organisational structures. WUAs also come into interface with pre-existing forms
of social organisation such as the bhaichaara-based organisation in Haryana (ibid.). The presence
of other forms of social organisation for water management influences, to a large extent,
the difference that WUA formation makes to water management and distribution practices.
When there already are in place systems of social organisation for the performance of water
management and distribution functions, the formation of WUAs only builds a redundant
organisational structure. Thus, the interface of WUAs with other forms of organisations is
important from a stand-point of understanding the difference that WUA formation could
make to water management and distribution practices.

Natural Resource Conflicts

The other implication of institutional plurality is in terms of conflict resolution. The creation
of different organisations for water management also creates a potential for conflict over the
same source of water, or over diversion of water for different purposes from the same source. A
research question for further inquiry is whether the creation of a large number of organisations
for water management at the local level gives rise also to a widening of choice with regard to
the forums available for conflict resolution, or does the creation of these organisations breed
greater contestation and ambiguity among them?

Legal Pluralism
The final implication of organisational plurality is the implication of being a member of
several resource management organisations at the same time. Individuals who are members
170 Vishal Narain

of WUAs are simultaneously members of other resource management bodies. Thus, they
are confronted with a number of normative systems, rules and regulations. This breeds a
situation of legal pluralism where individual resource users find themselves simultaneously
facing different systems of rules, regulations and bye-laws. Under these circumstances, how
do individuals choose among different systems of rules and codes of conduct that influence
their behaviour?
These five issues mentioned above deserve critical attention in the research on WUAs in
India in the years to come and in the broader context of current trends in decentralisation in
a number of agrarian resource sectors.

C ONCUSION : B REAKING THE I MPASSE

IN P ARTICIPATORY I RRIGATION M ANAGEMENT

Having reviewed the learnings from PIM in India, how can we break the governance impasses,
that we identified in section three of this chapter? There is clearly a need for research on WUAs
in the wider context of agrarian structure, particularly locating that research in debates on local
governance. This requires a clear break-through and a breaking away from the conventional
approach to studying WUAs; WUAs are seen in isolation from the social, technological and
political context of which they are a part. The literature on WUAs takes a very piece-meal ap-
proach, emphasising isolated factors, rather than the context of local governance.8 There is
a tendency to single out factors that influence the success of WUAs, such as rule making and
number of members. This approach needs to be replaced by an approach that emphasises the
following issues.
The first is the implications of design for WUA establishment. Design characteristics define
the extent to which water management and distribution practices can change through WUA
formation.9 Implications of the design of canal irrigation systems should provide an entry
point for further debates on PIM in India. The second issue is for state governments to clearly
examine what they wish to secure through WUA formation, apart from harnessing on the feel
good factor with donors and funders. This requires defining policy goals of WUA establishments
more clearly. The third issue is to embed WUAs over existing forms of social organisation and
examine their interface with other local governance structures. Finally, attention needs to
be focused on the effects of PIM on a redefinition of water rights and entitlements. Do efforts
at participatory irrigation management impact on governance by leading to a redefinition of
water rights and entitlements, or do they simply maintain the status quo?
Essentially, we need to break away from conventional debates on PIM relating to such dichoto-
mies as top-down vs. bottom-up, big-bang vs. pilot, NGOs vs. Command Area Development
Authority (CADA) and small WUAs vs. large WUAs. WUAs need to be seen against the backdrop
 Crafting Institutions for Collective Action in Canal Irrigation 171

of a larger picture of canal irrigation management reform and a larger picture still of agrarian
structure and relationships. This then should lay down the boundaries of further thinking
on PIM in India.

Notes
1. In India, two workshops were organised by the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad; the
first was in July 1987, titled ‘People’s Participation in Irrigation Management’. Conceptual advances
were made in the second workshop in January 1992, titled ‘Farmers Management in Indian Irrigation
Systems’. The word ‘Participation’ was dropped and the word ‘Management’ was substituted (Maloney
and Raju 1994: 295).
2. See also Narain (2004).
3. The phad system is a system of farmer-managed irrigation that has historically existed in parts of western
Maharashtra. It is a system in which farmers collectively tap water by building local embankments
and share water mutually amongst themselves.
4. For more on the Mexican model and its implementation in Mexico itself, see Kloezen (2002).
5. Warabandi irrigation system is prevalent in Northwest Indian and Pakistan canal irrigations. It is an
arrangement that each cultivator in canal command in assigned a turn, represented by the specific
period of time. The time share becomes a property right legitimised by the state through the creation
of a formal and legal roster for the every delivery channel.
6. Shejpali irrigation system is partially a demand based system in which the irrigation department allo-
cates water in consideration of a farmer’s request according to the land and crop. Unlike the warabandi
system, a farmer has the option to take water or not, and he has to file an application indicating the
area, crop and number of watering turns required beforehand.
7. I thank Professor Linden Vincent for raising this point in one of my interactions with her.
8. A review is provided in Narain (2004).
9. See Narain (2003). See also Kloezen and Mollinga (1992) and Mollinga (1998).

References
Agrawal, A and C.C. Gibson (1999). ‘Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in
Natural Resource Conservation’, World Development, 27(4): 629–49.
Ballabh, V. (2002). ‘Emerging Water Crisis and Political Economy of Irrigation Reforms in India’, paper
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 10
Inter-state Water Disputes
and the Governance Challenge
Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

I NTRODUCTION

In India, inter-state water disputes are fast emerging as a serious national problem. Although,
India is not among the world’s most severely water stressed countries, there are significant
areas of scarcity with one third of its 570,000 villages declared as being water deficient.
This is due to the uneven distribution of water resources both spatially and temporally. The
Himalayan rivers are snow fed and perennial while the peninsular rivers are seasonal and
dependent on the monsoons. The north and east are water rich while the west and south are
water deficient. There are arid, drought-prone regions in the west and south (Andhra Pradesh,
Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu) and in the east there are areas which periodically
experience devastating floods (Bihar, West Bengal, Assam). The distribution of rainfall is also
highly uneven with 100 mm in western Rajasthan to over 11,000 mm at Cherrapunji in
Meghalaya. Further, variability of rainfall from season to season is also very high. The com-
bined effect of such factors is uneven water availability from basin to basin. Added to this is
the problem of inadequate and inequitable allocation of water, increase in population, indus-
trialisation, urbanisation and growing pollution of the water sources. This has resulted in
increased pressure on this valuable resource, where the demand for water is higher than the
supply, causing inter-sectoral and inter-regional conflicts.
The problem of inter-state river water disputes is more acute in India because over 85 per
cent of Indian territory lies within major and medium inter-state river systems. India has 14
major rivers, which are all inter-state rivers and 44 medium rivers, of which nine are inter-state
rivers having catchments or watersheds in two or more states.1 And the issue of water rights has
become complicated and fractious because of the simple fact that surface water and groundwater
flow without regard to political boundaries. This has made the politicisation of inter-state
river water inevitable. Often, water disputes arise amongst the basin states with regard to the
use, distribution or control of the waters in respect of many inter-state rivers or river valleys; or
in the interpretation of the terms of any agreement relating to the use, distribution or control of
such waters or in the implementation of any such agreement; or in the levy of any water rate
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 175

in contravention of various prohibitions. In most of these cases, it is not the lack of water that
leads to conflict, but the inadequate way the resource is governed and managed that is the
cause of the conflict. Hence, proper mechanisms should be in place to deal with the problem
which is becoming a threat to the integrity and unity of India.
Against this background, this chapter analyses the current flare-up in the Ravi-Beas water
dispute and tries to examine the challenges to sharing water peacefully by exploring the factors
responsible for inter-state water disputes and thereby outlining some of the major challenges
to governance for resolving such disputes. The chapter is organised into six sections including
this introductory section. The second section gives the overview of inter-state water disputes
in India. The third section provides a detailed chronological order of the Ravi-Beas dispute.
The fourth section discusses the issues involved in the dispute. The fifth section discusses the
governance challenge. The chapter concludes with the sixth section.

O VERVIEW OF I NTER - STATE W ATER C ONFLICTS IN I NDIA

The inter-state character of most of the Indian rivers has given rise to a number of disputes
among basin states with regard to the sharing of waters of such rivers and their development.
These disputes may pertain to the sharing of the quantum of water among the basin states;
or benefits and cost of an irrigation project; or it may even pertain to the preservation of the
quality of the respective water resources to enable the concerned states to make use of these
resources in their natural stable form. Sometimes disputes have arisen even regarding priority
in respect of various uses of water, in the background of the conflicting claims of the contesting
states in favour of one use or the other. Also, there are problems of identification of the basis
for determining the share of the concerned basin state (Chauhan 1992). These problems pose
difficulties and play a significant role at the time of distribution of the concerned water during
the settlement phase. Inspite of all the difficulties, some of the disputes have been settled through
agreement between the states involved, but some still remain to be settled and a few of them
have been pending for a number of years. This is because sometimes water law problems and
disputes unfold such insurmountable complexities that inspite of the best intentions of the
contesting parties to resolve them early, they defy solutions and get dragged on for decades.
But it will be wrong to gather the impression from the various current disputes that there has
not been much inter-state cooperation in the matter of river development. In fact, the position
is that the number of cases in which the states have cooperated and reached an agreement are
far more than the cases which have remained unsettled ( Jain et al. 1971). The various agreements
made between the states for river developments indicate a clear desire among the states to
cooperate in and develop river valley schemes for the economic development of the nation as
a whole. Not only have the states resolved their differences with regard to the sharing of waters
of inter-state rivers and other connected matters in an amicable manner through agreements,
they have also agreed to collaborate and cooperate in jointly developing the various inter-state
rivers. An overview of some of the inter-state water conflicts is given in Table 10.1.
 Table 10.1: Inter-state Water Conflicts in India
Basin/River/Dam States Involved Cause of Dispute Mode of Settlement Current Status
Ravi-Beas Punjab, Haryana, • Sharing of surplus river water Adjudication through Award given but not yet
Rajasthan, Delhi after reorganisation of state Tribunal (constituted in notified in the official
• Punjab’s insistence on the 1986-report given in 1987) gazette and the stalemate
application of doctrine of continues
‘absolute territorial sovereignty’
in distribution of inter-state
rivers
Narmada Gujarat, • Sharing of waters after Adjudication by Tribunal Award given and dispute
Maharashtra, reorganisation of states (1969–1979) settled
Rajasthan, • Construction of Navagam dam,
Madhya Pradesh Punasa dam and Bargi project
• Height of Sardar Sarovar Project
Godavari Andhra Pradesh, • Sharing and utilisation of the Mutual negotiations and Final award given and the
Karnataka, untapped surplus river water bilateral and tripartite dispute settled
Maharashtra, among the states after the agreements ratified by the
Madhya Pradesh, reorganisation of states Tribunal (1969–1980)
Orissa • Submergence of territories due
to Pochampad, Inchampalli,
Swarna and Suddavagu
irrigation projects
Krishna Andhra Pradesh, • Sharing and utilisation of the Initially through • Award given, dispute
Karnataka, untapped surplus river water negotiation mediated by settled but fresh dispute
Maharashtra among the states after the the central government but of Almatti dam
reorganisation of states final resolution through • Review of the Tribunal
• Telugu Ganga project and the adjudication by tribunal award in May 2000.
Almatti dam (1969–1976)
Cauvery Karnataka, • Sharing and utilisation of the Bilateral negotiations Cauvery development
Kerela, untapped surplus river water and mediation of centre authority has been set
Tamil Nadu, among the states after the and later adjudication by up. The final award of the
Pondicherry reorganisation of states tribunal (1986–interim tribunal is awaited
award 1991)
Mulla Periyar Kerela, Tamil Safety of the dam and Establishment of experts Expert committee report
Dam Nadu submergence of reserve forest committee as per directions submitted to Supreme
land and wildlife sanctuary of Supreme Court Court—next hearing of the
case by Supreme Court on
Nov. 2000
Mahi Gujarat, Sharing of the cost of the Agreement through
Rajasthan multipurpose project as well as mediation of Union
apportionment of power and Ministry of Irrigation
irrigation benefits and Power
Musakhand Uttar Pradesh Sharing of the cost and benefit of Agreement through
dam and Bihar the project mediation of Union
Ministry of Irrigation
and Power
Palar Tamil Nadu and Suspicion regarding the use of Agreement based on joint
Karnataka waters for purposes other than investigation
that agreed upon in the previous
agreement
Source: Compiled from Chauhan (1992) and Website of Water Resource Ministry, Government of India, New Delhi.
178 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

From the data in Table 10.1, we find that inter-state water disputes originate when the
boundaries of the state are redrawn, leading to an institutional vacuum to manage water
disputes; or when any party tries to utilise the waters by construction of large dams or diversion
projects without taking the interest of other parties into consideration. It is argued here that
the resolution of inter-state water disputes depends not only on the deficiencies in the legal
process, like delays in the tribunals and vagueness in the legal doctrine applicable, but also
on other issues such as relations between the concerned states, local problems faced by the
states, level of development achieved by the states and also the power equation between
the centre and the states. The inter-state water conflict and resolution framework is given in
Figure 10.1. The argument is supported through the case study on the Ravi-Beas rivers water
dispute. The formation of a new state and construction of a large dam expresses interest in
capturing a larger share of water on intensification of agriculture, industrialisation, etc.,
which ultimately results in capturing more water than their due share, leading to the conflicts
among the riparian states. The emergence of conflicts leads to constitution of the tribunal to
resolve the dispute. Some tribunals have been able to identify solutions, others have failed,
and disputes continue for a variety of reasons.

Figure 10.1: Inter-state Water Conflict and Resolution Framework

 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 179

R AVI -B EAS W ATER D ISPUTE

Ravi and Beas rivers belong to the Indus system. This system comprises the Indus and its three
tributaries—Kabul, Jhelum, Chenab—to the west and Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to the east. The
partition of India on 15 August 1947 created two new sovereign states, namely, India and
Pakistan, and the new international boundary also bisected the entire Indus Basin, which was
hitherto one nation. The upper reaches of the main Indus River and its eastern tributaries
came to lie in India while the lower reaches found their place in Pakistan. A vast part of the
network of existing canals fell within the territory of Pakistan but the installations which
supplied water to these canals were situated in India. Thus, the development and utilisation
of the water resources in one country appeared to hamper the corresponding development
and utilisation of the same in the other.
While the negotiations for the settlement of the Indus dispute was in progress, development
activities in India started simultaneously in anticipation of a treaty with Pakistan on sharing
of Indus waters as proposed by the World Bank in 1954. The state governments of Punjab,
Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan were re-
quired to prepare a development programme for utilisation of the water of the eastern rivers
that were to become exclusively available to India. Whereas the waters of the river Sutlej had
already been planned to be utilised in the states of Punjab, PEPSU and Rajasthan through the
Bhakra Nangal project; the surplus waters of the Ravi and Beas, excluding pre-Partition use,
had to be planned for utilisation by the states of Punjab, PEPSU, Jammu and Kashmir, and
Rajasthan. On 29 January 1955, an agreement was entered by the concerned states regarding
the distribution of water from the Ravi and Beas, estimated at 15.85 million acre feet (MAF)
over and above the actual pre-Partition use of 3.13 MAF. There under, this 15.85 MAF was
allocated amongst the state of Punjab (5.9 MAF), PEPSU (1.3 MAF), Rajasthan (8.0 MAF) and
Jammu and Kashmir (0.65 MAF). In 1960, the Indus Waters Treaty was signed between India
and Pakistan under which the waters of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej were reserved for exclusive
use by India after the transition period. With the merger of PEPSU with Punjab in 1956, the
share of composite Punjab rose to 7.20 MAF (GOI 1987).
After the bifurcation of the state of Punjab into two separate states, Punjab and Haryana,
in November 1966 under the States Reorganisation Act 1966, a fresh dispute arose between
the newly-formed states as to their respective shares in the 7.20 MAF water allocated to
composite Punjab. Haryana claimed 4.8 MAF out of a total of 7.2 MAF on the principle of
equitable distribution, whereas Punjab staked its claim to the entire quantity of 7.20 MAF on
three counts, namely, (i) Haryana was not a riparian state, in that neither of the two rivers flow
through it nor does any part thereof fall within the valley or basin of the two rivers; (ii) the head-
works of the canal for the distribution of river waters were all situated in reorganised Punjab;
and (iii) Punjab planned an irrigation intensity of 200 per cent to utilise the said waters. On
19 September 1968, a decision was taken at a meeting called by the Government of India (GOI)
on sharing the waters of Ravi-Beas on an ad hoc basis, which allowed 35 per cent for Haryana
and 65 per cent for Punjab, pending finalisation of the dispute (ibid.: 30).
180 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

As the dispute could not be resolved within the stipulated time by agreement between the
two party states, Haryana approached the GOI for a decision under Section 78 of the Punjab
Reorganisation Act 1966. This provides for the apportioning of rights and liabilities of the
existing state of Punjab among the successor states in relation to the Bhakhra-Nangal project
and the Beas project by an agreement entered into by the states after consultation with the
Centre. Pursuant to the demand made by Haryana, a high level committee of independent
experts were appointed by the Central Government in 1970. The GOI on 24 March 1976, after
taking into consideration the various reports received, allocated 3.5 MAF to each of the two
states and the remaining 0.2 MAF to Delhi. In order to make full use of the water allocated to
Haryana under this statutory decision, a proposal for the construction of the Sutlej Yamuna
Link (SYL) Canal was mooted. Punjab was dissatisfied and filed a suit in the Supreme Court
challenging the validity of Section 78 of the 1966 Reorganisation Act. Haryana also filed a suit
for implementing the Centre’s notification of 24 March 1976 (GOI 1987: 30).
While the suit was still pending the states concerned reached an agreement on 31 December
1981. It was when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and Darbara Singh as the Chief Minister
in Punjab. Then Haryana was also under Congress rule, headed by Bhajan Lal. As per that
agree-ment, the flow series was changed from 1921–45 to 1921–602, resulting in an increase of
the availability of the Ravi-Beas waters from 15.85 MAF to 17.17 MAF. The two states withdrew
the suit from the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the amount of distributed water was: Punjab
(4.22 MAF), Jammu and Kashmir (0.65 MAF), Haryana (3.5 MAF), Rajasthan (8.6 MAF) and
Delhi (0.2 MAF). It was further stipulated in the agreement that Punjab would complete the
SYL canal within a period of two years, that is, by 31 December 1983. Lastly, it was agreed
that until such time as Rajasthan was in a position to utilise its full share from the surplus
Ravi-Beas waters, the unutilised share of Rajasthan may be used by Punjab (ibid). Even after
this agreement was signed by all the concerned states the controversy continued to persist and
the questioning of sharing of the water resource continued to be politically alive in Punjab.
After the signing of the agreement, the Government of Punjab released a white paper on
23 April 1982 hailing the agreement which had resulted in an additional 1.32 MAF of water
to Punjab over the allocation made by the GOI, while the allocation of the state of Haryana
remained unchanged. Soon thereafter, certain political changes took place in Punjab, which
ultimately led to the Punjab Legislative Assembly passing a resolution on 5 November 1985
repudiating the said agreement of 31 December 1981 and declaring the white paper as
redundant and irrelevant. Intense negotiations thereafter resulted in the signing of the Punjab
settlement on 24 July 1985 at New Delhi between the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and late
Harchand Singh Longowal, President of the Shiromani Akali Dal. Paragraph nine of this accord
has three subparts. The first part assures water to the farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan,
which would be not less than what was their respective share as on 1 July 1985. The second
part suggests setting up of a tribunal, which would adjudicate the claim of the sharing of water
by Punjab and Haryana. It was decided that that Tribunal will give its decision within six
months, which would be binding on both the states. The third part suggests the continuation
of the construction of the SYL canal. The construction of the canal shall be completed by
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 181

15 August 1986 (GOI 1987: 30). The Central Government constituted the tribunal of the eminent
juries, that is, Justice Eradi, Justice Ahmadi and Justice Balakrishna Menon.

Tribunal Judgement
After looking into the various legal and constitutional aspects of the claims made by the con-
tending parties and the validity of their claims and counter claims, the Eradi Commission
submitted its report in January 1987. The Eradi (Ravi-Beas) Tribunal Report was forwarded in
May 1987 to the concerned state governments. The Tribunal made an attempt for an equitable
apportionment of river water. The quantum of Ravi-Beas water used, as on 1 July 1985, by
Punjab was 3.1 MAF, by Rajasthan (4.98 MAF) and by Haryana (1.62 MAF). The shares of Delhi
and Jammu and Kashmir remained unchanged.
The Tribunal took notice of two important aspects while making its award. First, Haryana
was not utilising the full quantum of water allocated to it under the 1976 and 1981 agreements.
Second, Haryana was receiving 3.68 MAF of Yamuna water, which was likely to go up by
another 0.5 MAF, whereas Punjab had no other source except the Ravi-Beas water. Ultimately
the Tribunal decided to be fair and reasonable and equitable. To allocate the surplus available,
water allocation was made on the basis of the 1921–60 flow series. It allocated 5.0 MAF to Punjab
and Haryana got 3.83 MAF. The share of Rajasthan and Delhi remained unaffected (ibid).
After the submission of the Tribunal report there was no change in the confrontationist
stand by Punjab and Haryana over the sharing of the Ravi-Beas water. Punjab was unhappy.
It charged that the Tribunal in determining the share had gone beyond the terms of reference
and committed ‘errors of jurisdiction’. The course of the SYL canal became a matter of dis-
pute between the two states. The farmers of Punjab felt that the 49 km stretch of the canal
on the Sivaliks might cause water logging of their land due to seepage from the canal. A
committee with R.S. Gill and Gurbachan Singh as its members was set up to look into the SYL
canal problem. After careful examination they concluded that the SYL canal course was best
and rejected Punjab farmers’ plea for realignment. Since then, quite often the political parties,
that is, the Alkalis and the Government of Punjab have linked the SYL canal with the transfer
of Chandigarh to Punjab and some districts of Punjab to Haryana in lieu of Chandigarh. So
much so that in January 1990 Mahant Sewa Das Singh, in a letter to the then Prime Minister
of India, conveyed that to find a lasting solution to Punjab’s problem, the government should
look into the problem of the Ravi-Beas water sharing urgently (Khan 2001).
Punjab filed a review application before the Ravi-Beas Tribunal on 9 August 1987 against
the award given by it under Section 5(3) of the Inter-State Water Disputes (ISWD) Act 1956.
Meanwhile, in 1999, Haryana filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking construction of the
SYL canal. Though the Court had asked the Centre to intervene between the two states, it
did not help. And the judgment that was kept pending was pronounced directing Punjab to
complete the SYL canal within one year.
In 2002, taking exception to the non-completion of the SYL canal by the Punjab Government,
the Supreme Court directed that it should be completed within a year from to augment the
water supply to Haryana and Delhi. In case the Punjab Government failed to accomplish the
182 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

task within the stipulated period, the Centre should get the work done through its own agency.
Acting swiftly on the Supreme Court judgement to complete the SYL canal within one year,
the Punjab Government filed a review petition as also a petition challenging both Section 78
of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, Section 14-A of the Inter-State Water Disputes Act and also
the award of the Ravi-Beas Tribunal.
After the Punjab Government failed to comply with the apex court order of 15 January
2002 directing it to complete the remaining portion of the canal in its territory within a year,
the former petitioned for a review of the court order. The Supreme Court dismissed Punjab’s
petition seeking review of the 15 January 2002 order and on 4 June 2004 directed the Centre
to get the canal completed through a central agency.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, in compliance of the 4 June 2004 Supreme
Court judgement, set up a committee with representatives of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan
on board, and tasked the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) on 2 July 2004 to take
over the canal work from Punjab within two weeks. But before the CPWD’s scheduled start of
canal work, the Punjab Assembly passed a Bill on 12 July 2004, abrogating all water accords
with neighbouring states by the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004. The Centre
moved the apex court seeking fresh instruction in the wake of the Punjab Act which stalled
work by CPWD. After intensive deliberations in the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, the
UPA government, on 21 July, sought the Supreme Court’s opinion on the contentious and
complex issue through a Presidential reference. On 22 July 2004, the President referred
Punjab’s controversial Termination of Agreements Act to the Supreme Court. The decision of
the Supreme Court is pending.

C ASE A NALYSIS : C HALLENGES OF

I NTER - STATE W ATER D ISPUTE R ESOLUTION

Riparian Doctrine
Punjab’s argument on application of the riparian principle in sharing of the river waters is
untenable since the application of the ‘riparian doctrine’ would in practice amount to denial
of the right to divert streams beyond riparian lands ( Jain et al. 1971). Both in the field of
‘international water law disputes’ or ‘inter-state water law disputes’, this theory or the so-called
doctrine of ‘riparian rights’ has never been accepted as basis for or found application in the
settlement of such disputes, inspite of its causal reference here and there. This principle has
also never been accepted in any form whatsoever, even in the pre-Partition period in India
(Chauhan 1992).
The various tribunals constituted in India so far have also rejected the use of the doctrine
of ‘riparian rights’ for the settlement of inter-state disputes. Both the Krishna and Godavari
Water Dispute Tribunals made similar observations that ‘the doctrine of riparian rights governs
the right of private parties, but does not offer a satisfactory basis for settling inter-state water
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 183

disputes’ (GOI 1973, 1979). The Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal also held, among other
things, that the diversion of water of an inter-state river outside the river basin is legal (GOI
1973). The Eradi (Ravi and Beas waters) Tribunal, in its award given in 1987 also rejected the
so-called doctrine of riparian rights when it found the claims of Punjab to the propriety rights
over the water of Ravi and Beas as unsustainable on the basis of its position as a ‘riparian’ and
to the exclusion of Haryana by treating it as ‘non-riparian’ (Chauhan 1992).
The Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal made somewhat ambiguous observations in its report
in 1978 when it remarked that Rajasthan being a non-riparian state was not entitled as a matter
of law to any share in the water of the inter-state river Narmada and that the rights of Rajasthan
must, therefore, be based on the agreement of Chief Ministers dated 12 July 1974 (GOI 1978:
128). Further, it is submitted by the Tribunal that an ‘agreement’ is as good a source of law as
‘custom’, legislation (in statutory form)’, ‘precedent’ or ‘award’, and so on. Thus, by actually
allotting water to Rajasthan out of the Narmada waters the Tribunal conceded the rights of
Rajasthan to these waters, and in such a situation the observation that ‘Rajasthan being a
non-riparian state is not entitled as a matter of law to any share in the waters of the inter-state
river Narmada’ becomes only obitur-dicta or a ‘causal reference’ (Chauhan 1992).

Deficiencies in the Legal Process

Delay in Tribunals
Article 262 of the Indian Constitution provides for parliamentary legislation for adjudication
of inter-state water disputes. In pursuance of these provisions the Parliament enacted the Inter-
State Water Disputes (ISWD) Act of 1956. According to this Act, the states of the Indian Union
have been given the right to request the Centre to set up a tribunal to adjudicate between states
involved in the case of river-water disputes. This can be done only after all attempts at an
amicable settlement through negotiations have failed. But the manner in which the tribunals
have adjudicated the awards leaves a lot to be desired. Further, some tribunals have given
interim orders, while others have failed to give a final order even after a decade (for example,
the Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery river-water disputes).
The main problem with respect to tribunals is inordinate delay at every stage. Even the in-
ability of the states to have a dispute referred to a tribunal unless the Union Government is
satisfied that no negotiated settlement is possible, causes delay (Iyer 1999, 2002). Generally,
delay occurs at three stages, (i) in setting up the tribunal; (ii) in the announcement of the
award; and (iii) in implementation of the award. In the Ravi-Beas case, political difficulties
in implementing the award led to further reference being made to the tribunal and 12 years
after the award was given, the matter is still before the tribunal. In the case of Cauvery, dis-
pute adjudication has been running a troubled course. After the request by the Tamil Nadu
government in 1986, it took over four years and a direction by the Supreme Court for the
tribunal to be set up by the Central Government.
However, states have sometimes refused to accept the decisions of tribunals. Although, the
ISWD Act says that the award is final and binding and provides no appeal even to the Supreme
Court, there is no effective sanction available against the contingency of non-implementation
184 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

of a tribunal’s award by one of the party states. Therefore, arbitration is not entered, often
making it redundant. An inter-state water disputes tribunal can only give an award; it has
no role in its implementation. After giving its award it will cease to exist, it has no powers of
enforcement even when it is in existence (Iyer 2002). Significantly, the courts have also been
ignored on occasion. For example, the Supreme Court’s order to complete the SYL canal was
ignored by Punjab. Finally, the Centre has sometimes intervened directly as well, but in the
most intractable cases, such as the sharing of the Ravi-Beas waters among Haryana, Jammu and
Kashmir, Rajasthan and Punjab; central intervention, too, has been unsuccessful. In the last
few decades, it has been apparent that only the formation of tribunals and their suggestions
are not sufficient to cope with the problem of river-water sharing. The awards of different
tribunals are not backed by enforcing mechanisms.
However, with the amendments to the Inter-State Water Disputes Act passed by the
Parliament in 2002, most of the deficiencies of the legal process have been taken care of. The
amended Act prescribes a one-year time period for the establishment for the tribunal by the Cen-
tral Government on request from the state government. It allows a period of three years
for the tribunal to give an award, which could be extended, if found necessary, by a further
period not exceeding two years by the Central Government. It also gives the tribunal one year
to give a further report if a reference is made to it as provided for in the ISWD Act, and this
one year being further extendable if necessary, with no limit specified for such extension. A
further amendment states that the decisions of the tribunal shall have the same force as an
order or decree of the Supreme Court (Iyer 2003). Inspite of these changes, there are still some
shortcomings in the act as pointed out by Iyer (2003), which include, among others,

(a) no time limit being prescribed for the publication of the tribunal’s decision in the
gazette by the Central Government;
(b) the provision that disputes already settled by the tribunals before the amendment act
shall not be reopened; and
(c) the decision of the tribunal is final and there is no provision for further appeal against
the decision.

Doctrine of ‘Equitable Appropriation’

The doctrine of ‘equitable apportionment’, which is based on the Helsinki Rules 1966, has
emerged as a guiding principle in the field of settlement of inter-state water disputes. According
to the Helsinki Rules: ‘Each basin state is entitled, within its territory, to a reasonable and equit-
able share in the beneficial uses of waters of an international drainage basin’ (Jain 1971: 163).
Words like ‘equitable share’ and ‘beneficial uses’ have not been defined as these may have
different meanings for different parties at different points of time. Thus, the principle of ‘equit-
able apportionment’ is vague and cannot be defined with precision. Its meaning cannot be
written into a code that can be applied to all situations and at all times (GOI 1973). At the
practical level, while applying the theory of ‘equitable apportionment’, it becomes necessary
to determine the respective share of each contending party. This is not only difficult but also
the most complicated problem. Each basin or river system has its own peculiar features and
universally applicable principles in this regard may be impossible to predict. Working out an
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 185

equitable share of each basin state requires an analysis of complex technical and economic
data and the judicious balancing of conflicting claims of, and uses of the river by different
riparian states.
This principle of apportionment also takes into consideration the extent of existing use of
water by the contending basin, co-riparian states or concerned units and protects the existing
use as opposed to the contemplated future use ( Jain et al. 1971; Chauhan 1992). This com-
plicates the problem as different uses of the river by different states are not simultaneous.
Depending upon the needs and the economic development of a state these uses may take place
at different points of time. Thus, how far can an existing use by a riparian state be disturbed
for providing a beneficial equitable use in contemplation of another riparian state is not an
easy matter to decide.

Political Economy of Conflict Resolution

Here, we argue that local agrarian problems and interests affect the performance of the water
sector, and that relations between Centre-states and states-states impact inter-state water dispute
resolutions. There is a strong link between the way water is managed by each contending state
and the level of water scarcity at the basin level. The poor management of water at the local
level has an impact on quantity and quality of water available at the basin level and increases
competition for this scarce resource among the states. Thus, with increased intra- and inter-
sectoral competition over scarce water, we may anticipate conflicts to remain part of the inter-
state water culture, and therefore we have to change our way of managing local-water resources
to minimise conflicts. Prudent water management at the local level can ensure sufficiency of
supply and quality to the different users that make demands upon a river basin.

Relations between the States

Cordial relations between the contending states have an impact on the resolution of inter-state
water disputes. If the relationship is marked by acrimony, it becomes difficult to come to a
negotiated settlement. Unresolved issues of the past like the boundary dispute with Haryana
after the reorganisation of the states on linguistic basis and the non-inclusion of Chandigarh
in Punjab have created a lot of animosity among the people of the two states and this gets
manifested in water disputes. This is because the state with which it has boundary disputes is
also the same state with which it has to share water. So, the general tendency is to divert the
anger of being given a raw deal during the reorganisation of states to water conflicts, which
makes it more difficult to come to an amicable solution.

Power Relations between Centre and States

The power relations between the Centre and the states have also an influence over the peaceful
resolution of inter-state water disputes. The nature of relationship between the Centre and state
governments has significantly changed from that of the 1950s when the ISWD Act came into
force. In the 1950s, the Indian political space was essentially uni-polar with the Indian National
Congress having an unassailable position as the lead party in the union government as well as
186 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

in many states. Since 1989, it became necessary for coalitions to be formed to command a
majority in the lower house of the Parliament and thus form the union government.
Most of the water disputes were solved during the time the parties at the Centre and the
states were the same. The 1981, the Ravi-Beas agreement was reached when Indira Gandhi was
the Prime Minister and Darbara Singh and Bhajan Lal, both Congress chief ministers, were in
power in Punjab and Haryana respectively. By the mid-1980s, this position began to change
with the emergence of regional parties in most of the states in India. These regional parties
have their own agenda, which often gives primacy to the interests of the state and ignores
the national interest. Since they depend on their states for power, there is a huge incentive
for them to sometimes flare up conflicts which have a wide appeal.
The strength of the Central Government vis-à-vis the states also impacts the dispute reso-
lution. When the Central Government is strong—that is, a single party having sufficient
majority in Parliament—it can take a firm stand in the dispute and sometimes even coerce the
contesting states to come to an agreement. When the Central Government is weak—that is, a
coalition with a small majority—it may have self-interest in keeping river water disputes alive
as it has to depend on one or more of the coalition partners for the survival of the government.
It may try to favour one party over the other to gain its support.

Level of Development
Again, if we see the different water disputes, we find that the most vociferous states in these
conflicts are those states that are economically and agriculturally developed. These states
have made full use of their natural resources to reach this level of development. But there is
a price to be paid for every good thing achieved. So development has not come free of cost;
it has its own side-effects which are visible in the destruction and degeneration of natural
resources. To further proceed in the path of development, states need to secure vital natural
resources. But most of the states have exploited their natural resources to an extent wherein
it is difficult for the natural resources to regenerate. Thus, looking at the different water dis-
putes in India we find that the most developed among them are the ones involved in one or
another water dispute. And whenever the dispute involves two or more developed states, the
solution to the dispute is very difficult to achieve. For example, the Cauvery dispute between
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the Ravi-Beas dispute between Punjab and Haryana are still
festering even after years of negotiations and legal wrangling, and a solution to either dispute
is yet to come by.
Another reason for conflict among states is the competitive rivalry among developed states
that makes them clash with neighbouring states which are equally developed. The economy
of Punjab, which was once vibrant, is on the decline. The performance of total economy is
also found to be deteriorating and below the national average. The growth rates of Net State
Domestic Product (NSDP) from agriculture, total NSDP and the per capita income in Punjab
in the 1990s have been lower than those for the country as a whole (Chand 1999). The state,
which was always ahead of its neighbour Haryana (carved out of Punjab itself in 1966) in
agricultural growth, lost to it by the late 1980s. The annual compound growth rates of average
value of output and of yield for the period 1980–83 to 1992–95 at 1990–93 constant prices
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 187

for Punjab were only 3.87 per cent and 2.85 per cent respectively, compared to 4.74 per cent
and 4.13 per cent respectively for Haryana (Bhalla 1999). When the conflict is between a de-
veloped state and an underdeveloped state there is not much acrimony. In fact, this leads to a
better understanding of the other party’s needs and the solutions to the problem are achieved
without much bitter feelings. Also, the reason could be that in underdeveloped states the na-
tural resource in question has not been fully tapped due to slower industrial and agricultural
development, and the resource remains unused, i.e., it is not critical. This helps in coming to
an understanding for solving the conflict. But when the conflict is between two developed
states that are both economically and agriculturally developed, the natural resource for which
both are competing becomes critical for both the parties and also the egos of both the states
clash, and achieving an amicable and smooth settlement becomes difficult.

Local Problems
Most of the water disputes at the state level are manifestations of local-level problems that
may relate to land rights, individual/group conflicts and mismanagement of water at the local
level. Conflicts at the local level may also include petty conflicts between individual farmers
regarding land, water, social status or any other personal reason. Although water may be one
of the reasons for the conflict, the intensity of conflict varies for different reasons. For example,
in a particular location, land conflict may be of prime importance rather than water issues.
Conflicts are also common at community scales between users and sectors involving access to
water of adequate quantity and quality. For example, inequities in water availability within
water courses between head-, middle- and tail-ends are more acute than imbalances of water
supply at the state and canal scales. Even when water supplies are not severely limited, allocation
of water among different users and uses (agriculture and urban residents, for example) can
be highly contested. Degraded water quality, which can pose a serious threat to health and
aggravate scarcity, is also a source of potentially violent disputes.
Usually, there are many local conflicts (other than water) that get manifested as water
conflicts. Due to salience of water issues between states and the consequent availability of
information on them, local conflicts usually receive less attention. But while conflicts often
remain local, they can also impact stability at the national and regional levels. Even if disputes
over water-related issues do not typically cause violent conflict, they often lead to inter-state
tensions. The entanglement of inter-state water disputes with more general centre-state conflicts
and political issues compounds problems.
In this regard, the Ravi-Beas water dispute could be ascribed to the larger agrarian crisis that
the two conflicting states face. The Green Revolution had increased the production of food
grains. But of late there has been a decline in production levels. Intensive cropping of the paddy-
wheat cycle with canal and groundwater has caused widespread water logging and salinity in
these two states. The quality of soil has also degraded due to increased use of chemical fertilisers
and pesticides. In some parts of Punjab, the water table rose by 4–5 m during 1984 to 1994
and led to problems of salinity and water logging, however, the water table in central Punjab
is going down at the rate of 0.23 m per annum due to excessive pumping of groundwater for
irrigation. If this decline continues for the next 15 years, about 2 lakh centrifugal pumps will
188 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

need to be replaced by submersible pumps, which at current prices will cost Rs 2,000 crore or
about Rs 5,000/hectare (ha) of net sown area (Chand 1999). Widespread deficiency of micro-
nutrients has appeared in the soil and there is an increase in weed infestation, pest and disease
outbreak. There is a relative fall in the income levels of the people. The economic condition of
a vast majority of farmers in Punjab has deteriorated. Family income of about 47 per cent of
the farmers from crops plus dairy is lower than the income at lowest pay scale for unskilled
workers in the state and about 20 per cent of the farming population is below the poverty-line
income (ibid.). This has acted as a dampener among the people of the two states to go to the
next level of development. The rising discontent among the farming community due to their
failure to get aspired farm income and problems like declining water-tables in some parts,
water logging in other parts, and soil degradation and environment pollution, have reached
such proportions as to force the state government to make serious efforts to address these
problems. The state government is unable to do much because of the financial crisis facing the
state due to the mismanagement of the finances by the successive governments (Gill 2000).
Therefore, there is a general frustration with the physical realities of life.
Underlying the desperation, particularly in Punjab, is a larger crisis that confronts the farm-
ing community; one that has nothing to do with the canal debate. As Punjab University aca-
demic H.S. Shergill pointed out (Swami 2004): ‘the falling water table and environmental
degradation are no doubt, serious problems, but are certainly not the central issues’. The core of
Punjab’s agrarian crisis is the stagnation of farm incomes for the past many years (Chand 1999)
and farmers’ fears of imminent fall in their incomes if the world-trade agenda is implemented
thoughtlessly. This problem is sought to be remedied by agricultural diversification by getting
out of the rice-wheat cycle and growing vegetables, fruits, dairy, and so on. Although, the net
returns from growing vegetables would be higher than competing crops, it would require
increased use of pesticides and the labour requirement would rise. Further, the returns from
vegetable cultivations are risky due to market fluctuations. This makes the farmers unwilling
to switch to other crops as rice–wheat are low-risk and high-profitability crops and the returns
are higher due to the strong and assured government price support and superior yields of wheat
and rice compared to the competing crops (ibid.). In several scholarly papers, Shergill noted
that efforts to push farmers out of the wheat-rice cycle imposed punitive costs on them and
exposed them to dangerous price fluctuations seen in new high-value crops (Swami 2004).
In both states, however, emotive mass mobilisation on river water issues has been a way for
politicians to deflect attention away from the very real agrarian crises they face and the need
for serious constructive reform.
From the above discussion we see that though the legal aspect is important in the settlement
of inter-state disputes, it is not the only factor for bringing about the settlement of such dis-
putes. Other issues, unrelated to water, play an important role in long-drawn conflicts. These
issues are usually entangled in politics, making their settlement difficult. In fact, most of
the intractable water disputes are due to the hardening of stances by the political parties of
the states concerned. The problem is heightened by the power game indulged by political
leaders of the concerned states. Politicians in Indian states often use this sensitive issue as
a platform for attaining political mileage by whipping up peoples emotions and instigating
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 189

them to take a more vocal and rigid stance on the issue. This causes the dispute to linger on
for years without any solution. Thus, it can be said that water disputes are essentially political
in nature and resolving them would require political solutions. The ultimate responsibility
for either the amicable settlement of conflicts through negotiations or for the intensification
of conflicts by the adoption of uncompromising stances rests with the political leadership of
the states involved in the disputes. Thus, achieving the resolution of long drawn inter-state
water disputes would require mobilisation of political will and a change in the behaviour of
all the actors involved in the settlement of the dispute.

G OVERNANCE C HALLENGE

Most of the time, inter-state water disputes are accentuated by the lack of adequate water
institutions, inadequate administrative capacity, lack of transparency, ambiguous jurisdictions,
overlapping functions, fragmented institutional structures and lack of necessary infrastructure.
This situation represents a crisis of governance which, if left unchecked, could make it unman-
ageable and thus hinder the economic development of the people. Improving governance
for effective resolution of inter-state water disputes would thus require changing institutions
and redefining the roles of different players in society. The present mismanagement of water
resources and the inability of the states to settle disputes in a reasonable time frame provide
an opportunity for civil society to stake its claim for a place in the dispute resolution process.
The present situation is aided by the new governance paradigm where the state is increasingly
loosing its pre-eminence as a provider of service and its place is taken by plurality of actors
(Rhodes 1997). Today, development is not only the concern of the state alone but of the en-
tire society (Pierre 2000). This calls for a wider participation among the civil society in the
dispute resolution mechanism.
Civil society had its rights to manage small water resources and resolve conflicts. However,
with the construction of large dams by the state and the creation of the technical-oriented
irrigation bureaucracy, the ‘right of the people’ was converted to ‘right of the state’ to settle
disputes. It became the duty of the states to arrange and provide for the water services, almost
free of charge. This has brought about the separation of civil society from the water management
process. States have a predominant role in the resolution of inter-state disputes. The legitimacy
of the state to represent the interest of the people in inter-state dispute resolution is gained
through the democratic process of elections, which enables the state to legally represent its
people and sign agreements. The irrigation acts of various states vest the control of water man-
agement in the state government and the ultimate authority regarding use of waters rest with
the government. This is often misused by politicians who indulge in rent-seeking activities
and monopolise the role of representing the interest of the people. This provides incentive
for the political leaders to keep the conflict alive and raise tempers for their own political gain
by creating scenarios of loss of livelihood, food security and, in turn, the essential foundation
190 Hemant Kumar Padhiari and Vishwa Ballabh

of a society and the identity of the people themselves. The involvement of civil society in
dispute-resolution process would make them aware of these challenges.
Given the complexities of conflict, managing inter-state disputes entails ensuring that
disparate voices are heard and engaged in decisions over common waters; this is because
water governance encompasses many interlinked social players and must be responsive to the
needs of the people and to the long term sustainability of the natural resource. This cannot
be done by the government alone; the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and
civil society is also crucial in encouraging cooperation. There have been a number of non-
government initiatives including citizen dialogues in 1992 and, during 2003–04, the ‘Cauvery
family’ approach to establish dialogue between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu farmers from the
Cauvery districts in both states (see for details Janakarajan 2006). Thus, effective governance
of water resources will require the combined commitment of governments and various groups
in civil society, particularly at local/community levels, as well as the private sector. Ways
must be found to include all stakeholders—including local governments, utilities, agricultural
interests, environmental groups, professional associations, research organisations, religious
groups, and industry—that represent the broad diversity of interest in any given society and
create a forum to identify and articulate the needs of stakeholders for water management and
dispute resolution.
Today, it is increasingly being realised that although the states set the overall policies and
laws for resolution of inter-state disputes, they need to involve all users of water in the process
of developing appropriate policies and regulations for successful implementation. To enable
the stakeholders to participate effectively would require establishing an enabling environment
not only for the creation of the right policy frameworks but for ensuring there is adequate
capacity and accountability within regulatory and management institutions to correctly
implement these policies. The creation of accountable but dynamic relationships between the
different players and stakeholders is required. This asks for new forms of polycentric or dis-
tributed governance, with effectiveness sought in complementarity rather than in authority.
Above all, governments need to ensure the participation of all stakeholders—including both
public and private sectors—in the process of creating new and modifying existing legislation.
Importantly, governments have a significant role in developing cooperation at all levels among
those sharing water basins.
For effective negotiations to be achieved among the different stakeholders, building capacity
for integrated water management and conflict prevention is critical. Developing the human,
technical and administrative capacity to generate and analyse data, to develop sustainable man-
agement plans and to implement these plans is necessary to enable water institutions to
fulfil their management tasks and to prevent water-related disputes over the long term. The
capacity of parties to negotiate contested water issues must be strengthened. Capacity building
in conflict-management techniques (such as mediation and facilitation), as well as in stake-
holder participation, would help mitigate conflicts and prevent disputes from emerging during
decision making. Disparities in capacity and knowledge have often led to mistrust between
riparian states, hindering cooperative action. Strengthening the negotiating skills of states can,
therefore, help prevent conflict, as can strengthening their capacity to generate and authorise
relevant data.
 Inter-state Water Disputes and the Governance Challenge 191

C ONCLUSION

Inter-state water disputes are very complex in character, and inspite of sincere efforts by all
concerned some disputes evade solution and remain festering for a long time. It is not only
the deficiencies in the legal process (vagueness regarding the legal doctrine applicable, overall
delay in completion of the adjudication process) that prevents the ultimate settlement of the
dispute, but also certain other issues (unrelated to water) that lead to acrimonious relations
among the contending states get entangled in water disputes and make it much more difficult
to achieve a lasting solution. Thus, even if a final agreement is reached there is no guarantee
that the conflict will not surface again. This is due to the cyclical nature of inter-state water
conflicts. There may be changes in the river basin over a period of time, which may make a
previous agreement inequitable and may require looking at the dispute afresh. The presence of
a permanent monitoring body would be essential to look into the matter of implementation
of the agreements as well as monitoring the changes by constantly collecting data, which
would be useful in settling future conflicts over water. Also, the involvement of civil society
should be encouraged in the dispute resolution process to act as a counter-weight against the
rent-seeking politicians, who would like the dispute to linger on for years and derive political
mileage out of it.

Notes
1. A ‘major’ river is a river with a catchment area of 20,000 sq km or more and a ‘medium’ river is one
with a catchment area of between 200 and 20,000 sq km (Valsalan 1997).
2. The flow series period suggests the period that is taken to calculate the availability of water in the
rivers. In this case when the period for calculating the flow was extended from 1921–45 to 1921–60
the availability of water increased due to better rainfall during the said period which was available
for distribution. The flow series period is an important technical factor in deciding the distribution of
water between states, as one has to go by past rainfall and water availability data in deciding the water
to be distributed. This is tricky as climate may change and the rainfall may not be as it used to be in
the past and hence there is lesser water availability or vice versa and this conflict among parties.

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 Section III
Groundwater Governance
194 Vishwa Ballabh et al.
 11
Groundwater Governance in Eastern India
Vishwa Ballabh, Kameshwar Choudhary,
Sushil Pandey and Sudhakar Mishra

I NTRODUCTION

This chapter is based on the study of six villages, two each in east Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and
West Bengal. The selection of districts and villages are based on the relative progressiveness
of the district in terms of agricultural production and productivity. From each district two
villages were chosen: one to represent high performance of agricultural production and pro-
ductivity and another for its relatively poor performance. The villages from the districts of
Maharajganj in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Purnia in Bihar and Bardhaman in West Bengal were
selected to represent high productivity zones of these areas, and the other three villages from
the districts, namely Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Muzaffarpur of Bihar and 24 Parganas
(South) of West Bengal, to represent relatively backward areas of these states (Ballabh et al.
2002). The main objective of this chapter is to look into groundwater development in the
region and the role played by state, civil society and markets. This chapter also analyses the
emergence of water markets and the distribution of benefits in terms of who loses and who
gains through groundwater development on the one hand and evolution of the water markets
on the other. In the context of governance, which recognises the plurality of the actors and
how the legitimate authorities are exercised in the application of governmental power, and in
the management of public affairs, this chapter goes on to explain the role played by various
actors such as the government revenue department, private dealers, moneylenders and bankers
in the development of the groundwater in reviving the agrarian dynamism in eastern India. It
also brings out the policy implications for the governance of groundwater in eastern India.
The chapter is organised into six sections, including this introductory segment. The second
section deals with patterns of groundwater development in the six villages selected for the
study. The third section explains who owns and controls groundwater in these villages. In
the fourth section, factors responsible for differential patterns of groundwater development
are explained. The nature of water markets, buyers and sellers and likely gainers and losers
are described in the fifth section. The sixth section brings out a summary and conclusion and
identifies policies and strategies for the governance of groundwater in the eastern region,
which is characterised by unconfined abundance of groundwater resources.
196 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

G ROUNDWATER D EVELOPMENT P ATTERN

The data in Table 11.1 provides the extent of groundwater development and other relevant
information for the development of groundwater in the six villages selected for the study.
The proportionate area irrigated through groundwater varies from a minimum of 46 per cent
in Hatberia village of West Bengal to a maximum of 96 per cent in Asonpur of West Bengal.
In fact, in all the villages except Hatberia, more than 70 per cent of the net cultivated area is
irrigated through groundwater either from private pump sets, tube wells or through purchased
water. Thus, the groundwater is well developed in all the villages except Hatberia village of
24 Parganas (South) district in West Bengal. One of the factors that helped widespread use of
groundwater in irrigation is the development of the water market. In fact, the area irrigated
through purchased water is more than that which is irrigated by their own pumps and tube
wells in all the villages except Fariani village of Purnia district in Bihar. Other factors which
have helped in the spread of irrigation through use of groundwater development are (i) num-
ber of bore wells, and (ii) use of plastic pipes for transporting water to distantly-located frag-
ments. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar villages, the number of bore wells is more than pump sets
(see Table 11.1) and farmers move their pump sets from one location to another. As a result,
the scale of operation goes up. Similarly, in Bihar villages, use of plastic pipes to carry water
for a distantly-located parcel was also commonly observed, particularly in Machhahi village
where the degree of fragmentation is highest and size of fragments is very small.
Investment in pump sets and tube wells in these villages has increased rapidly after 1985
leading to rapid development of groundwater resources during the period (see Table 11.2). This
was also the period when eastern Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal experienced rapid growth in
food-grain production, much of which was contributed by the productivity growth. Overall,
however, the density of bore wells and pump sets varies vastly. The number of pump sets per
hectare (ha) of cultivated land is least in Hatberia (0.04) and most in Fariani (0.44). Similarly,
the density of bore wells varies from zero in Hatberia1 to a maximum in Fariani (0.77). It
should be noted that a free-boring scheme in Uttar Pradesh was initiated in 1984–85, which
contributed immensely to the development of groundwater. Elsewhere we have shown that the
density of pump sets have a strong correlation with productivity in the region (Ballabh et al.
2002). Thus, development of groundwater in the region can contribute immensely to the
overall growth and development, and, therefore, there is need to evolve strategies that lead
to uniform development of groundwater covering all sections of the society. The next section
deals with who owns and controls groundwater in the region and its implications for equity
and sustainability of the water resource development.

O WNERSHIP AND C ONTROL OF G ROUNDWATER

The water beneath the land belongs to the owners of land. This is the general belief in India.
However, access to this water depends on one’s ability to invest in water extraction devices—
pump sets, bore wells, tube wells, and the like. The access and control of groundwater resources
 Table 11.1: Groundwater Development in Selected Villages (Village-wise)
Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal

Maharajganj Azamgarh Muzaffarpur Purnia Bardhaman 24 Parganas(S)

Particulars Rampur (U) Khemaupur Machhahi Fariyani Asonpur Hatberia
Total cultivated area (in ha) 194.24 317.47 168.72 107.37 182.99 50.05
No. of fragments/holding 2.11 1.34 5.30 1.59 5.97 1.24
No. of fragments per/ha 2.44 2.69 19.51 3.93 10.35 8.17
No. of borings in the village 133 80 80 83 32 0
Average land size per boring 1.46 3.96 2.11 1.29 5.72 0
Total no. of pump sets/tube wells 51 63∗ 43 47 32∗∗ 2
Average land size per pump set/tube well 3.81 5.03 3.92 2.28 5.72 25.02
Area irrigated by own pump set/tube well 69.67 40.64 47.99 58.24 48.27 0
Area irrigated through buying 84.56 180.81 109.06 28.48 137.72 23.4
Per cent of area irrigated 79.40 69.75 93.03 80.76 96.17 47.75
Range of water charges (Rs/hr) 35–45 10–40 50–60@ 32–40# 20 35–55
Source: Ballabh et al. 2002.
Notes: ∗ Largely electricity operated tube wells.
∗∗ Electricity operated submersible tube wells.
@ Rs 5 per hour + diesel for hiring pump sets to draw water from own bore well.
# Rs 15 per hour if diesel is purchased by the user (for one hour one litre diesel is required.
 Table 11.2: Installation of Bore Wells and Pump Sets in Different Periods
(by numbers)
Name of Village Upto 1970 1971–75 1976–80 1981-85 1986–90 1991–95 1996 and after Total Density

1. Bore wells
Uttar Pradesh
(i) Rampur (U) 6 3 11 27 20 42 24 133 0.68
(ii) Khemaupur 11 5 9 7 16 16 16 80 0.25
Bihar
(i) Fariani 2 3 5 7 26 19 21 83 0.77
(ii) Machhahi 3 2 8 8 26 12 21 80 0.47
West Bengal
(i) Asonpur 0 0 0 0 6 15 11 32 0.17
(ii) Hatberia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00
2. Pump sets
Uttar Pradesh
(i) Rampur (U) 2 2 3 10 11 16 7 51 0.26
(ii) Khemaupur 7 3 9 6 16 13 9 63 0.16
Bihar
(i) Fariani 1 1 2 3 15 10 15 47 0.44
(ii) Machhahi 1 2 4 3 14 5 14 43 0.25
West Bengal
(i) Asonpur∗ 0 0 0 0 6 15 11 32 0.17
(ii) Hatberia 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.04
Source: Ballabh et al. 2002.
Note: ∗ All the pump sets are submersibles and run on electricity.
 Groundwater Governance in Eastern India 199

have been a matter of debate and contestation. It has been argued that small and marginal
farmers have relatively less access to groundwater resources (Shah and Ballabh 1995; Bardhan
1989; Dubash 2002). Others have argued that groundwater is relatively more accessible to
small and marginal farmers than the other sources of irrigation (Shah 1993). Even if they do
have access, they may need to pay a higher per-unit cost for the resource. It is also argued that
control over groundwater resources offers scope for linkages between land and water contracts
in a manner that could strengthen the position of large landowners (Dubash 2002).
The fact that land distribution in east India is skewed is not surprising and the six villages
under study were no exception to it. However, skewness in distribution of land varied vastly
across the six villages. But what is surprising is that the skewness in distribution of land is less
in Bihar and West Bengal villages than in the two villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar
Pradesh, the upper caste households constituting 11 per cent in Rampur and 27 per cent in
Khemaupur have ownership of 26.4 per cent and 60.7 per cent of village land, respectively. On
the other extreme, the Schedule Caste (SC) and Schedule Tribe (ST) population is 39 per cent
and 47 per cent, but they own only 11.9 per cent and 18.1 per cent of village land, respectively.
If we include the landless households of these groups, their position further deteriorates in
terms of landholding. The investment in pump sets and bore wells, however, has been made
by every caste group and it is not confined to the upper castes only (see Table 11.3). In fact,
middle peasantry and the backward and other caste households have proportionately made
more investment in groundwater resources than the upper caste households in all except one
village, namely, Khemaupur in the Azamgarh district of eastern Uttar Pradesh. In terms of
the size of landholding, households having land of between 1 hectare (ha) and above own
more pump sets and bore wells than those owning less than 1 ha of land. Thus, both in terms
of caste as well as size categories of land, the ownership of pump sets and bore wells is rela-
tively more equitably distributed compared to the land distribution across farm size and caste
categories. In Uttar Pradesh villages, a significant number of SC households having less than
0.5 ha land own pump sets and bore wells. Thus, it could be concluded that the asset to extract
groundwater resources are relatively better distributed across caste and class categories. Based
on the evidence gathered from these six villages from eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West
Bengal, it may be asserted that strategies devised in Uttar Pradesh have worked more in favour
of the socially disadvantaged class than the other two states as far as groundwater development
is concerned.

F ACTORS R ESPONSIBLE FOR

G ROUNDWATER D EVELOPMENT
The development of groundwater in eastern regions, particularly eastern Uttar Pradesh and West
Bengal, has been attributed to two contrasting factors. In the case of eastern Uttar Pradesh, it
has been argued that the Free Boring Scheme and Credit-Subsidy Programme intermediated
by the dealers of pump sets have contributed significantly to the development of groundwater
(Shah 2001).
 Table 11.3: Distribution of Bore Wells and Pump Sets by Caste and by Size of Landholding
Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal

Maharajganj Azamgarh Muzaffarpur Purnia Bardhaman 24 Parganas(S)

Rampur (U) Khemaupur Machhahi Fariyani Asonpur Hatberia

Cast/Size of Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump

Landholding Bore Well Set Bore Well Set Bore Well Set Bore Well Set Bore Well Set Bore Well Set
Upper
Large Farmers
(> 3 ha) 12 3 19 14 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Middle Farmers
(1 to 3 ha) 19 9 16 14 0 0 0 0 8 8 0 0
Small Farmers
(0.5 to 1 ha) 1 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Marginal Farmers
(< 0.5 ha) 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Landless 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sub Total 32 12 38 31 0 0 0 0 9 9 0 0
(%) 24.1 23.5 47.5 49.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 28.1 28.1 0.0 0.0
Middle
Large Farmers
(> 3 ha) 21 8 8 7 4 2 12 7 0 0 0 0
Middle Farmers
(1 to 3 ha) 30 12 3 3 25 18 32 16 14 14 0 2
Small Farmers
(0.5 to 1 ha) 10 7 6 4 34 18 20 16 7 7 0 0
Marginal Farmers
(< 0.5 ha) 12 5 0 0 14 4 16 8 2 2 0 0
Landless 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sub Total 73 32 17 14 77 42 80 47 23 23 0 2
(%) 54.9 62.7 21.3 22.2 96.3 97.8 96.4 100.0 71.9 71.9 0.0 100.0
Lower
Large Farmers
(> 3 ha) 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Middle Farmers
(1 to 3 ha) 1 0 4 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Small Farmers
(0.5 to 1 ha) 6 3 7 6 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Marginal Farmers
(< 0.5 ha) 21 4 13 8 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0
Landless 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sub Total 28 7 25 18 3 1 3 0 0 0 0 0
(%) 21.1 13.7 31.3 28.6 3.8 2.2 3.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Total 133 51 80 63 80 43 83 47 32 32 0 2
Source: Primary Data, Ballabh et al. 2002.
202 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

Further, availability of institutional credit, subsidies and free-boring schemes has led to
the emergence of a variety of private entrepreneurs and informal institutions that contribute
to the development of groundwater. The dealers of pump sets and tube wells have found an
opportunity to enhance their sales and profit using the credit and subsidy schemes. This was,
however, possible through procedural modifications which included among other things,
(i) allowing private rigging contractors to do boring; (ii) allowing farmers to choose the brand
of their choice; (iii) procedural changes in disbursement of credit; and (iv) allowing bankers
to pay directly to the dealers of pump sets (Shah 2001). Thus, all the transaction costs of
negotiation with agriculture and minor irrigation (MI) departments and banks were borne by
pump set dealers. Often, these transaction costs are indeed very high and almost consume the
entire subsidy provided to the farmers (Ballabh et al. 2002). In contrast, in West Bengal the
revitalisation of the panchayat institutions and implementation of development programmes
through these institutions, which ensured massive people’s participation at the grassroots level,
are considered to be the prime driving force for the development of groundwater resources
in the state (Pandey et al. 2002).
The extent of investment in pump sets generated through the credit-subsidy scheme across
six villages, however, varies widely. It is about 50 per cent in Rampur village (Maharajganj
district) and only 14 per cent in village Khemaupur (Azamgarh district) of eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Self-finance and credit from non-institutional sources have also contributed significantly to
the development of groundwater. All tube wells in Asonpur were financed through own re-
sources or borrowing from informal credit markets. In the two villages of Bihar, Machhahi
and Fariani, institutional credit played a relatively less significant role in the development of
groundwater (see Table 11.4).
Thus, in majority of the cases, farmers have invested their own funds or mobilised resources
through the informal credit market. The extent and magnitude of credit generated through
non-institutional sources is not known, but given evidence from these villages, the size of such
investment is indeed very large. The government-supported boring scheme has also contributed
to the groundwater development in Rampur and Khemaupur villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh
than in the villages of Bihar and West Bengal. However, according to many farmers in the
eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar villages, more than the free-boring scheme, the evolution of
cost-effective technology for bore wells has contributed to groundwater development. Accord-
ing to their narratives, to begin with, in the 1960s, bore wells were constructed by using material
made of steel and copper, which has changed to plastic pipes since the 1980’s. In nominal terms,
the cost of constructing a bore well in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continues to be around
Rs 2,000 per bore well since the 1960s (in real terms the cost has declined to one-tenth of the
original cost). Thus, cheap boring equipments have made rapid proliferation of groundwater
structures possible. Hence, in real terms the cost has significantly declined.
The role of credit and subsidy through commercial banks seems to have a much lower in-
fluence on investment in pump sets in Bihar and West Bengal villages. The extent of financial
support provided to the commercial banks, cooperatives and regional rural banks varied sub-
stantially across the three states. It is observed that refinancing for MI by National Bank in
Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has been consistently very high in Uttar Pradesh
 Table 11.4: Sources of Investment for Bore Wells and Pump Sets in Selected Villages
Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal

Rampur (U) Khemaupur Machhahi Fariyani Asonpur Hatberia

(no.) % (no.) % (no.) % (no.) % (no.) % (no.) %

Total no. of bore wells 133 80 80 83 32 0
Total no. of pump sets 51 – 63 – 43 – 47 – 32 – 2 –
No. of farmers owning bore wells1 89 25 71 18 80 13 60 23 30 9 0 0
No. of farmers owning pump sets1 50 14 60 15 43 7 44 17 30 9 2 1
No. of farmers owning both1 50 14 45 11 41 7 41 16 30 9 0 0
Sources of investment for bore wells2
(i) Govt-supported free boring scheme 20 15 18 22 2 3 7 8 0 0 0 0
(ii) Self-finance & non-institutional credit 104 78 42 53 70 88 71 86 32 100 0 0
(iii) Bank loan 9 7 20 25 8 9 5 6 0 0 0 0
Sources of investment for pump sets2
(i) Self-finance & non-institutional credit 25 49 54 86 38 88 46 98 32 100 2 100
(ii) Bank loan 26 51 9 14 5 12 1 2 0 0 0 0
Source: Ballabh et al. 2002.
1
Notes: Percentage of owners to the total no. of households in the village.
2
Percentagess shown against the numbers are per cent to the total number of bore wells/pump sets.
204 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

compared with West Bengal and Bihar. The cumulative refinance (per hectare of the net sown
area) in 2000–01 for Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar comes to Rs 941, Rs 188 and Rs 134,
respectively. So, the refinance for Uttar Pradesh is five times that of West Bengal and seven
times that of Bihar during the period 1987–2001. Bihar is the most neglected state, showing
very low or even nil refinance between 1998–2001. Over the years the component of refinance2
to minor irrigation (particularly for the development of groundwater) and the total refinance
is also declining in all three states (see Table 11.5).3
The lack of institutional credit support prevents the development of positive-dealer dynamics
and win-win situations for bankers, dealers and farmers in Bihar and West Bengal. This has led
to different trajectories in the development of primary pump set markets when it moves from
manufactures, to dealers, wholesalers retailers and finally to the farmers. In eastern Uttar
Pradesh, the dealers, through their paid employees, directly negotiate with farmers; in Bihar,
there are layers of agents between pump set dealers and farmers. In West Bengal, the local
panchayat mediates between farmers and bankers. The relationship between farmers and dealers
is limited to buyers and sellers and dealers generally do not do promotional work. Thus, it
was found that the relationship between farmers’ and dealers was much more direct and also
relatively more competitive in Uttar Pradesh than in Bihar or West Bengal (see Table 11.6).
Furthermore, in Bihar, the dealers themselves advance credit to the farmers. These dealers
appoint agents on a commission basis for recovery of loans, which further increases the
transaction cost of credit. Many self-financed pump sets in Bihar villages are basically purchased
through credit from the informal credit market provided by the dealers. While, informally,
many farmers talked about it, when it came to the financing of their own pump set they denied
these aspects; but our impression is that it is quite substantial. In contrast, dealers in Uttar
Pradesh do promotional work but do not have to worry about recovery because more than
50 per cent of the pump sets are financed through the bank and the advancing bank has to
bear the burden of recovery. The Revenue Department of the state government has developed
a simple and banker-friendly procedure for recovery of the loan.
The transaction cost of institutional credit is further enhanced due to the cumbersome pro-
cess of recovery in Bihar and West Bengal. In Bihar, the banks have to pay the district revenue
department an advance fee equal to 10 per cent4 of the recoverable loan amount in case of
default by the borrower. This makes banks hesitant to approach the district revenue department
for the fear of loss of not only the original loan amount but also the commission paid to the
government. In Uttar Pradesh, the district revenue department is allowed to collect 10 per
cent from the borrower only on the recovered amount, after the recovery. In West Bengal,
the procedure to access credit and subsidy has to be routed through the gram panchayat. The
panchayat plays a significant role in the assessment of the creditworthiness of the borrower
and feasibility of the scheme. Often, these decisions are based on political considerations and
affiliations.
Some farmers from the two sample villages in the Bardhaman district of West Bengal stated
that they did not approach the bank and block development officials because they were
sure that the panchayat would not recommend their applications. In fact, all the farmers in
 Table 11.5: Refinance for Minor Irrigation by NABARD to Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar and West Bengal (1987–2001)
Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal
MI Refinance∗ MI Refinance∗ MI Refinance∗
Per cent of Per ha of Per cent of Per ha of Per cent of Per ha of
MI Refinance Total Refinance Net Sown MI Refinance Total Refinance Net Sown MI Refinance Total Refinance Net Sown
Year (Lakh Rs) (%) Area (Rs) (Lakh Rs) (%) Area (Rs) (Lakh Rs) (%) Area (Rs)
1987–88 7130 35.12 41(41)∗∗ 4816 46.66 64(64)∗∗ 1139 17.99 21(21)∗
1988–89 7664 38.17 45(86) 1385 19.45 18(82) 854 15.99 16(37)
1989–90 9866 36.10 57(143) 24 0.33 0(82) 1254 16.52 24(61)
1990–91 11580 34.11 67(210) 501 6.18 6(88) 1026 12.48 19(80)
1991–92 12170 31.88 71(281) 44 0.49 1(89) 1120 11.87 20(100)
1992–93 12930 31.37 75(356) 123 1.52 2(91) 808 7.63 15(115)
1993–94 10866 24.33 63(419) 243 2.99 3(94) 651 6.50 12(127)
1994–95 14640 31.10 85(504) 421 5.12 6(100) 502 4.58 9(136)
1995–96 15499 32.63 89(593) 610 7.37 8(108) 665 5.73 12(148)
1996–97 13642 28.21 78(671) 1120 7.96 15(123) 535 4.31 10(158)
1997–98 11624 21.43 66(737) 711 4.45 10(133) 403 2.86 7(165)
1998–99 11695 17.09 67(805) 0 0 0(133) 382 2.41 7(172)
1999–2000 15391 19.90 88(893) 58 0.33 1(134) 379 1.96 7(179)
2000–01 9794 10.58 56(941) 3 0.02 0(134) 474 1.89 9(188)
Source: Data provided by NABARD office, Mumbai. See Ballabh et al. 2002.
Notes: ∗ Percentages show the proportion of refinance to MI sector (of the refinance of the state).
∗∗ Figures in bracket show the cumulative amount of refinance per hectare of net sown area since 1987–88 rounded off to the
nearest integer.
206 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

Table 11.6: Role of Commission Agents in UP, Bihar and

West Bengal—A Comparative View
Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal
Particulars (Maharajganj) (Muzaffarpur) (Bardhaman)
1. Distributors in the 15–20 5–6 7–10
district (no.)
2. Dealers (retailer-cum- 80–100∗ 15–20 35–40
wholeseller)
3. No. of middlemen and 1–2 5–6 –
commission agents∗∗
4. Distance travelled for 5–10 km 35–40 km 10–15
purchase of pump sets and
boring
5. Nature of competition Intense and competitive Less competitive, large Not existing
no. of commission
agents and monopoly
by a few dealers and
distributors
Source: Primary Data, 2001–02. See Ballabh et al. 2002.
Notes: ∗ Almost every small town in the district has 15–16 dealers.
∗∗ Number of middlemen and commission agents between dealers and farmers.

village Asonpur in Bardhaman district mobilise funds from their own sources and through
informal credit markets and not a single farmer has approached banks for loans and subsidies.
Thus, a new set of transaction costs has emerged in the case of West Bengal for the access of
institutional credit, which in turn affects the development of groundwater through denial or
restricted disbursement of institutional credit.
From the foregoing discussion, it is evident that states, banks and private entrepreneurs all
have played a crucial role in the development of groundwater in three eastern states of India.
However, their role has varied across states and within states among villages. The state has
provided support in terms of subsidies and also ensured institutional credit which has led to
the emergence of pump set dealer-dominated promotional activities. The prime motive of
these dealers was profit through the sales of pump sets. In order to increase their profit, they
absorbed transaction costs associated with negotiations with the revenue, block and banks
for releasing credit and subsidies. Because such opportunity did not exist in Bihar and West
Bengal, their role in promotion of groundwater development has been relatively lower. In
order to boost groundwater development, the state governments need to streamline credit and
subsidy programmes in Bihar and West Bengal and other states in eastern India for boosting
agricultural development.
 Groundwater Governance in Eastern India 207

W ATER M ARKET AND E QUITY

The development of groundwater has also led to the emergence of markets for groundwater
resources. The eastern region is no exception to this general phenomenon. In recent years,
the issue of equity has received specific attention in sale and purchase of groundwater (water
market) in irrigation. One set of opinions holds that socio-economic factors play a very little
role in the groundwater market. Another stream of thought conversely argues that there is
inequity prevailing in the water market. On the one hand, the water market is regarded as a
very important institutional factor, which has promoted agricultural production and equity in
the agrarian sector. Shah and Raju (1987) have described various benefits of the groundwater
market accruing to the large segment of the farming community. They state: ‘Water markets
have the potential to become powerful instruments for efficient and equitable groundwater
development. It is also remarkable that the water markets render every member of market
better off than those of without market. Risk-free income flows to buyers (small farmers) from
better farming on one hand and private tube well owners from selling surplus capacity on the
other. Besides, the landless labourers get improved demands for labour and improved wages’
(cited from Prasad 1993: 210).
Shah and Ballabh (1997: A189) conducted a study of six villages of the Muzaffarpur district
in north Bihar. The study relates to the growth of pump irrigation markets, which they regard
as ‘a robust and dominant irrigation institution dwarfing many other institutional impulses
and serving virtually as the sole powerhouse energising north Bihar’s new-found agrarian
dynamism’ (ibid.). They observed that ‘irrigation was available to almost anyone who asked
for it, regardless of caste and class barriers’ (ibid.). In terms of reliability and availability of
water on demand, the quality of irrigation service was good and ‘social and kinship factors
played a very minor role in mediating water transactions’ (ibid.). But a strong element of
monopoly pricing was evinced. The water rate varied between Rs 20–30/hour from a 5 HP
pump exceeding the incremental pumping cost by a factor of 2.5 to 3 times and average total
cost by a factor of 1.25 to 1.8 times.
It is stated that increasing monopoly rents in water prices could have a negative distributional
impact. It could lead to a progressive transfer of irrigation surplus from water buyers to pump
owners. It could also lead to a loss of output and incomes because water buyers, faced with
high water prices, may use less water than required. However, it was found that ‘the marginal
product of irrigation was so much larger than the price of pump irrigation that buyers were
unmindful of the high price they were paying. No wonder, then, that the high water price was,
as yet, a non-issue for north Bihar’s water buyers’ (Shah and Ballabh 1997). Further, it was ob-
served that in regard to the proportion of area irrigated, cropping intensity, yields, and so on,
the water buyers systematically out-performed pump owners. ‘Overall, the study challenges
the prevailing notion of north Bihar’s stagnant agriculture strapped by feudal production
relations. The agrarian scene in the region seems in the throes of a massive transformation’
(ibid.). A similar opinion was expressed by Niranjan Pant that the emergence of groundwater
208 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

markets facilitated improved access to water even for small holders for whom investment in
groundwater is economically not viable (Ballabh and Pandey 1999: A-13).
But some other studies noticed a significant role of social economic factors hindering the
growth of agriculture in eastern India. In the study of a village (mainly having private tube
wells) in Muzaffarpur district in Bihar (Prasad 1993: 214, 215), it was found that 68 per cent
of the farmers had not felt the impact of groundwater markets on agricultural production. An
important reason, according to this study, of the under utilisation of the groundwater was its
lack of accessibility for the poor farmers—their inability to purchase water. It is stated: ‘though
groundwater market has been spreading over in the village, poor farmers are not able to take
advantage of the existence of such market due to their resourcelessness’ (ibid.). Moreover, the
structure of the groundwater market was not competitive due to large variations in the water
charges and the prevalence of various sorts of discrimination, especially in the supply of water
to the small and marginal farmers. ‘The marginal and small farmers have been far away from
the benefits of the development of groundwater market and thus, its performance lacks equity
effects’ (ibid.). Another set of studies reveals the inequities prevailing in the water market. It
shows that the private tube well owners sell water at higher rates (Rs 20/hr) to the majority
of lower caste buyers; but at lower (Rs 12–18/hr) rates to the same caste (19 per cent) and
higher caste buyers (10 per cent), and to family related households. So, there exists caste-based
inequity in the water market. A lot of variation was found in terms of the payment schedule
for water services also. It was found that of those who made full payment of water purchased,
most (83 per cent) belonged to the lower castes and very few to the same castes (12 per cent)
and higher castes (5 per cent). Moreover, the balance unpaid was largely in the case of family
related households (61 per cent) and also the same castes (19 per cent) and higher castes (15 per
cent), but very little in case of the lower castes (5 per cent).
The evidence from six villages in the three states does not support large inequities in
groundwater sale and purchase. It was observed during the field visit that the number of
buyers and sellers is not mutually exclusive. A water seller could also be a buyer depending
upon the location of his field and the nearest bore well/tube well. Broadly, three types of
terms and conditions for water trading were found in these villages: (i) on cash basis, (ii) on
kind basis and (iii) on area basis. Cash and kind were charged hourly water sales whereas the
charge was on an area basis for an entire season. Each type had a wide variation in water trading
conditioned by informal social relations and convention within the village. Each village had
a particular water rate (we may call it ruling water price) either on hourly basis or on area
basis. On these ruling prices, sometimes, sellers offered a discount and gave more time for the
payment to buyers belonging to the same caste and kinship. Thus, in Bihar the water rates
(per hour) charged are as low as Rs 5 to Rs 15, provided the buyer gets diesel for hired pump
sets to draw water from his own bore well and/or as a swapping arrangement between a pump
set/bore well owner. In Asonpur village (Bardhaman district in West Bengal) a contract rate of
Rs 700/bigha (0.132 ha) is offered to the buyers for the irrigation of boro (summer) paddy by
the submersible pump set owners. In Hatberia village (South 24 Paraganas), the buying of water
is very limited due to high water charges, which restricts rabi cropping. In Uttar Pradesh and
 Groundwater Governance in Eastern India 209

Bihar, water charges are settled usually at the end of a cropping season partly through the
crop yield and the balance by cash.
The data in Tables 11.7 and 11.8 show that the distribution of pure water buyers are those
who depend solely on purchased groundwater. They do not own pump sets and hence are not
involved in water selling by size of landholding and caste categories. Although a large number
of water buyers belong to small and marginal categories, the area irrigated through purchased
water was more on the large farm categories in all but one village—Machhahi in the Muzaffarpur
district. It should be noted that there was only one farmer in this village having land more than
3 ha. Again, in terms of caste, the number of buyers in upper and middle caste households is
higher than the lower caste categories. On the whole, water markets in these villages do not
seem to be oppressive for a particular caste or size category of farm households. Since small
and medium farmers and lower caste households are also sellers, they can claim a sizeable
proportion of irrigation surplus generated through higher water prices, as a group water market
would be in their favour if they are net sellers. To some extent, empirical evidences from the
study villages support it.
A similar analysis of water sellers revealed that the sellers are not dominated by particular
land size categories or castes (Ballabh et al. 2002); if anything, the number of sellers from small
and marginal farm household categories was higher than the middle and large farm households
in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar villages. Some of the small and marginal farm households are sellers
of water in one place and buyers in another place. Thus, water selling has helped these small
and marginal farmers to improve the economic viability of their investment in pump sets. In
the case of West Bengal, it was the middle category farmers having 1–3 ha who were selling
more water. Because of higher costs involved in the development of groundwater through
submersible pump sets and tube wells, a different picture and contractual terms and conditions
emerged in the water market of West Bengal. Two types of contractual arrangements are
common—(i) fixed rent per unit of land, Rs 700/bigha (0.132 ha); and (ii) lease in land on
fixed rent by the owners of submersible pumps and tube wells. The difference between these
two arrangements is that, in the former, all the risk is borne by the water purchaser, whereas,
in the later, the risk is borne by the water sellers.
Although risk of failure for boro rice is relatively small, the person entering into a contract
with the owners of the submersible pump set has to pay the entire contracted amount. Half
of the amount is to be paid in the beginning of the season. The payment is not associated
with the success and failure of the crop and all the risk of crop failure is borne by the owner
of the land. Elsewhere within the district, it was found that the owners of submersible pump
sets lease in land from the neighbouring farmers and pay them a fixed amount of grain (un-
husked rice). This system is not prevalent in Asonpur village of Bardhaman district because
landowners fear loss of their land under the Tenancy Act.
An analysis of sellers by caste categories revealed that water sellers in Rampur and Khemaupur
villages of Uttar Pradesh were evenly distributed among upper, middle and lower castes; in
Machhahi and Fariani villages of Bihar and Asonpur village of West Bengal, it was dominated by
the middle caste groups. Overall, thus comparing the pure buyers and sellers of the groundwater,
it appears that the middle caste group of the farming community have benefited more from the
 Table 11.7: Pure Buyers of Groundwater by Size of Landholding Categories
(No. of Households)
Eastern Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal
Maharajganj Azamgarh Muzaffarpur Purnia Bardhaman 24 Parganas (S)
Caste Particulars Rampur (U) Khemaupur Machhahi Fariyani Asonpur Hatberia
Large Farmers (> 3 ha) No. 4 7 0 0 0 0
Land owned 17.7 27.44 0 0 0 0
(ha)
Medium Farmers No. 24 48 8 9 36 1
(1 to 3 ha)
Land owned 37.5 72.54 11.23 13.68 50.75 1.04
(ha)
Small farmers No. 20 64 51 11 72 14
(0.5 to 1 ha)
Land owned 11.9 42.86 33 7.6 47.94 8.52
(ha)
Marginal farmers No. 136 188 436 50 160 60
(< 0.5 ha)
Land owned 17.6 37.99 64.81 7.84 39.02 14.89
(ha)
Total No. 184 307 495 70 268 75
Land owned 84.5 180.81 109.06 28.48 137.72 24.44
(ha)
Source: Primary data, Ballabh et al. 2002.
 Table 11.8: Pure Buyers of Groundwater by Caste
Eastern Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal
Maharajganj Azamgarh Muzaffarpur Purnia Bardhaman 24 Parganas (S)
Caste Particulars Rampur (U) Khemaupur Machhahi Fariyani Asonpur Hatberia
Upper caste No. 21 74 60 0 120 23
Land owned (ha) 15.99 93.32 7.33 0 67.06 6.57
Middle caste No. 107 84 392 64 146 52
Land owned (ha) 63.18 50.05 99.14 27.81 69.53 17.88
Lower Caste No. 56 149 43 6 2 0
Land owned (ha) 5.39 37.44 2.58 0.67 1.12 0
Total No. 184 307 495 70 268 75
Land owned (ha) 84.56 180.81 109.06 28.48 137.72 24.44
Source: Primary data, Ballabh et al. 2002.
212 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

water market and sale of water than the large or small farmers. Thus, it could be concluded that
the water market does not reinforce an in-egalitarian distribution of resources. If the evidence
gathered from the six villages are any indication, it could be said that the water market leads to
a more egalitarian distribution of gains from groundwater development in the eastern states.

C ONCLUSION

Groundwater development has induced agricultural growth in east India. But the development
of groundwater is not uniform in the region. It varies across states and also between different
regions within a state. This reflects that there is scope for further groundwater development
in the region. Institutional credit has not played as much of a role as it is generally believed.
NABARD refinance has always been the highest in Uttar Pradesh. The flow of credit has led to
the emergence of several intermediate institutions and development of localised markets for
pump sets, which has helped in faster development of groundwater resources. Evidence from
the six villages suggests that small farms and lower caste households are not at a disadvantage
as a group due to monopolistic water prices. To the extent water prices matter, a very important
step from the cost and operation angles would be to go in a big way for installing electric
operated tube wells and ensuring adequate power supply for rapid agricultural development
in the region.
Government support provided in Uttar Pradesh under the free-boring and subsidy-credit
scheme to the small and marginal farmers has enabled them to have the ownership of boring
and pump sets. This has helped them irrigate their own land as well as sell water to other
farmers. So it has, in one way, promoted social equity in the agrarian sector. In addition to
their own resources, they have quite effectively utilised the institutional support provided to
them for the development of groundwater and raising agricultural production. The semi-feudal
constraints on production have been considerably weakened over the years. The development
of new institutions, including the groundwater market, is playing a positive role in expanding
irrigation and raising production. However, the role of the new institutions requires to be deeply
examined. Further, the constraints emerging due to the fragmentation of landholdings, that
is, lack of land consolidation, have been considerably overcome through the development of
the water market and technological factors.
In the 1980s and 1990s, groundwater development and institutional finance have been the
highest in Uttar Pradesh, but the fastest agricultural growth has taken place in West Bengal.
Institutional mechanisms that have facilitated groundwater development are not the same
across the three states. Whereas private dealers and agents have been the key factor in eastern
Uttar Pradesh, the panchayat, despite certain limitations, has played an important role in West
Bengal. In fact, the role of these two institutions is not essentially contradictory. They may
have the potential to play a complementary role for further groundwater development and
agricultural growth. The absence of institutional credit has not only prevented investment in
 Groundwater Governance in Eastern India 213

groundwater development but also the emergence of competitive market for pump sets and
hence the distributive impact as well. However, Bihar has consistently lagged far behind the
other two states in terms of groundwater development and agricultural growth. It needs special
measures for promoting the development of groundwater and agricultural growth. There is a
wide scope for increasing groundwater development, particularly in Bihar and West Bengal
and perhaps even in other states in the region.
Many scholars have shown concern about falling prices of rice in West Bengal due to which
its cultivation is becoming unprofitable. Evidence from Bangladesh also suggests that the fall
in boro rice prices in the early 1990s was directly related to the fall in the number of shallow
tube wells installed. In much of east India, groundwater is used to grow rabi crops of either
wheat in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar or boro rice in West Bengal. These two crops come
within the purview of procurement of the Government of India, which announces a yearly
minimum price for both of these crops. But the public procurement system is very lax in all
the eastern states. In much of east India, farmers are still forced to sell off their produce in
distress right after harvest. Farmers from this region have a comparative advantage in growing
rice, but benefits of minimum support price (MSP) largely goes to north-western commercial
producers of rice (Pandey et al. 2002). The removal of subsidies to rice producers in north-west
India and lowering of the procurement prices will increase the profitability of rice production
in east India. Further, as stated above, this will further induce private capital formation in east
India through investment in groundwater development. There are empirical evidences that
suggest that terms of trade and long term institutional credit have a significant impact on
private capital formations in agriculture. Hence, redesigning credit subsidy for pump irrigation
on the line of Uttar Pradesh so as to make the pump set market more competitive and buyer
friendly would go a long way in the development of agriculture in the region. Thus, if the
agricultural production is to be boosted in east India through groundwater development, the
state government, local institutions like panchayats and institutional credit all have to work
in tandem. In its eastern part, the state of Uttar Pradesh has found this right combination.

Notes
1. In this village, a pump set is used to lift water from small ponds.
2. Refinancing means NABARD provides credit to the commercial and land development banks for ad-
vancing loans to agriculture sectors at the bank rate which is much lower than those charged to
farmers. Thus, the bankers make a sizeable profit on the refinance provided to commercial banks for
advancing loans to agriculture which is a priority sector.
3. The actual credit disbursement to the minor irrigation sector, however, does not solely depend on the
amount of refinance provided by NABARD and banks could also supplement it through their own
resources. It is only when resource availability with a bank is tight that the bank resorts to refinancing.
It is quite common belief in the financial sector that the actual disbursement of credit to agriculture
sector is to the time of three to four times the refinance provided by NABARD.
4. If a borrower defaults in eastern Uttar Pradesh and banks request the revenue department for recovery,
the revenue department charges 10 per cent additional amount as a cost of recovery from the borrower
on the amount recovered. In contrast, in Bihar the bank has to pay 10 per cent on recoverable amount,
whether or not the revenue department has recovered it.
214 Vishwa Ballabh et al.

References
Ballabh, V. and S. Pandey (1999). ‘Transitions in Rice Production Systems in Eastern India: Evidence from
Two Villages in Uttar Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34(13): A11–16.
Ballabh, V., K. Choudhary, S. Pandey and S. Mishra (2002). ‘Groundwater Development and Agriculture
Production: A Comparative Study of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal’, project report
(unpublished). Anand: Institute of Rural Management.
Bardhan, P. (1989). ‘Interlinked Rural Economic Arrangements’, in P. Bardhan (ed.), The Economic Theory
of Agrarian Institutions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dubash, N.K. (2002). Tubewell Capitalism, Groundwater Development and Agrarian Change in Gujarat.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Pandey S., B.C. Barah and L. Velasco (2002). ‘Patterns of Rice Productivity Growth in Eastern India:
Implications for Research and Policy’, unpublished mimeo. Las Banos: International Rice Research
Institute.
Prasad, J. (1993). ‘Marketing of Farm Inputs: A Case Study of Private Groundwater Market in Bihar’, The
Bihar Journal of Agricultural Marketing, 2(2): 209–15.
Shah, T. (1993). Water Markets and Irrigation Development: Political Economy and Practical Policy. Bombay:
Oxford University Press.
Shah, T. and V. Ballabh (1995). ‘The Social Science of Water Stress: An Exploratory Study of Water
Management Institutions in Banaskantha District, Gujarat’, in M. Moench (ed.), Groundwater Man-
agement: The Supply Dominated Focus of Traditional NGO and Government Efforts. Ahmedabad: VIKSAT
Natural Heritage Institute.
Shah, T. (2001). ‘Muscle, Diesel and Electrical: Energy-Irrigation Dynamics in Eastern Uttar Pradesh’,
Monograph, Anand: Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation.
Shah, T. and K.V. Raju (1987). ‘Working of Groundwater Markets in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat: Results
of Two Village Studies’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22(13): A23.
Shah, T. and V. Ballabh (1997). ‘Water Markets in North Bihar, Six Village Studies in Muzaffarpur District’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 32(52): A83.
 12
Political Economy of Groundwater
Governance in Gujarat: A
Micro-level Analysis
Anjal Prakash

I NTRODUCTION

For more than a decade, Gujarat has been at the forefront of debates concerning water scarcity
and the level of decline in the groundwater table. This is rightly so, as water scarcity for
drinking and irrigation is the order of the day in today’s Gujarat, particularly in areas where
groundwater recharge is low and rainfall is scanty and erratic. The consecutive droughts of
1999–2001 aggravated the problem that compels to look into the systems of water governance
in the state.1 The immediate fallout of increasing water scarcity and groundwater level decline
is the deceleration of agricultural growth and productivity seriously affecting the livelihoods
of millions of people staying in the hinterland. The question is—what are the measures taken
by the government to check this process and confer the livelihood rights of the people who
are directly affected? The issue of groundwater governance comes as a necessary and important
point in these deliberations due to heavy reliance of the state on groundwater resources for
agriculture. More than 80 per cent of the state’s irrigation requirements are met through
groundwater, a resource that has been overdeveloped in recent years.
The crisis of depleting aquifers and increasing threat to the livelihood of the poor is in fact a
crisis of governance. Gujarat stands in the queue of weak groundwater-governed states of India
due to its failure in managing a precious resource. This is largely manifested in inadequacies
to enforce rules regarding access and use of groundwater. Far from it, the state has encouraged
groundwater exploitation through encouraging groundwater-based agriculture intensification.
Further, it turned a blind eye on expanding private groundwater markets in the early 1980s
and late 1990s which exploited the deep aquifer through a subsidised electricity structure and
lack of enforcement of regulatory mechanism. Most of these markets have been shrinking due
to decline in water levels and increasing prices to access them from deep aquifers. Agricultural
intensification suffers from stagnation due to land degradation and crop failure narrowing the
gap between agricultural investment and profit. The water resources have been exploited to
216 Anjal Prakash

such an extent that even the famous Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), professed as the panacea to
solve the water problems, would also not be able to enhance much of the lost groundwater
in critical areas.
This chapter traces the history of groundwater governance in Gujarat by looking into the
causes and distribution of water scarcity, showing how scarcity is historically grounded in the
social-ecology and larger political economy of the state. The chapter begins with sketching
the groundwater scarcity in different eco-regions of Gujarat. This is followed by focus on the
process of agricultural intensification in the pre and post-Independence era marked with new
technology that relied on groundwater irrigation that aggravated the problem of its depletion.
This process also increased inequity in resource access, where the gains from agricultural inten-
sification largely benefited the affluent classes within the village society. It then discusses the
possible changes brought about in the groundwater ecology of Gujarat through the famous
SSP and its distribution networks. At the end, the chapter summarises the discussions and
looks into alternative forms of groundwater governance, focussing on restoring community-
based surface water bodies and ecologically-benign agricultural development to enhance the
productivity of the ecosystem.

T HE A GRO - ECOLOGY OF G UJARAT

Within its limited geographic area, Gujarat has a unique bio-climate ranging from dry desert
areas to high-altitude rain forests. According to the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Planning,
Gujarat can be broadly divided into eight major eco-regions based on variability in rainfall
potential and actual evapo-transpiration and other ecological factors. These regions are marked
by erratic and uneven rainfall on one hand and heavy rains on the other. Gujarat receives only
one rainfall each year from the south-west monsoon between June–July to September–October
that ranges from 1,000–2,000 mm in the southern rocky highland to around 250–400 mm in
Kutch. The distribution of rainfall determines the water regime of the state. Around 70 per
cent of Gujarat’s total geographic area falls in the arid or semi-arid region and is drought-
prone (see Table 12.1). The surface water is generally concentrated in southern and central
parts of the state. The northern alluvial plain lacks a perennial source of water but is rich in
groundwater sources. Most of the groundwater resource is concentrated in unconsolidated
formations covering 40 per cent of the area of the state. Around 70 per cent of this potential
is in the alluvial plains (Patel 1997).
For the purpose of the present analysis, the agro-ecological zones of Gujarat are broadly
divided into four regions: water-abundant south Gujarat; central alluvial plain or middle
Gujarat; semi-arid northern alluvial plain or north Gujarat; and peninsular Gujarat including
Saurashtra and Kutch. The differential rainfall in the above regions has resulted in a particular
agro-ecology across the state. The rainfall diminishes from the southern hills (1,000–2,000 mm
annually) to the northern-most districts of Sabarkantha and Banaskantha (300–400 mm an-
nually). While the southern hills are forested, the northern plains feature good soil in Mehsana
 Table 12.1: Eco-regions of Gujarat
Ecosystems
Area in Aridity Index in Rainfall in
Eco-region Name Per cent Per cent Millimetre Water Regime Natural Ecosystem Agro-ecosystem
Northern rocky 12 30–40 Semiarid 700–1000 Unconfined Dry deciduous Rainfed
highland forest
Southern rocky 7 10–15 Sub-humid 1000–2000 Unconfined Moist deciduous Rainfed
highland forest
Northern alluvial 14 20–40 Semiarid 450–700 Unconfined & Scrub forest Rainfed, Irrigated
plane Confined waterland
Central alluvial 8 20–30 Sub-humid 500–800 Unconfined & Nil Irrigated &
plane Confined Irrigated rainfed
Rann and Banni of 13 40 Arid 250–450 Saline waste Rann, wet/dry Nil
Kutch grassland
Peninsula of Kutch 8 40 Arid 250–450 Unconfined and Scrub forest Rainfed
Semi-confined wasteland
Peninsula of 24 20–40 Semiarid 400–600 Unconfined and Scrub forest Rainfed
Saurashtra Semi-confined wasteland
Coastal zones of 14 10–40 Arid to 250–200 Unconfined Littoral and Rainfed, irrigated,
Gujarat Humid swamp forests, horticulture
wetlands, estuaries
Source: Compiled from Patel (1997).
218 Anjal Prakash

and part of Banaskantha district. The climate becomes semi-arid proceeding towards the north-
west. Peninsular Gujarat consists of two sub-regions—Saurashtra and Kutch. Most of Saurashtra
is characterised by semi-arid hard rock regions with an annual rainfall of 400 mm. Kutch has
an annual rainfall of around 300 mm and is the most arid part of Gujarat (Wood 1999).
This ecological diversity has resulted in uneven distribution of cultivable land, water and
vegetation across the state, which also determines the water availability in each of the four
eco-regions. The combination of climate, physiography and geology in different regions of the
state provides naturally favourable conditions for water resources. The north Gujarat alluvial
area has low rainfall, but good topographic conditions for recharge and ideal conditions for
aquifers, making it a groundwater rich region.2 The southern hilly and forested areas have pro-
vided perfect locations for creating surface storage dam reservoirs. The arid areas of Kutch have
confined aquifers and the coastal areas of Saurashtra are capable of storing the rainfall run-off
from the upland rocky terrain (Hirway 2000). However, the situation has changed considerably
and Gujarat is now known for water crises, mostly in north Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch.
An extensive canal network feeds the central region while the southern region is naturally
rich in water resources. Next, I illustrate the water scarcity situation in Gujarat showing the
nature and extent of the areas that are affected.

The Water Scarcity in Gujarat

Because of grossly mismanaged water resources, Gujarat has been facing a severe water crisis.
Due to surface water being concentrated in the southern areas, Gujarat’s water needs are
heavily met through groundwater resources. As discussed earlier, more than 80 per cent of
Gujarat’s irrigated agriculture is dependent on groundwater, apart from several other needs
such as industrial and domestic water requirements. Due to this, groundwater resources have
been overdeveloped in many regions of Gujarat. Groundwater mining has resulted in areas
increasingly coming under ‘overexploited’ categories. Recent figures released by the government
show that while in 1984 about 162 sub-districts3 (88 per cent) were under the ‘white’ category,
it has decreased to 95 (about 51 per cent) in 1997. The number of overexploited sub-districts
has increased from just one in 1984 to 31 in 1997.4 Salinity ingress into groundwater is another
problem that is caused by excessive withdrawal of groundwater, especially in areas close to
the seashore or marshy land such as Kutch. The number of sub-districts affected by salinity
ingress has increased from one in 1984 to seven in 1997. As of 1997, only 52 per cent of the
sub-districts in Gujarat had groundwater that can be considered safe (ibid.).
The question then is: what forces have led to the present situation of water scarcity? The
answer is complex and lies in the larger political economy of the state. The earlier land use
and livelihood patterns were determined by the availability of fresh water, that is, a supply-
determined pattern of land use and agriculture-based livelihoods. This pattern changed
due to technological advancement, such as pump sets, and external input agriculture that
increased pressure on natural resources, such as water. The increase in water demand led to
changes in the topology of water utilisation in three spheres—technological, institutional
and distributional—each of which have had significant effects on the nature and dynamics
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 219

of the resource and its consequence on the users (Prabhakar et al. 1997). Further, an estimate
on the potential of irrigation and utilisation shows that in June 2003, the ultimate irrigation
potential through surface water had been assessed at 3.94 million hectares (MHa). This included
1.79 MHa to be irrigated through the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). However, the surface water
potential created up to June 2003 was only 1.71 MHa of which 1.48 MHa has already been
utilised. The irrigation potential through groundwater was assessed at 2.55 MHa, out of which
the potential of 2.04 MHa was created up to June 2003 and almost all of it was utilised (see
Table 12.2). Altogether, the total irrigation potential created up to June 2003 has worked out
to be 57.57 per cent of the ultimate irrigation potential, and maximum utilisation comes to
94.10 per cent of the irrigation potential created and 54.18 per cent of ultimate irrigation po-
tential (Government of Gujarat 2004).

Table 12.2: Irrigation Potential Created and Utilised as per June 2003
Ultimate Irrigation Irrigation Potential Maximum Utilisation
Potential Created up to June 2003 up to June 2003
Item (in Million Hectares)
Surface water 3.94 1.71 1.48
Major and medium scheme 1.80 1.41 1.29
Sardar Sarovar Project∗ 1.79 0.03 0.03
Minor irrigation 0.35 0.27 0.16
Groundwater 2.55 2.04 2.03
Total 6.49 3.74 3.51
Source: Government of Gujarat (2004).
Note: ∗ Including conjunctive use.

Much of the problem lies with the way water resources have been managed in the state in the
past four decades and in the development of agriculture. The lion’s share of total groundwater
use in the state is siphoned off by agriculture. The development of agriculture in Gujarat is
accounted to its response to the Green Revolution technologies. In the initial stages, diesel
pump sets met this demand but had a limited capacity to cope with decreasing groundwater
levels. Rural electrification boosted investment in electric tube wells which had a greater cap-
acity to support high-powered motors to fetch water from deep aquifers. Groundwater was
seen as an extremely cheap and efficient alternative to surface irrigation networks that were
non-dependable. The current overexploitation of groundwater in Gujarat is closely related to
this reliance (Bhatia 1992). The dependence on groundwater showed a considerable rise in
well population since the 1960s with overdraft and saline intrusion problems becoming major
issues in some locations. Consequently, water tables started dropping alarmingly. Depletion of
static groundwater reserves became a well known problem in many areas of Gujarat (Moench
1991). Due to the stressful groundwater situation, agriculture has also suffered as the cost of
irrigation increased manifold. This is coupled with land quality degradation and increased
salinity of groundwater that have adversely affected the productivity of agriculture. In the
next section, I historically examine these trends for Gujarat.
220 Anjal Prakash

A GRICULTURAL D EVELOPMENT AND

G ROUNDWATER I RRIGATION IN G UJARAT

Agricultural development in Gujarat can be broadly divided into four distinct phases—pre-
Independence (prior to 1947), pre-Green Revolution (1947–65), Green Revolution (1965–1980)
and post-Green Revolution (1980 onwards). In order to understand the pattern of agriculture
in Gujarat, I outline its phase-wise characteristics to see how agriculture, historically, has been
heavily dependent on the use of groundwater.

The Pre-Independence Phase

Pre-Independence agricultural development and revenue administration in Gujarat outlining
political-economy trends have been excellently documented by Patel (1969) and Hardiman
(1998). This section, therefore, draws heavily on the analysis of these scholars to understand
the dependence of agriculture on groundwater in the pre-Independence era. Under the British
regime, the Gujarat region formed a part of the Bombay Presidency and covered the five districts
of Ahmedabad, Kheda, Panchamahals, Broach and Surat. These districts were interspersed with
148 princely states and estates like Baroda, Bansda, Dharampur, Lunawada, Deogadh Baria,
Jambuaghoda, Limbdi, Idar, and Palanpur, as well as others that were under the jurisdiction
of the Western India States Agency. The whole of Gujarat did not come under British rule at
one stroke as the territorial connections commenced in commerce and dated back to the 17th
century with Surat and then with Broach, Ahmedabad and Kheda, and lastly with Panch Mahals.
The first territorial footing of the British was in 1759 when they captured Surat, followed by
Broach, Ahmedabad and Kheda in 1772, 1817 and 1838, respectively. Panch Mahals was the
last district of Gujarat to come under British rule in 1877 (Patel 1969: 15–18).

For revenue administration the Bombay Presidency followed the Ryotwari system unlike
the Zamindari system introduced in the Permanent Settlement in Bengal in 1793. The land
revenue in the Zamindari system was fixed in perpetuity at 10/11th of the agricultural
income and 1/11th of the rent was left with the Zamindars. The British thought that this
system would create a loyal force that would help them in consolidating the empire. How-
ever, they found that the revenue flow was not up to their expectations and Zamindars
under reported the actual cultivated land and hence siphoned off the share of agricultural
revenue. This led to the introduction of the Ryotwari system in Madras Presidency that was
based on the full survey and assessment of the cultivable land. This system proved to be
giving better revenue and hence was replicated in Bombay Presidency in 1851 (ibid.: 20).

However, when the British took over Gujarat, irrigation was on the decline. This decline
appears to be due to the continuing warfare in the region between the British, the Peshwas,
the Gaikwads and other Maratha aristocrats for ascendancy that caused the traditional forms
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 221

of irrigation systems such as wells and tanks to decay. The British did not value the excellent
irrigation system built by previous rulers (Hardiman 1998).

For example, the large reservoir near Ahmedabad, the Karna Sagar–which had existed since
the time of Solankis–was fed from a dam on the river Rupen. This was washed away in the
monsoon of 1814. The British, who took control of Ahmedabad in 1817, never made any
efforts to reconstruct this dam and the reservoir ceased to exist (ibid.: 1538).

The Irrigation Commission of 1901–03 that was appointed to look into the problems of irri-
gation recommended irrigated projects connected with the Sabarmati, Mahi, Narmada and
Tapti rivers. The Visvesvaraya Committee appointed in December 1937 observed that:

…there is a keen demand in Gujarat for large storage works that would ensure perennial
irrigation, but considering the meteorological conditions and the existing high intensity
of cropping without irrigation in this region, it is a matter of doubt whether the increase
in the value of crops raised and the revenue expected would justify the outlay (Report of
Irrigation Inquiry Committee quoted in Patel 1969: 12–13).

However, these suggestions were dropped or postponed on the grounds of financial stringency.
In the absence of a network of irrigation works, the cultivators mainly relied on the monsoon
and wells for irrigating the crops (ibid.). Wells accounted for over 78 per cent of the total
irrigated area in 1930 as against only 10 per cent of the area irrigated through canals. This was
because of British policies that promoted well irrigation through tax exemption.

In many parts of Ahmedabad district, for example, when a new well was built to a depth
of 200 haath (about eight meters) or more, the land thus irrigated was exempted from tax
on rabi (spring) and unado (summer) crops for either a specified period of between two and
eight years or for as long as it took to repay the cost of construction. The general rule was
that the deeper the well, the longer the exemption (Hardiman 1998: 1539).

The tax-relief policies, thus, gave an impetus to well irrigation which largely benefitted the
wealthier communities within village societies.
The Indian Easement Acts of 1882, passed by the British, provided the right to appropriate
water beneath the land of the landowner. This change in the property right system created
incentives for exploiting a common resource (Bhatia 1992: 64). As a result, individual well con-
struction gained momentum followed by the development of water markets in areas dominated
by agriculture in the early 19th century. The political position of the elites in the village was
strengthened through the exchange of water in a sharecropping system that appropriated one-
third of the produce for supplying water. Further, it gave rise to economic individualism and
capitalist development in agriculture. The British also encouraged the production of non-food
crops such as cotton to provide raw material to textile mills in Manchester. The landowners,
who were also the village elite, used a variety of oral tenancy contracts and shifted the risk of
222 Anjal Prakash

cultivation to the lower classes. The Kanbis, who were elevated to the status of Patidars, were
the main beneficiary of the changed land tenure system and encroached the land of the Kolis
and Adivasis in the northern part of the region (Shah and Rutten 2002: 27).

The Pre-Green Revolution Phase

After Independence in 1947, Gujarat came under the jurisdiction of the Western India States
Agency and the princely states and estates were merged into the existing five districts of
Gujarat in 1948–49. In 1956, the reorganisation of the states merged the state of Saurashtra
and Kutch into the bigger bilingual state of Bombay. In 1960, Bombay state was bifurcated into
Gujarat and Maharashtra. A tenancy legislation was implemented in 1951 with an objective
to increase the income of cultivators by increasing the landholding. Compared to other states
in India, the Tenancy Act was effectively implemented in Gujarat, especially in abolishing
the Zamindari system in Saurashtra and other regions. However, the advantage of the Act
was mainly taken by the affluent class and hence it did not change the basic social structure
of village society. Land reforms accelerated the process of commercialisation and economic
development, especially in central and south Gujarat (Shah and Rutten 2002: 27–30). Another
development was a reform in the land revenue system. The Taxation Enquiry Commission
(1953–54), set up by the government to look into the land revenue system, recommended
that the land revenue should be reduced. The report mentioned that Gujarat had been heavily
assessed in the past as a part of former Bombay state on the account of the fertility of soil and
the revenue legacy of the Maratha period. Accepting the recommendations of the commission,
the Bombay Government amended the Land Revenue Code by the Amendment Act XXVII
of 1956, and made 1/16th of the average yield of the crops as a basis of normal and standard
assessment of the land. By this time, agricultural production was rising due to early adoption
of new technologies in agriculture. Therefore, the burden of land revenue on the cultivators
decreased as their income increased due to higher yields in agriculture. The beneficiaries of
this were large landholders who raised commercial crops with a bigger, larger marketable
surplus (Patel 1969: 468–92). The process created a class of farmers within village society who
had already tested the new technology and were ready to adopt the Green Revolution that
was underway.
During this phase, irrigation was limited to the rabi (winter) season and the karif (monsoon)
season crops were mainly rainfed. Irrigation was used for rabi crops such as cotton, tobacco
and groundnut, which are non-food crops. The area under non-food crops considerably in-
creased from 1949–50 to 1963–64. This was coupled with a steady decrease in cereals and other
food grains (see Table 12.3). The figures, thus, show that Gujarat slowly moved towards a cash
crop economy that was largely irrigated through wells.
In 1961, around 68 per cent of Gujarat’s population was directly dependent on agriculture
for their livelihood. According to the 1961 Census, the total population of Gujarat was over
20 million, and of the total workers cultivators constituted 53.3 per cent while agricultural
labourers constituted 14.8 per cent. This dependence on agriculture led the government to invest
into irrigated agriculture to increase its productivity and create employment opportunities.
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 223

Table 12.3: Area Under Principle Crops (in million ha)

Crop 1949–50 1963–64

Cotton 0.82 1.69

Tobacco∗ 0.05 0.08
Groundnut 0.47 1.85
Sugarcane 0.01 0.02
Total cereals 4.82 3.90
Total food grains 5.33 4.44
Total oilseeds 0.75 2.04
Source: Patel (1969: 12).
Note: ∗ Excluding Kutch and Saurashtra regions as data was not available.

Under the first Five Year Plan (1951–56), several medium and minor irrigation projects were
initiated in Gujarat. But irrigation was insignificant in the early 1960s. In 1961, about 52 per
cent of Gujarat’s total geographic area was under cultivation but the net irrigated area as the
percentage of net sown area was only 7.8 per cent. Of this, a large part was contributed by well
irrigation rather than surface irrigation through canals or tanks. In 1961–62, around 83 per
cent of irrigation was carried out through wells and only 9.5 per cent of it was done through
canal networks. Through investment in the public irrigation system, canal irrigation increased
up to 13.4 per cent in 1965–66 but the dependence on wells and tube wells was almost the
same, though the area irrigated through them increased (see Table 12.4).

Table 12.4: Area Irrigated by Source (in km2)

Source 1960–61 1965–66

Government canals (including panchayat canals) 652 (9.5) 1393 (13.4)

Private canals 6 (0.1) 11 (0.1)
Wells (including tube wells) 5677 (83.1) 8625 (82.8)
Tanks 128 (1.9) 296 (2.8)
Other sources 366 (5.4) 87 (0.8)
Source: Statistical Abstract of Gujarat State 1985–86 quoted in (Bhatia 1992: 23a).
Note: The figures in parentheses indicate the per cent distribution of the net irrigated area by irrigation
source.

However, the nature of well irrigation started to change during this phase.

While earlier water was extracted manually through the use of draft power, the technology
of energised pumps started to enter into the village economy. The electrification of villages
also played a role in boosting investment in pump sets. While the number of electrified
pump sets was 5400 in 1960–61, it rose to 15,240 at the end of 1966, i.e., around 182 per
cent increase over the preceding five year (Bhatia 1992: 21–23).
224 Anjal Prakash

Tube well technology coincided with the development of external input agriculture and created
an environment for a groundwater-based Green Revolution to stand on firm footing.

Green and Post-Green Revolution

During the Green Revolution phase, agriculture contributed to the state economy in more than
one way. In 1970–71, the primary sector (including agriculture) contributed around 49 per cent
to the net state domestic product (NSDP). The output in the state doubled during this period
compared to that recorded in the 1960s. In 1981–83 crop output recorded an unprecedented
growth rate of 3.6 per cent, compared to 2.2 per cent in the previous decades. The trends in
agriculture over three decades, starting from 1960, show that the Green Revolution has influ-
enced the cropping pattern to move towards cash-crop production. The data released by the
Directorate of Agriculture, Gujarat, shows that from 1963–93, the area under cereals have
declined from 42.5 per cent to 29.8 per cent, contributing to a total decline of nearly 1.11 mil-
lion hectares (mha) (Government of Gujarat 2003). The area under food grains remained
stagnant at 50 per cent of the gross cropped area during 1963–83 but declined dramatically
during 1983–93 to 38 per cent. Food grains were replaced by other crops such as mustard,
sugarcane and cotton (see Mathur and Kashyap 2000).
The change in the cropping pattern has affected the irrigation scenario in the state. Since
almost all the non-food cash crops need irrigation, the area under irrigation has increased
over the years. Recent figures show that the per cent of net irrigated area to the net sown area
increased from 20.91 in 1981 to 30.51 in 1996–97. During 1980–92, the percentage grew from
20.91 to 27.42 (around 7 per cent), but this growth slowed down in later years. By 1996–97,
the area under irrigation increased by only 3 per cent as compared to 1991–92 (see Table 12.5).
The overall area under irrigation grew during the Green Revolution and post-Green Revolution
period but it was profoundly dependent on the use of groundwater resources. Irrigation through
wells and tube wells accounted for 79.31 per cent of all the sources combined in 1980–81 and
marginally reduced to 78.45 per cent in 1996–97. The dependence on government canals
increased from 18.31 per cent in 1980–81 to 20.13 per cent in 1996–97. The net irrigated area as
per cent of the net sown area for the state increased from 20.91 per cent in 1980–81 to 31.51 per
cent in 1996–97. In 1998–99, this further increased to 31.88 per cent, which is around 8 per
cent less than the national average (Government of Gujarat 2003).
In order to meet the need of growing irrigation, numerous private tube wells have come
up. The government also responded to the increasing demand for irrigation. During the
severe drought of 1965–67, a centrally-sponsored scheme was introduced for groundwater
development in nine states.5 The Gujarat Water Resource Development Corporation (GWRDC)
was established in 1975 as a state-owned company responsible for establishing and managing
irrigation tube wells with resource support from the state government. Between 1975 and
1994, the GWRDC set up 2,800 public tube wells (Shah et al. 1995).
The primary objective of the public tube well programme was to increase the area under
irrigation by utilising the groundwater. To an extent, it created irrigation access to the farming
communities. However, it was a bureaucracy managed subsidy-based programme and hence it
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 225

Table 12.5: Area Irrigated by Source (in ’00 hectares)

Year
Source 1980–81 1985–86 1990–91 1991–92 1993–94 1994–95 1995–96 1996–97
Government canals 3668 3586 4731 5570 5301 5930 5735 6125
Wells/tube wells 15884 16532 19301 20565 19709 23656 22665 23863
Tanks 409 253 314 256 307 353 417 292
Other sources 65 24 30 34 88 82 105 138
Total net irrigated area 20026 20395 24376 26425 25405 30021 28922 30418
Gross irrigated area 23344 23812 29105 32269 30869 36548 34994 36424
Per cent of gross
irrigated area to
gross cropped area 21.72 22.81 27.37 29.18 28.77 32.50 31.83 32.95
Per cent of net irrigated
area to net area sown 20.91 21.69 26.22 27.42 26.89 31.24 29.22 31.51
Source: Directorate of Agriculture, Gujarat State; data for several years.

generated enormous losses in the process. Some of the tube wells also became defunct due to
lack of repair and maintenance by the bureaucracy. The government decided to transfer the
management responsibilities of the defunct tube wells to farmers’ organisations.6 It had two
explicitly stated objectives for turning over the public tube wells—to reduce the financial
burden on the state and to improve the utilisation of the wells. Many of these tube wells were
transferred to farmer cooperatives. Simultaneous to the government’s response to increase
irrigation access through groundwater, many water companies7 and farmers’ groups came up
to install deep tube wells for sharing and selling surplus water to other farmers. Shah et al.
(1995) compare the economic performance of the farmers turned public tube wells and water
companies, and reveal that an average company earned twice the amount of an average co-
operative run by the government, in gross income terms. The assessments created a policy en-
vironment where private water vending was advocated in potential areas. Institutional finance
was made available for people or groups who wanted to sink tube wells to access groundwater
for irrigation. In many areas of north Gujarat, private water markets emerged to access and
sell surplus groundwater. These markets were mostly dominated by the village elite who had
resources to invest or had adequate social networks to access institutional finance. The flat-rate
electricity and its uninterrupted supply also gave impetus to this growth. As a result, small
and marginal farmers became dependent on water vendors for irrigation. Within a policy
environment with subsidised electricity, the number of tube wells increased considerably. As
a result, the water table started dropping alarmingly and, at present, around 50 per cent of
Gujarat’s groundwater falls in the overexploited category.
In 1970, the Government of India introduced the Groundwater Model Bill that was a
legislation-based approach to control the usage of groundwater. Since ‘water’ is a state subject,
the bill brought by the central government was to be endorsed by the state and till date very few
state governments have enacted it. In 1992, a revised version of the bill was introduced again
but was enacted in very few states. Gujarat, where the groundwater depletion problem was much
226 Anjal Prakash

visible, succeeded in implementing it, but it was applied to a limited number of districts that
were considered overexploited.8 Even in these districts, the act was never implemented in spirit
due to the powerful farmers’ lobby opposing any such regulatory measures. Some of the indir-
ect approaches to managing groundwater resources have come in through limiting institutional
credit, electricity pricing mechanisms and electricity connections. These approaches have made
little impact and have proven impossible to implement so far, as well-off farmers are generally
able to bypass regulations and obtain credit or access to electricity connections. They often
already have wells and, if power charges are increased, are able to afford them or make further
investment to use water efficiently, such as the introduction of underground pipes instead of
open channels to carry water to the field. Overall, most traditional (regulatory) management
actions that could reduce rates of groundwater extraction in overdeveloped areas are likely to
disproportionately affect the poor (Moench Undated: 15–22).
Further, the Supreme Court (SC) of India, responding to public interest litigation (PIL)
against the overexploitation of groundwater resources, directed the Ministry of Environment
and Forests (MoEF) to constitute the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) as an authority and
exercise power under Section 5 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, for regulating the
overexploitation of groundwater resources. The SC also directed to establish a State Ground
Water Authority and interact at the state level for making provisions for powers to various
field levels such as panchayats and village communities. The CGWB drafted ‘Environment
Protection Rules for Development and Protection of Ground Water’, which included legal and
institutional aspects and was circulated to all the states for their comments before notification.
However, the circulation and enactments of such bills and rules raised the spectre of a vast
bureaucratic machinery administering use of groundwater through licensing and supervision.
Presently, the owner of the land has absolute freedom in accessing groundwater. However,
many abstain from trading this freedom with bureaucratically administered licensing regimes
and therefore no state has shown any inclination to adopt the proposal (GOI 1999: 213). Also,
these notifications do not work because numerous new tube wells are dug to chase the water
table every day all over Gujarat. The reasons for the non-implementation of the regulations
are many. Foremost of them is the big farmers’ lobby which constitutes the strongest political
influence in the state politics. They are also the largest group engaged in the sale of water and,
hence, no regulation has had an effect on their interest. The use of political clout has ensured
that the regulatory aspects of legislations are not implemented on ground. Till now, the farmers
have witnessed only an indirect form of regulation through a decrease in electricity supply and
cuts in institutional finance for digging tube wells. Many attempts were made to convert the
present flat-rate into pro-rata tariff but it has not worked well. The electricity charges have also
been raised but every time the political leadership was compelled to back-track the decision
taken by departments such as the Gujarat Electricity Board. At present, there is a tussle between
the government and farmers’ bodies over the electricity price issue. Recently, the price was
hiked by the electricity board, which resulted in farmers refusing to pay. A strong agitation
by various farmer groups has been reported followed by some form of negotiation. However,
until the time of writing this chapter, an amicable solution of the issue that is acceptable to
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 227

both farmers and government had not come about.9 As per the cut back in the institutional
finance, the rich farmers have never been dependent on the state. The other sources of finance
based on social networks and private credit cooperatives fill this gap.
However, looking at the problems in curtaining the demand of groundwater, the government
introduced programmes to increase supply and efficient management in the early 1990s.
Some of them include the transfer of government-owned tube wells to farmers’ cooperatives,
initiating participatory irrigation management (PIM) for efficient utilisation of canal water
and undertaking watershed management at a large scale. Among other programmes, the
watershed management has shown initial success in Gujarat with a significant increase in agri-
cultural yield, which can be attributed to the substantial increase in water table (Shah 2000).
However, among all the initiatives for solving the problem of water scarcity in the state, the
construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River has been the most visible,
controversial and political in recent years. Looking at the scale at which the project is operating,
it has the potential to alter the groundwater ecology in some locations of Gujarat. In the next
section, I briefly introduce issues related to the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and its distribu-
tion networks. I will also analyse the impact of the new water10 coming from the dam on the
groundwater ecology of Gujarat.

T HE S ARDAR S AROVAR D AM ON R IVER N ARMADA

The Narmada River originates from the Maikal ranges at Amarkantak, 1,057 m above the sea-
level, now in the Shahdol district of Madhya Pradesh (MP) in central India. In its 1,312 km
long journey before joining the Arabian Sea, the Narmada flows through the states of Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Nearly 90 per cent of the flow is in MP, and most of the
remaining is in Gujarat. It flows for a very brief stretch through Maharashtra. The Sardar Sarovar
Project is a part of the bigger Narmada Valley Development Plan (NVDP) that envisaged
the building of 30 big dams, 135 medium dams and 3,000 small dams on the Narmada and
its tributaries. Ever since its conception, SSP has been under controversy over its costs and
potential benefits. Numerous organisations and individuals including Narmada Bachao
Andolan (NBA) led movements against the construction of the dam. NBA also filed a writ
petition to review the project in the Supreme Court (SC), which stopped the construction of
SSP in 1995 at the height of 80.3 m. In February 1999, the SC gave the go ahead for the dam’s
height to be raised to a height of 88 meters followed by the judgement in October 2000 to allow
the immediate construction of the dam up to a height of 90 m. Further, the judgement also
authorised construction up to the originally planned height of 138 m in 5-metre increments
subject to receiving approval from the Relief and Rehabilitation Subgroup of the Narmada
Control Authority. The history of the SSP and associated controversies are well-documented
(Fisher 1995; Mehta 2001; Morse and Berger 1992)11 and hence I focus only on updating the
information from the view of changing groundwater ecology due to the SSP in Gujarat.
228 Anjal Prakash

The Status of SSP in 2002

Soon after the Supreme Court judgement in 2000, construction work took off with the re-
vised estimated cost of Rs 131.80 million (at 1991–92 prices) against which the cumulative
expenditure of Rs 126.63 million was incurred up to March 2002. The dam height has increased
from 90 m to 95 m and the government claims to provide annual irrigation benefits to around
1.8 million hectares (mha) spread over 75 sub-districts in 14 districts of Gujarat. It also envisages
providing water for domestic and industrial usage in about 8,215 villages and 135 townships
(Government of Gujarat 2003). In December 2000, drinking water supply was started through
an irrigation by-pass tunnel in the main canal.
Many features of the SSP are considered remarkable by the government. For example, its
spillway discharging capacity would be the third highest in the world. Upon completion,
the 458 km long Narmada main canal would be the largest irrigation canal in the world with
an estimated capacity at the head of 40,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs). The 1.8 mha of
irrigation potential generated by the SSP would be more than the existing total irrigation
potential of all major, medium and small irrigation projects of Gujarat put together. Water
for irrigation will be conveyed through a 66,000 km network of conveyance and distribu-
tion system consisting of branch canals, distributaries, minors and sub-minors. There will be
42 branch canals off-taking from the main canal, out of which Miyagam, Vadodara, Saurashtra
and Kutch branch canals will be the major branches having a capacity of more than 75 cubic
meters per second (cumecs [2650 cusecs]). The distribution system will cover a gross command
area of 3.43 Mha, spread over 3,393 villages in 62 sub-districts of 12 districts of Gujarat. As
of June 2003, the Narmada main canal phase-I, that is, from the main head regulator to the
Mahi River crossing was complete. The Narmada main canal in Phase-II-A, that is, from the
Mahi river crossing to the Saurashtra Branch Canal off take is nearing completion. The 352 km
long Kutch branch canal (KBC) is planned to run through Banaskantha and Patan districts in
its initial reach up to 88 km, crossing the little Rann of Kutch and finally entering the Kutch
district after travelling 101 km from the start. In the Kutch district, the canal length is from
101 km to 352 km. The total Culturable Command Area (CCA) of the KBC is 175,889 ha out
of which 63,111 ha is in the Banaskantha and Patan district and 112,778 ha is in the Kutch
district. A total of 0.496 and 0.087 Million Acre Feet (maf) of water is planned for irrigation, and
domestic and industrial use in the Kutch district respectively. The KBC will cover 38 villages in
Banaskantha, 41 villages in Patan and 182 villages in Kutch districts. The construction work at
the KBC is under process. The Gujarat government issued a policy resolution dated 1 June 1995
to adopt and promote participatory irrigation management (PIM) practices under the existing
as well as new irrigation schemes that also apply to the SSP command areas. These areas will be
divided into village service areas (VSA) of nearly 500 ha wherein Water User Associations (WUA)
will be formed which will be responsible for the distribution of the irrigation water.12

SSP’s Effect on Water Availability in Gujarat

In its journey up to the Rajasthan border the canal traverses through regions with diverse agro-
climatic and soil characteristics, and across numerous streams and major rivers. The major
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 229

areas benefitted would be central and north Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. Apart from bringing
irrigation, the canal network is expected to alter the groundwater ecology in the canal command
areas. The farmers of these areas are hoping for year-round irrigation based on the surface flow
from the canal. They expect the groundwater level to go up, which will also combat salinity
ingress (Wood 1999). However, the data provided by the government is treated with lots of
suspicion by activists and scholars (Black 2001; Kothari 1999; Ram 1993; Roy 1999). Questions
are raised on the extent of irrigation possible under the Narmada command and the cost in-
volved in bringing water from far-off regions. It is claimed that when the original study of the
water flow in the river was calculated in 1979, there was not enough historical rainfall and river
flow data to produce accurate figures. The official estimates have historically underestimated
the affected area and people and grossly overestimated the benefits of dams (Roy 1999). The
amount of water actually available for use at the dam site at 75 per cent dependability is only
22.69 MAF and not 27.22 MAF as stated by the government. Even with the official estimate, the
SSP is likely to irrigate only 44 to 52 per cent of the 1.8 MHa as the amount of water available for
irrigation is substantially less than what was planned. Furthermore, the efficiency of the canal
system assumed by the government seems unrealistic. The efficiency is likely to be closer to
45 per cent rather than 60 per cent as claimed and, therefore, it will further reduce water
available for irrigation (Ram 1993).
In the SSP command areas, the cost at which water will be brought is also questioned.
The SSP has taken away a whopping 80 per cent of the total irrigation budget of the Gujarat
government for almost a decade between 1994 to 2003. In the 2000–01 annual plan, the SSP was
allocated US$ 811 million—half the state’s entire budget. The expenditure is on the ground of
the persistent water scarcity in drought-prone districts of Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat.
Experts say that water cannot enter the canal by gravity until the dam reaches 110 m. Therefore,
a decision was taken to pump water into the canal from the Sardar Sarovar reservoir (Black
2001). Many believe that the cost of pumping water into the canal is too high and unaffordable.
For example, in October 2002, water from the Narmada was pumped into the dry beds of River
Sabarmati. The people of Ahmedabad experienced the river flowing bank-to-bank after many
years. The water was not directly used for drinking but recharged the French wells that were
used to supplement the drinking water supply from Raska weir. However, later the Gujarat
government slapped a Rs 102 crore charge on the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC)
towards the water flowing in the River Sabarmati at the rate of Rs 6.40 for every 10,000 litres.
As a result, AMC was forced to increase taxes by nearly Rs 3.3 million in its interim budget for
the year 2003–04. However, the interim budget was rejected by the standing committee of the
AMC under pressure from people and civil society institutions.13 This example shows that the
cost of bringing water into canals will be high and only time will tell how people are going
to react to the increased cost of irrigation.
Even at the cost decided by the government, the fact is that the Narmada water will reach
only 2 per cent of drought prone areas in Kutch, 22 per cent in Saurashtra and 17 per cent in
north Gujarat. There are other areas such as Sabarkantha, Banaskantha and many villages of
Saurashtra that need water but are not under the command area of the SSP.14 In rabi, in 2002,
water was released in the Narmada canals for irrigating 80,000 ha in the Narmada, Bharuch and
Vadodara districts where the canal infrastructure up to minor level is either fully or partially
230 Anjal Prakash

ready. While the full reservoir capacity was likely to be created once the dam height was raised
to 135 m by 2003, it will take 10–15 years before the canal network gets constructed to cover
the entire command area of the project (Shah 2003). Even in the command area of SSP, water
availability is expected to go down as the project cycle increases due to various environmental
changes. A 2003 article published in a national daily quotes V.B. Patel, Chairman of the Task
Force on Interlinking of Rivers, who warned that Gujarat is running out of its water resources
despite the fact that waters from the Narmada reservoir were now reaching several parts of the
state. He stated that the estimated population of Gujarat will grow from the present 50 million
to 80 million before it stabilises in the next 60 years when the per capita water availability
will reduce to nearly two thirds of what is available in 2003. The present availability of water
is around 700 cubic metres per capita per year, which is expected to go down to 400 cubic
metres in the next 60 years. The present water availability of Gujarat is 300 cubic metres,
which is much less than the internationally accepted 1,000 cubic metres per capita per year
marked as a water scarce condition.15 Narmada, therefore, should not be mistaken as a panacea
for solving the groundwater depletion of Gujarat. Is there a way out of the situation? In the
concluding section, I examine alternative methods to counter the problem of water scarcity
and groundwater overdevelopment.

C ONCLUSION : T OWARDS AN E COLOGICAL

P ERSPECTIVE OF G ROUNDWATER G OVERNANCE

This chapter shows how scarcity is historically grounded in the unique ecological situation
of Gujarat, ranging from rocky highlands to marshy wet lands and alluvial planes to coastal
zones. This diverse situation has resulted in an uneven distribution of land, vegetation,
surface and groundwater resources. The land-use patterns that were earlier determined by the
availability of surface water, slowly changed due to the introduction of the Green Revolution
technology, which was based on external inputs. In order to meet the demand, numerous wells
and tube wells came up, mining the deep aquifers in many locations. The government policy
of subsidising electricity for the farming community promoted extensive groundwater mar-
kets. The market flourished in some of the alluvial zones suitable for tapping deep aquifers but
was largely inequitable in providing control over the resource to the society that was marked
with socio-economic inequality. Further, these markets helped in consolidating positions
of some of the upper class farmers, feeding back to the political linkage that worked against
regulatory mechanism for checking groundwater overexploitations. Altogether, the present
form of governance has, in-fact, been detrimental on the limited water resources of the state.
To an extent, it has allowed the exploitation of surface and groundwater resources for private
gains and for a particular class of Gujarati society, making the pattern largely unequal and
unsustainable. As one of the responses to the growing problem of water scarcity, the Gujarat
government proposed to build a high dam on the river Narmada. A close examination of the
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 231

water available through the SSP shows a limited effect on the groundwater ecology of Gujarat
until 2002. The distribution networks of SSP covers only part of the scarcity zones and hence
should not be seen as a solution for solving the crisis of scarcity for the large part of Gujarat.
Further, the cost at which this water will be available from the SSP has been questioned by
planners and experts.
An immediate fallout of the scarce water situation is reflected in the contribution of different
sectors to the economy and their growth in recent years. A close examination shows that the
Gujarat economy has shown an upward trend with a balance between the primary, secondary
and tertiary sectors during the 1960s and 1970s. However, since 1980, this growth is tilted
more towards the secondary and tertiary sector. Agricultural growth sharply declined from
2.27 per cent in 1960–70 to 0.26 per cent in 1990–96.16 The annual growth rate in agriculture
fell to 1 per cent while the secondary and tertiary sector showed a big jump to around 7 per
cent during the 1980s. During the 1990s, the annual compound growth rate in agriculture
remained at less than 1 per cent while secondary and tertiary sectors rose to 9.45 and 10.61 per
cent respectively (Hirway 2000). Further, the share of agriculture towards the Gross State
Domestic Product (GSDP) dwindled from 19.9 per cent in 1993–94 to 13.6 per cent in 2002–03,
while the secondary sector showed an increase from 35.8 per cent to 37.2 per cent during
the said years, respectively. The tertiary sector showed the highest jump from 38.8 per cent
in 1993–94 to 45.6 per cent in 2002–03 (Government of Gujarat 2004). This deceleration of
agricultural growth is accounted to several technical constrains such as present high yield
variety (HYV) seeds losing their genetic potential, decreasing government’s expenditure on
agriculture, irrigation and electricity, and the lack of capacity of small holders to sustain risk
(Desai 1997). Over the years, the pressure on land has increased compared, in absence, to major
diversification from agriculture leading to increased pressure on natural resources such as land
and water. Experts in Gujarat are calling for complementing seed-centered new technology with
resource-centered new technology to combat the situation (Hirway 2000). Does this worry
planners in Gujarat? A possible answer, advanced by many, to the negative pattern of agricul-
tural growth and its decreasing contribution to the GSDP is that in an industrialising economy
this is what is exactly predicted—a move away from primary to secondary and tertiary sectors.
However, the declining trend is problematic as agriculture still employs more than half of
Gujarat’s population. In 2001, 52.05 per cent of the total workforce of Gujarat came from this
sector and hence any decline in its growth directly affects half of the state’s workforce.17
This analysis leads to the concern for an alternative form of groundwater governance in
Gujarat, as the present form has been unsustainable, unequal and detrimental to people
living on the margins and deriving source of livelihood from their immediate environment.
Mehta (2003) analyses the contexts and construction of water scarcity through its linkages
with ecological, socio-political, temporal and anthropogenic dimensions and stresses not to
conceive it in absolute terms. Water scarcity has distributional and relational aspects as it
does not have a universal impact on all social groups. Further, according to her, scarcity is not
permanent but is a combination of the period of abundance and bounty. Paranjape and Joy
(1995) describe the primary and secondary productivity of an ecosystem from an ecological
perspective. According to them, primary productivity is the productivity of an ecosystem
232 Anjal Prakash

without any external inputs. The increase in productivity is achieved through the use of the
external inputs, which is categorised as secondary productivity of the ecosystem in relation
to the particular level of input. The analysis shows that the sum of primary and secondary
productivity may rise while the primary productivity of an ecosystem actually declines. In
order to maintain the level of productivity, there will be a further increase in external inputs
that often leads to diminishing returns. The early warnings signals of the fall in primary prod-
uctivity of the ecosystem are scarcity of drinking water and increasing external inputs such
as more water, and fertilisers to maintain the productivity. This analysis closely follows the
Gujarat case where the agricultural production system has heavily relied on external inputs
leading to high agricultural production in the beginning. In recent years, there has been a
sharp decline in agricultural productivity decreasing the gap between investment and profit.
Further, it also has posed environmental dilemma such as depleting aquifers and declining
primary productivity of the ecosystem.
The big question is—how have the construction of water scarcity and a deeper understanding
of ecosystem helped us in developing an alternative ecological framework for groundwater
governance? First, the ecological perspective would mean understanding the environmental
deterioration that is located in land use, local ecology and patterns of development. Second,
the perception of scarcity is rooted in historically evolving politico-economic relations. It is
more so in societies encompassed by large socio-economic inequalities in access and control
over resources. Water scarcity, therefore, does not have a universal effect on all social groups.
An ecological framework means devising strategies to protect the interest of historically mar-
ginalised groups in the wake of extreme scarcity situations. In combination, the alternative
groundwater governance framework encompasses the political, economic and social processes
and institutions and signifies a variety of ways to combine decentralised conservation, sup-
ply augmentation and demand management within the understanding of socio-economic
asymmetries.

Notes
1. During 1999–2000, the government declared 8,666 villages (of a total of 18,637 villages) scarcity-hit
in the wake of monsoon failure. The total scarcity was declared in 6,675 villages while 1991 villages
were semi-scarcity hit. 7,467 villages faced severe shortage of drinking water. The deficient monsoon
during the year led to a decline of 29–31 per cent of crop production in Saurashtra, Kachchh and North
Gujarat districts. The estimated figures of production show decline of 45 per cent in pearl millet, 83 per
cent in sorghum, 72 per cent in groundnut and 41 per cent in moong. The total crop failure was esti-
mated to Rs 45.89 million (Government of Gujarat [GOG] 2000). The problem continued in 2002
when 13 out of 25 districts received less than normal rainfall. Some 5,144 villages in these districts
were declared scarcity/semi-scarcity hit. The production loss for kharif season was estimated to be
23 per cent, amounting to rupees 18.74 million, while, in the rabi season, the loss was of the order of
Rs 9.69 million (GOG 2003).
2. In the villages of Mehsana, the colloquial term describes North Gujarat having three Narmadas beneath
its land. This means, North Gujarat can store (or has stored) three times the water available in the
Narmada River.
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 233

3. According to the 1991 Census, there were 19 districts and 184 sub-districts in Gujarat. However, in
1998, the districts of Gujarat were reorganised and new districts were carved out of older districts for
administrative purposes. Navasari, Bharuch, Anand, Patan, Porbandar and Narmada are the six new
districts totalling to 25 districts that exist in Gujarat from 2001. Similarly the number of sub-districts
also increased from 184 to 226 (Census of India 2001).
4. According to the Central Groundwater Board, Government of India, the overexploited sub-districts
are areas in which level of groundwater is more than 100 per cent of annual recharge. Dark blocks
are areas in which level of groundwater development is between 85 and 100 per cent of annual
groundwater recharge. Similarly, grey blocks areas that have between 65 and 85 per cent of
groundwater development.
5. In order to support the scheme, geo-hydrological units were set up in eight states. The programme
was further facilitated by the rapid electrification of the rural areas and the increased availability of
institutional finance. The estimated fourth plan outlay of Rs 13.53 million on groundwater schemes
(Rs 2. 53 million from the public sector plus Rs 6.50 million from financial institutions plus Rs 4.50
million from the cultivators themselves) was expected to lead to a net increase in the irrigation po-
tential of 4 million hectares (Planning Commission 1974: 1).
6. ‘In the recent years when the government has begun to restrict subsidies, the GWRDC has accumu-
lated a loss of over Rs 700 million. Most of the corporation’s problems are those of any public-sector
bureaucracy. It has acquired a permanent staff of 6,400 imposing a staggering wage bill of Rs 220 mil-
lion per year; as a result, its overheads were 31 per cent of its total operating cost in 1993. Compared
to this, the annual gross income of all its tube wells is a mere Rs 60 million which can barely meet
a fourth of the salary bill, leave alone the costs inclusive of capital’ (Shah et al. 1995: 160).
7. These are private companies engaged in water vending. In most cases the investment comes from
the private sector.
8. ‘After some prodding from the central government, the Bombay Irrigation Act (governing Gujarat) was
amended in 1976 to regulate new deep tube wells and the use of water in the existing tube wells. As a
result of a series of legislative delays, the amendment only entered into force in 1988 and currently
applies to nine districts’ (Dubash 2002: 70).
9. Based on Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (GERC) award, dated 10 October 2000, the
Gujarat government hiked the tariff of electricity used in agriculture from June 2003. There are an
estimated 600,000 farm connections in the state, wherein farmers pay for electricity according to
the contracted load of their motors. The rates for electricity motors of less than 7.5 HP capacity
were increased from Rs 350 per year to over Rs 1,100 and on that of more than 7.5 HP capacity to
Rs 1,260 from Rs 500 per year. Many believe that the government acted under pressure from the
Asian Development Bank (ADB) to do away with subsidy in the farm sector following which it was
decided to cut subsidy to the Gujarat Electricity Board worth Rs 11.56 billon. Around 57 per cent
of this is shouldered by the agriculture sector alone. The Gujarat government spends Rs 1,700 crore
every year as subsidy to farmers. However, soon after the declaration of tariff hike, strong agitations
sparked off from farmers’ organisations. They stopped paying electricity bills and, in some cases,
did not allow the electricity department officials to enter the village to demand payment or severe
connections due to non-payment. A number of farmers’ organisations were involved in the agitation.
Most prominent upon them was the Gujarat Farmers’ Agitation Forum led by Bipin Desai, Bhartiya
Kisan Sangh (BKS), the farmers’ wing of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and Gujarat Khedut
Sangharsh Samiti (GKSS) backed by the Congress party. The agitations led to two state-wise bandhs
in 2003 wherein the government used force to suppress the violent agitations. A 31-year-old farmer
in Surat district died in September 2003 after police officers beat him up while he was taking part in
234 Anjal Prakash

a demonstration against power tariff hike. However, as the general elections were round the corner in
2004, the government offered 25 to 33 per cent reduction in power tariff. This would mean that the
farmers using up to 7.5 HP pumps would have to pay Rs 750 per HP per year instead of the proposed
Rs 1,050. Similarly, those using motors higher than 7.5 HP capacity would pay Rs 900 instead of
Rs 1,200 per HP per year. The new tariff was also not accepted by the farmers’ organisation and they
continued their resistance. In February 2004, one of the farmers’ organisations, BKS, compromised
with the government and called off its strike after a decision on lowering the tariff further by Rs 50
per HP. However, other organisations are continued with their agitations calling it a great betrayal
by BKS due to their closeness with the ruling BJP. In the general elections of 2004, the ruling BJP got
a major set-back, loosing 12 of the 26 Parliament seats including Mehsana (compiled from various
newspaper reports, discussions with farmers and their organisation leaders).
10. I have borrowed this term from Wood (1997) who describes the ‘new’ availability of water in the
context of variety of water management initiatives possible in different zones of Gujarat including
water available through the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The new water has to attend to technical, social,
economic, institutional and political challenges.
11. The history of the SSP is available at number of internet sites. They are—www.sardarsarovardam.org
(official website of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd, Government of Gujarat), www.nvda.
nic.in (official website of Narmada Valley Development Authority, Government of Gujarat) and
www.narmada.org (website of the sympathisers of Narmada Bhachau Andolan, one of the activist
organisations that is highly critical of the SSP).
12. Compiled from information available at www.sardarsarovardam.org
13. The information is based on the newspaper reports in The Times of India: ‘Water wars waged over
Rs 100-cr bill’, The Times of India, 19 September 2003a; ‘What Rs 102 crore means to cash-strapped
AMC?’ The Times of India, 21 September 2003b; and ‘AMC standing committee rejects interim budget’,
The Times of India, 21 September 2003c (Ahmedabad edition).
14. In Junagadh district in Gujarat, the coastal areas of Mangrol block have become the scene of a major
health scare. Take Loej village five kilometers from coastline for instance. The 200-odd families have
one thing in common: each has at least one member suffering from kidney stones. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO) norms, the total dissolved solids in drinking water should not
exceed 500 ppm. In Leoj, the TDS content is 4,000–8,000 ppm [parts per million]. Over the past three
decades, salinity ingress has made groundwater unfit for drinking in village after village. Out of the 60
villages, 23 are gripped under total salinity ingress. In 29 other villages it has contaminated more than
half of the groundwater resources. As the state’s drinking water schemes always remained a pipedream,
villagers had to rely on well water, even while groundwater table was depleting fast. The rhetoric of
Narmada water supply cannot put balm as the scheme is meant for only parts of Jamnagar and Rajkot
(sourced from report in The Indian Express, 28 April 2003 quoted in Dams, Rivers & People, Vol 1, Issue
6–7, July–August 2003, Delhi: p. 26).
15. ‘State running out of water despite SSP, warns expert’, The Times of India, 16 October 2003 (Ahmedabad
edition).
16. The sector ‘Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing’ registered a negative growth rate of 2.35 per cent during
1998–99 compared to 1997–98. The sectors that registered significant growth during the same period
are mining and quarrying (13.08 per cent), communications (18.64 per cent), banking and insurance
(13.88 per cent) and public administration (24.89 per cent) (GOG 2000).
17. During 1961, agriculture in Gujarat engaged 64 per cent of the total workforce that has reduced to
56 per cent in 1991. This indicates that the state is reducing its dependence on agriculture for income
and employment generation and hence going through structural transformation. This transformation
 Political Economy of Groundwater Governance in Gujarat 235

is a result of ‘textile first strategy’ vis-à-vis ‘machine first strategy’ apart from inducing agriculture
and industry linkages. This strategy manifested in decline of the share of cereals and food grains and
a rise in non-food grain crops (Mathur and Kashyap 2000).

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 13
Governing the Groundwater Economy:
Comparative Analysis of National Institutions
and Policies in South Asia, China and Mexico
Tushaar Shah

T HE C OMMON C HALLENGE

Regions of Asia, where food security and rural livelihoods have come to depend precariously on
intensive use of groundwater in agriculture, have expanded at a frightening pace, especially after
1970. Recent analyses of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) suggest that
1970 was probably the watershed year: prior to that, steady rise in food production depended
squarely on growth in surface irrigation. Since then, however, South Asia and North China
experienced a massive groundwater boom and by the early 1990s, groundwater irrigation had
overtaken all other sources in explaining the total area irrigated as well as in contribution to
farm output and incomes (DebRoy and Shah 2003). An extraordinary aspect of this boom is its
quiet, furtive character: governments in many Asian countries have remained unaware of this
wildfire growth of wells and tube wells fueling right under their noses. As a result, by the time
resource managers begin to size up the challenge facing them, they find they are fighting a
losing battle. Many regions of Asia are now discovering that the groundwater boom comes with
a price tag in the form of groundwater depletion, pollution and quality deterioration (because
of fluoride, arsenic, nitrates, etc.) raising serious concerns about the future sustainability of such
intensive groundwater irrigation. What these need direly is a practical strategy of managing
this runaway growth in the bubble of groundwater economy before it bursts, causing misery
all around. The phrase ‘groundwater governance’ has come into currency primarily in the
wake of the recognition that managing groundwater has come to involve, not just physical
and ecological processes but a complex of socio-economic and institutional relationships with
far-reaching impacts on society.
Drawing from the experience of Western United States, Europe and Australia, international
thinking on the ways forward on improving groundwater governance has veered towards a
complex of stylised prescriptions: (i) countries should get an appropriate legal and regulatory
framework for groundwater appropriation and use; (ii) a new system of groundwater rights
should replace the present open-access regime; (iii) groundwater should be treated as an
238 Tushaar Shah

economic good and priced to reflect its scarcity value; (iv) an institutional structure created
for development of the resource should be transformed into one that is appropriate for
resource management; and (v) policies should be redefined and adjusted to the new priority
of sustainable management.
Against these stylised prescriptions, we find vast variations in the way nations actually re-
spond to the problems of groundwater stress. In this chapter I attempt to explain why. I do this
by developing a comparative analysis of institutions and policies for groundwater management
in South Asia, China and Mexico. My purpose is to explore to what extent the responses to
groundwater overdevelopment in these regions conforms to these stylised prescriptions and why.
In the second section, I draw a broad comparison between the South Asian and Chinese situations
because one finds marked similarities in these in several respects. In the third section, I develop
the Mexican case study. In the fourth section, I offer some general conclusions and argue for
a more nuanced understanding of the context within which groundwater economies operate
in different parts of the world, and which shape their strategies of governing its appropriation
and use.

C OMPARING G ROUNDWATER I NSTITUTIONS AND

P OLICIES IN S OUTH A SIA AND N ORTH C HINA

History and Context

South Asia and North China have important similarities in terms of very high population
densities, small land holdings and predominance of groundwater. While South Asia’s irriga-
tion history goes back to the millennia, North China’s goes back to all of 50 years. However, when
it comes to the history of groundwater irrigation, an unprecedented expansion in it after 1970
was spurred in both the regions by nearly the same compact of factors, that is, intensification
of farming and the propagation of seed-fertiliser technologies, reduced and undependable
surface water supplies, role of groundwater in mitigating the impacts of drought and early
encouragement from public policy makers to groundwater irrigation. In both the regions, well
densities increased in spurts during drought periods and with active support from the state
(Ronghan 1988: 83). Booming groundwater-based irrigated agriculture in both the regions is
facing imminent threat of decline as a result of resource depletion or salinisation caused by
constant over-draft. Secondary salinisation has yet not emerged as a critical problem in large
areas of North China, especially in the western parts (Kendy et al. 2002) as it has in Pakistan’s
Punjab and Sindh and Indian Punjab and Haryana. However, groundwater depletion and
secular decline in the water table, high fluoride content, rising energy costs of pumping,
problems of land subsidence, falling well-yields and high rate of failure of wells are problems
common to both the regions.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 239

Organisation of Village Groundwater Economies

However, there are notable differences in other respects, mostly in the institutional fabric of
the two regions. First, it is the sheer numbers: China has an estimate of 3.5 million agricultural tube
wells, mostly in the North China Plains (NCP), which extract an estimated 75 km3 of groundwater/
year; in comparison, South Asia had 19 million agricultural wells and tube wells during the
mid-1990s, which may well have increased to 23–25 million now, extracting some 210–230 km3
of groundwater. Then, the structure of land and water rights and groundwater institutions are
different. Throughout South Asia, an overwhelming majority of groundwater wells and pumps
are privately owned by farmers. Rights to groundwater are not separately specified and are
treated as an easement attached to land; as such, land owners act as if they have unrestricted
ownership rights on groundwater. However, exercising this right requires a well and a pump;
and many small farmers’ holdings are too small to make a mechanised well viable. Moreover,
because of high levels of land fragmentation, even those who own wells cannot irrigate all their
fragments by their own wells. A major institutional response to this problem is the emergence
of pervasive, local, fragmented pump irrigation markets which have helped smooth out these
rough edges of the groundwater economy in a South Asian village and have expanded access
to groundwater irrigation to the resource poor.
This institution of South Asian groundwater markets—or, to be precise, pump rental
markets—has been extensively studied in the South during recent years (Shah 1993; Saleth
1994; Palmer-Jones 1994; Janakarajan 1992; Kolawali and Chicoine 1989; Meinzen-Dick and
Sullins 1994; Strosser and Kuper 1994). Like markets in general, these create new wealth and
help alleviate rural poverty; but they also make the organisation of the groundwater economy
a chaotic maze of intense, criss-crossing interaction amongst pump owners and water buyers
without any mediating influence. In many regions of South Asia, farmers invest in tube wells
and pumps primarily for selling water for profit; even when the primary motive is irrigating
own land, pump owners can still earn significant supplemental income from selling water as
a side activity (Kolavalli and Chicoine 1989). As water markets mature, intense competition
amongst water sellers confers benefits to buyers in terms of lower price and better service; but
it also encourages huge overlaps in command areas of private tube wells and excess pumping
capacity.
In a typical South Asian village, the groundwater economy is completely untrammeled
by any regulatory authority or mediating agency. It permits no role for even the village level
governance structures (such as India’s gram panchayats or Pakistan’s numberdars). No norms
are effectively in place for siting and licensing of groundwater wells. The only government
agency the pump owners have any interaction with is the electricity utility and some times
public sector banking institutions. India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Develop-
ment (NABARD), which refinances bank loans for groundwater structures, stipulated some
siting norms; however, these are extensively violated (Shah 1993). In groundwater depletion,
areas such as North Gujarat in west India, where capital investments as well as risks in making
240 Tushaar Shah

successful tube wells are high, farmers come together to form cooperative tube well organisa-
tions (Shah and Bhattacharya 1993). However, their prime aim is to secure irrigation for their
members and they play no role whatsoever in guiding or managing the overall groundwater
socio-ecology of the village. All in all, in South Asia’s chaotic village groundwater economies,
all formal and informal institutions function with the sole aim of maximising present wealth
creation from groundwater irrigation.
In a typical North China village, however, the case was nearly the opposite until the early
1980s. Before the sweeping agrarian reforms initiated by the Deng administration in 1983,
irrigation organisation in the Chinese country-side was uniform and orderly in comparison.
Collectives were responsible for making and maintaining tube wells as well as pumps and
distribution systems. This did not necessarily mean that they were efficient in techno-economic
terms; however, it did mean the presence of an over-arching governance mechanism at the
level of the collective and above that oversaw the working of the irrigation economy. With
the onset of reforms and the household responsibility system, one finds a wide variety of
institutional arrangements have now come into play in the Chinese countryside (Xiang et al.
2000). Table 13.1 outlines a range of institutional arrangements we came across for tube well
management in nine villages of the Hanan and Hebei province in the course of fieldwork during
2002. Where water tables are high and the cost of making tube wells low—as, for example, in
the lower Hanan province—it is common for pre-existing shallow tube wells to be owned and
maintained by village committees (VCs) through agricultural taxes.1 Where new shallow tube
wells (STWs) need to be built, VCs still do so, especially if they have buoyant tax revenue; else,
they invite private farmers to build and operate tube wells under formal contracts, which vary
from very simple to the quite complex.
Regardless of whether STWs are collectively managed or contractor managed, pumps and
ground pipes are generally owned by farmers or borrowed from friends or relatives. Unlike
in South Asia, where the ownership of a pump in many regions is not the only source of sig-
nificant extra income but, as some social scientists claim, also of social status and political
power (Wood 1995; Dubash 2002), in STW areas in North China, pump ownership yields the
owner neither profit, nor power nor status. The chief reason is the relatively low real cost of
machine capital in China in comparison to the rest of the developing world.
In deep tube well (DTW) areas of Hebei and Shandong provinces, the village irrigation
organisation undergoes marked changes; tube wells are bigger and fewer, each serving a
larger command. Some VCs here also build and operate DTWs, which are a much costlier
affair compared to STWs. Here tube wells going to the depth of 350 m or so, motor-pumps
generally of 28 KW and 1,000–1,500 m of buried pipeline network—which comprises a tube
well assembly—may entail an investment of Yuan (Y) 250,000–300,000 (US$ 31,000–38,000)
apiece. Each tube well here commands 600–1,000 mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) and is beyond the
reach of any individual farmer unless he fancies himself as a water entrepreneur. It is common
for DTWs to be established, funded and owned by the village development committee; but
its operation is commonly contracted out. A variety of contracting arrangements seem to be
 Table 13.1: Variety of Institutional Arrangements for Groundwater Irrigation in
Nine Villages of Henan and Hebei Provinces

Village, County, Pumping Water

Province Level (metres) Shallow Tube Well Motor Pump Deep Tube Well Transformer Collection of Electricity Fee
Xiaotan, Yanjin 7–8 m BOM by VC Farmers Nil O & M by TEB’s electrician collects
county, Henan own & share township based on meter reading
pumps electricity bureau on each motor pump
Guantun,Yanjin 10 m BOM by VC Farmers Nil O & M by TEB’s electrician collects
county, Henan own & share township based on meter reading
pumps electricity bureau on each motor pump
Xijie, Yanjin 17 m STW maintenance by VC; but O & M Nil O & M by TEB electrician collects
county, Henan of STW and pump by contractor who township irrigation fee @ Y
charges Y 1/kWh against Y 0.7/kWh electricity bureau 1/kWh and pays the
to be paid to electrician contractor Y 0.3/kWh as
his margin
Zhao Zhuang, Ci 26–30 12 contractors operate collective Nil 4 managed by STW operators collect Y
county, Hebei STWs; 12 private service providers; private 1/kWh from irrigators
5 share-holder service providers contractors; against electricity cost
2 by VC of Y 0.565/kWh
Dong wan gnu, 5 Farmer-contractors operate STWs & Nil Owned and Contractors charge
Ci county, Hebei maintain them managed by Y 0.82/kWh from
VC irrigators and pay
Y 0.565/kWh to
electrician
Shi cun Ying, Ci 220 Private and stake-holder group owned and managed Collectively owned Tube well owners
county, Hebei deep tube wells with pumps and buried pipe networks by VC charge Y 10/hour from
irrigators and pay
0.565/kWh
(Table 13.1 continued )
(Table 13.1 continued )
Village, County, Pumping Water
Province Level (metres) Shallow Tube Well Motor Pump Deep Tube Well Transformer Collection of Electricity Fee
Yao Zhung Zi, 220 15 STWs managed by Farmers use 6 DTWs owned Collectively DTW operators
Chang Zhou VC own or & managed by owned employed by VC
county, Hebei borrowed the VC by VC collect Y 16/hour from
pumps irrigators and pay Y
0.45/kWh to electrician
Xi Huayuan, 250 VC owns and operates 6 DTWs and private farmers Four private DTW Private DTW owners
Chang Zhao operate 4, all with 28 kW pumps; the former operate owners own a charge Y 1.1/kWh and
county, Hebei as a utility, the latter as a business transformer each pay Y 0.48/kWh; VC
DTW charges Y 0.65/
kWh and pays Y 0.55/
kWh to TEB.
Xi Tun Zi, Chang 250 VC collected Y 200/mu to build 7 collective DTWs at a Collectively VC employed DTW
Zhou county, cost of Y 620,000; each has a 400 m deep DTW, 30 kW owned and operators charge Y 15/
Hebei pump and 1200–1500 m of underground pipeline managed by VC hour and pay Y 0.48/
network. kWh to electrician
Source: Based on author’s field work and notes in 2002–03, International Water Management Institute and Tata (ITP) Water Policy
Program.
Notes: BOM—Build, Owned and Managed; DTW—Deep Tubewell; O&M—Operation and Maintenance; VC—Village Committee;
STW—Shallow tubewell; TEB—Township Electricity Board.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 243

in vogue, each presenting interesting alternatives in the design of incentives. Regardless of

whether they are privately or collectively managed, in DTW areas of the North China Plain
(NCP), such as in most of Hebei province, irrigation is a far more expensive proposition than
in the STW areas. In these villages, everyone is a water buyer and pays a water rate that is
generally linked to energy use. In this increasingly complex maze of irrigation institutions in
North China, private irrigation service providers are emerging as key players.
Unlike in South Asia, where local water markets find their own prices, in North China, the
village leaders or party leaders often fix or have a say in deciding the margins to be charged by
contractors, which hovered around Y 0.2–0.35/kWh (US Cents (c) 2.5–4.4/kWh). Even where
private irrigation providers fixed prices, their gross margins tend to be in this range. There
is hardly any competition in the sense that it operates in South Asian groundwater markets
mostly because there is little overlap in the command areas served by different tube wells; and
it is common for contractors and private sellers to collude in setting a common price under
the watchful guidance of the VC. The net result is that the ratio of irrigation fee to energy
cost—which in India may be as high as 2.5 or more—seldom exceeds 1.5 in China. In villages,
with alternative irrigation sources or in years of good rainfall, tube well irrigation is sparingly
used and contractors make little money. All in all, compared to South Asia, village governance
institutions are stronger in China in that they enjoy and use greater authority in village affairs
and, therefore, have a pervasive influence not only on the irrigation organisation but also on
the entire village economy and society.
Compared to the South Asian farmer who virtually pays no direct taxes, the Chinese farmer
is heavily taxed. A major reason for the heavy taxation is the burden of the salary of the local
government officials. Every village has a village leader and a village Communist Party leader.
The former is elected by a village committee of seven elected members. The party leader for
each village is selected by the township level party leadership by all party members in the
village.
The party leader is all powerful in village affairs; if there is a dispute between the VC and the
Party, there are negotiations to settle the differences, but ultimately what the party leader says
goes. Party members, and particularly the party leader, are selected supposedly for their social
concern and awareness and a strong ‘extension motive’ (McClelland 1985). This helps some-
what in keeping the institution from becoming oppressive and hegemonic. The party leader
as well as the village leader and members of the VC are salaried officials. In the Henan vil-
lages we discovered, the party leader gets Y 140 (US$ 17.50) per month; while others get Y 120
(US$ 15) per month. These salaries have to come from land tax. Land tax is also used to sustain
the township government, which lays claim on upto 50 per cent of all land tax collections
at the village level.
This parallel structure of local government and party organisation may not be perfect or
even ideal; however, it ensures the presence, in the average Chinese village, of state authority,
which is largely or completely absent in the South Asian villages. In an Indian village, farmers
can chase away an Electricity Board meter reader with impunity and in Pakistan, the Water
and Power Development Authority has to use the military to take meter readings on electric
244 Tushaar Shah

tube wells (Sunday Times 2002); but in China many rules of the game get formulated as well
as enforced by the village-level governance structures. The ‘soft state’ is as evident in a South
Asian village as the ‘hard state’ is in a Chinese village (see Table 13.2).
All in all, the organisation of village groundwater economy in North China differs in several
material ways from that in South Asia in that:

(i) The village committee and the village leader play a significant mediating and regulatory
role in shaping the irrigation economy in North China whereas throughout South Asia,
the village groundwater economy operates in a laissez faire style.
(ii) Monopoly premiums are non-existent or marginal on pump rental markets in NCP
whereas they are significant in South Asia; in the NCP, monopoly rents emerge with
the rise of private water sellers in DTW areas.
(iii) Since STWs as well as DTWs in the NCP have no overlapping command areas, the
opportunities for ‘competitive deepening’ and destructive chasing of falling water tables
encountered in South Asia is absent in the NCP; this advantageous feature is likely to
stay as long as the village committee and the village leader play an influential role.
(iv) Finally, effective costs of groundwater irrigation tend to rise as one moves from STW
areas to DTW areas in a manner that broadly reflects the social cost of groundwater.

Table 13.2: Comparing Features of Village Groundwater Economies in

South Asia and North China
South Asia North China Plain (NCP)
Ownership of tube wells Private Collective, contracted
Ownership of pumps Overwhelmingly private Mostly private; some collective
Do all farmers own pumps No No
Do tube well command Yes, extensively No, rarely
areas overlap
Do pump owners compete Yes because of active markets No because tube wells are sited to
to increase water sales in pump irrigation service with serve specified command areas
powerful productivity and equity
impacts
Are water prices fixed by the Yes, entirely; there is no regulation No, it is guided by village
operation of the market? whatever of the way fragmented, committee and village leader;
local pump irrigation markets usually it is fixed on energy-cost
function plus basis
Is water selling viewed as a Yes, especially in eastern India, No except in DTW areas where
source of significant income? Nepal terai and Bangladesh farmers make heavy investments
Irrigation cost as a proportion 20–25% for water buyers 3–5% for water buyers
of total value of output?
Source: Based on author’s field work and notes in 2002–03, International Water Management Institute
and Tata (ITP) Water Policy Program.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 245

Direct and Indirect Cost of Groundwater Irrigation

Neither in South Asia nor in North China is groundwater itself priced on the margin. Under
the new Chinese Water Law, farmers are required to obtain a ‘permit’ for which they have to
pay a fixed fee. This was nowhere in effect; even if it were, it would not determine the marginal
cost of groundwater use. What does, however, affect the marginal cost of groundwater use is
the cost of energy used for pumping. In this, there are major differences between South Asia
and North China. Energy costs of groundwater in South Asia seldom fully reflect the scarcity
value of groundwater or energy. For instance, the cost of m3 of groundwater purchased by a
small farmer is around INR 4 (US c 8) in eastern Uttar Pradesh or North Bihar in India, where it
is abundantly available2; but it is less than INR 2 (US c 4)3 in North Gujarat, where it is mined
from 800 feet or more. In Bangladesh, where groundwater is abundant and can be pumped
from 10 feet below ground, irrigating a hectare of paddy with purchased groundwater costs a
high Taka 6,000 (approx. US$ 100) (Mainuddin 2002, personal communication) which drives
many small holders to manual irrigation; but in Tamil Nadu, where almost all groundwater
presently being used is mined, irrigating a hectare of paddy with purchased groundwater costs
less than INR 1,500 (~US$ 30).
The main reason why groundwater irrigation costs do not reflect its scarcity in India is the
distorted electricity pricing policies pursued by Indian state governments. Collecting electricity
charges from millions of farmers scattered over a huge countryside has been a nightmare for
South Asian countries like India and Pakistan. The logistical difficulty and economic costs of
metering electricity used by tube wells has been found to be so high that most Indian states
have done away with metering and instead charge a flat tariff-based on horse-power rating of
the pumps (Shah 1993; Shah et al. 2004b). Pakistan too tried flat tariff for nearly a decade before
reverting to metering in 2000. In India, there is growing opposition to flat tariff in part because
it is believed to induce inefficient use of power and groundwater, but in part also because flat
tariff has been used by populist politicians to subsidise tube well irrigation. Electricity subsidy
is thought to be the prime reason why many State Electricity Boards in India are on the verge
of bankruptcy. Thus, the management of this ‘energy-irrigation nexus’ in South Asia is central
to the governance of the region’s groundwater as well as energy economies.
Surprisingly, the electricity-irrigation nexus, in ways widely discussed in South Asia, is not
a subject of discussion in China at all. Indeed, researchers and technocrats with whom we
raised the topic had difficulty in understanding why the two need to be co-managed at all.
The Chinese electricity supply industry operates on two principles: (i) of total cost-recovery
in generation, transmission and distribution at each level with some minor cross-subsidisation
across user groups and areas; and (ii) each user pays in proportion to his use. Unlike in much
of South Asia, where farmers pay either nothing or much less than domestic and industrial
consumers for power, agricultural electricity use in many parts of North China attracts the
highest charge per unit, followed by household users and then industries. Here, operation and
maintenance (O&M) of local power infrastructures is the responsibility of local units, the village
committee at the village level, the Township Electricity Bureau at the township level and the
246 Tushaar Shah

County Electricity Bureau at the county level. Equally, the responsibility of collecting electricity
charges too is vested in local units in ways that ensure that the power used at each level is paid
for in full. At the village level, this implies that the sum of power use recorded in the meters
attached to all irrigation pumps has to tally with the power supply recorded at the transformer
for any given period. The unit or person charged with the fee collection responsibility has to
pay the Township Electricity Bureau for power use recorded at the transformer level. To allow
for normal line losses, 10 per cent allowance is given by the Township Electricity Bureau to the
village unit.4 Under a new Network Reform programme initiated by the National Government
with the objective of improving power supply infrastructure, village electricians in many
areas of NCP have organised to provide improved services to their customers. However, these
too levy a service charge for attending each request for help to cover their cost or transport
on motorcycle. The village electrician, who generally enjoys the support of the party leader,
is feared; and the new service orientation is designed partly to project the electrician as the
friend of the people. The hypothesis that with better quality of power and support service,
farmers would be willing to pay a high price for power is best exemplified in Henan where at
Y 0.7/kWh (US c 8.5/kWh, INR 4.27/kWh) farmers pay a higher electricity rate compared to
all categories of users in India and Pakistan, as also compared to the local diesel price at Y 2.1
(US c 26) per litre. Thus, the Chinese have all along had the solution to the energy-irrigation
nexus that has befuddled South Asia for nearly two decades. In the way the Chinese collect
metered electricity charges, it is well nigh impossible to make financial losses since these are
firmly passed on downstream from one level to the level down below.
Would transposing the Chinese institutional design for consumption based pricing of
electricity and water work in South Asia? After all, it should be simple to put the meter reader
of a state electricity board on a salary plus performance-linked incentive or disincentive; and
equally, to put the canal guard too on a similar system of performance-linked rewards, with minor
adjustments in physical infrastructure. Our assessment is that it would not work because of the
break-down of local authority structures in South Asia. The primary reason why the metering
system works in China is that, in order to perform their tasks effectively, the electrician can
invoke the authority of the state through the village committee, the village leader and, above
all, the village party leader. And since the Chinese are used to taking this authority seriously,
the electricians too invoke a measure of fear and compliance. The ease with which an electrician
in a Chinese village can recover the difference between power fee deficit by levying a cess on
all users is suggestive of the authority they vicariously enjoy.

The Organisation and Reach of the Water Bureaucracy

Never in the 2,500 year history of South Asia have ordinary citizens been subjected to a uni-
fied system of governance for a sustained period of time. A major reason probably is that
except for brief periods—when regents like Asoka, Harshawardhan and Akbar unified vast
territories—what are now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal were ruled over by
numerous kings through feudal chiefs and overlords constantly engaged in internecine strife.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 247

These regions came under unified administration only during the Colonial period which
created a bureaucracy as an institution of governance. Until then, each South Asian village
was pretty much a republic.
In contrast, for most parts of over 2,000 years, right until 1911, China has been a unified,
tightly-governed state that ensured respect for law and the authority of the state. Since the
time of Qin Shi Huangdi (circa BC 250), China’s first Emperor who unified numerous feuding
kingdoms into an efficient and organised state, China’s political system and governance
institutions seem to have changed very little. The Chinese state that Huangdi built has sur-
vived, in its essentials, to date with a single currency, nationalised land and natural resources,
standardised weights and measures, a single script with 3,000 characters. In a brief reign of
11 years, Huangdi also produced homogeneity in people’s thought by destroying all books
apart from legalist works and rallied society around the common goal of creating a ‘rich and
powerful country’. Despite numerous efforts to recreate pre-Huangdi kingdoms, China retained,
until well into the 20th century, the tradition of a unified state with, uniform penal code, the
legalist political system and a vast, centralised bureaucracy with a formidable reach and ambit,
which are evident even today.
The organisation of the South Asian water administration is thin, fragmented, top-heavy,
bureaucratic and in general ill-equipped to manage a sector that is rapidly growing in size and
complexity. Take for instance India; in a typical Indian block (or taluka or tehsil) that covers
some 100 villages and a population of over 200,000 people, the total number of government
officials (excluding the lowest rung, such as canal chowkidars and public tube well operators)
working on water probably does not exceed 10; and for a district, which may have 18–30 such
blocks and a population of 2–3 million, this number is probably around 100. Moreover, these
are vertically organised into line departments—such as irrigation, groundwater, water supply
and sanitation—which hardly interact with each other. Canal irrigation departments are com-
monly the largest; whereas groundwater departments are either absent (for instance in Gujarat,
where the Gujarat Water Resources Development Corporation doubles up as one) or thinly
staffed. Each department functions as a bureau, often pursuing a mandate that has long be-
come irrelevant. For instance, the groundwater departments in most Indian states still believe
further development of groundwater to be their key mandate; these are nowhere close to
making a transition from the ‘resource development mode’ to ‘resource management mode’.
Likewise, once the construction of new projects gets over, canal irrigation bureaucracies too feel
unable to move into the new role of system management and service delivery. Their ambit of
operation is linked to administrative units—such as districts and talukas—rather than a river
basin or sub-basin. Finally, the water bureaucracies in much of South Asia have increasingly
become a drag on the society; over 90 per cent of their budgets get used up by salaries and
establishment costs, and the heavily subsidised water fees—of which only a small fraction is
actually collected—can hardly meet even a part of this salary and establishment cost, leave
alone contribute to infrastructure maintenance and improvement.
Chinese water administration differs from the South Asian in at least two respects: it has
much greater presence at the grassroots level, and increasingly, it is paying for itself through
service fees. China has a nested hierarchy of water institutions at each level, controlled mostly
248 Tushaar Shah

by the government at that level but within an overall policy influence of the Ministry of Water
Resources (MWR) (Wang and Huang 2002). Like South Asian bureaucrats, Chinese water
bureaucrats too have a ‘resource development’ rather than a ‘resource management’ mindset.
However, there are indications that water management concerns are increasingly coming to
a head, especially in provinces like Hebei where groundwater scarcity, depletion and quality
deterioration are emerging as paramount concerns.
Compared to South Asia’s fragmented water administrations, China’s Water Bureaus rep-
resent an effective first step towards integrating and unifying water management tasks at local
levels (see Figure 13.1). Until a decade ago, water management in a typical county in China
was fragmented as in a South Asian local administrative territory (such as a tehsil or a district).
A serious—and avoidable—water crisis in Shenzhen in 1991 led its municipal administration
to create a unified Water Affairs Bureau which manages water source development and
construction, flood control and drainage infrastructure, urban water supply, water saving
programmes—all under one umbrella. The Water Affairs Bureau model caught on and by
May 1999, 160 counties had Water Affairs Bureaus. In May 2000, Shanghai brought in even
more functions under a new Shanghai Water Resources Bureau (ibid.).
Water Bureaux are substantial outfits even at the county level (equivalent to 2–3 taluks/
blocks/tehsils/thana in South Asia). In Ci County in Hebei province, which has 19 townships

Figure 13.1: Structure of Chinese Water Administration and its Funding

Wholly funded from

provincial budget
Provincial Water
Bureau: 100–180 staff

Partially financed from

farm and other taxes
County Water
Bureau: 50–70 staff

Wholly financed from

local taxes
Township Water
Bureau: 20–30 staff

Wholly financed from

Village Committee: 1–6
local taxes
water staff
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 249

and 390 villages under it, the County Water Bureau staff is only 60 and a typical township water
bureau employs 20–30 officials; however the entire hierarchy of water bureaus in the county
employs some 560 people. Hebei province, for instance, has nine city-level water bureaus and
200 water bureaus of counties like Ci, which manage water resources in 4,000 small townships
and villages. Thus, when all levels are taken together, the Water Bureau structure in a province
may employ several thousand officials. Whereas the Provincial Water Bureau is fully supported
by the state budget, the County Water Bureau has to raise a portion of its own budget and the
Township Water Bureau is wholly self-financed (see Figure 13.1). Thus, Ci County, for example,
has an annual budget of Y 30 million; in this, Y 10 million is contributed by the national gov-
ernment under the drought mitigation programme; however, the balance of Y 20 million has
to be raised by the County Water Bureau from farmers’ taxes and local incomes. Kendy et
al. (2002), in their study of groundwater institutions and policies in Luancheng County near
Beijing, note that ‘fee revenues are sufficient to fund the County Water Affairs Bureau, but
not to finance water conservation county-wide’. Changing incentives facing bureaucrats is
an economy-wide phenomenon that seems designed to transform China’s bureaucrats into
entrepreneurs (Scott et al. 2000).
The Water Bureau structure is apparently undergoing a strategic transformation under the
1998 reform; indeed, recently, in some provinces these are renamed Water Management and
Service Bureaux and are strongly encouraged to adopt a business ethic rather than a regulatory-
bureaucratic approach and generate resources locally by selling services. True, this may be easier
said than done, especially since revenue-yielding water infrastructural assets are commonly
held by provincial bureaus or the national government. Even so, many researchers believe that
unified water resources management under the overall leadership of the much-restructured
MWR is gradually becoming a reality in China (Wang and Huang 2002). From the groundwater
perspective, another major 1998 reform was to remove groundwater management from Ministry
of Geological and Mineral Resources to MWR, a more logical home.
The Chinese bureaucracy—of the government as well as the party—in general has been
a subject of much criticism by western scholars and researchers. However, the potentially
powerful role of an effective bureaucracy in governance of scarce natural resources such as water
has, in general, been underestimated. In India, for example, the Supreme Court announced
two far-reaching environmental decisions in the span of a decade: in the first, it enjoined the
Forest Department to bring illegal felling of trees in reserved forest areas forthwith, and the
Forest Department, which has a large bureaucracy with significant presence at the local levels,
effectively implemented the Supreme Court’s injunction throughout the Indian countryside
and deforestation of reserved forest was significantly reduced. In 1996, alarmed by widespread
groundwater depletion, the Supreme Court, in an equally momentous judgement, empowered
the Central Groundwater Board of India as the Central Ground Water Authority charged with
the task of controlling groundwater depletion forthwith. Six years later, nothing had changed;
beyond launching a limited regulatory programme in the Union Territory of Delhi, the Central
Groundwater Authority had been totally unequal to the task because it had no operational
bureaucracy comparable to the Forest Department (Down to Earth 2002). The Groundwater Board
250 Tushaar Shah

has been used to its traditional role of groundwater monitoring, which it has been performing
with the help of a thin force of scientific staff at the state level.

Groundwater Law, Policy and Their Implementation

In the context of growing scarcity, the task of managing water resources is becoming complex
entailing numerous tasks at the ground level such as:

1) the need to register users and control free riders; 2) [building] the technical capacity to
deliver agreed upon discharges at different points on the network; 3) the establishment of
a process of collective decision making where groups of users are federated in higher hier-
archical levels, with corresponding representatives; 4) the definition of partnership between
users and irrigation officials, where service fee contributes to payment of field staff; 5) a
legal framework to support this new institutional setting; 6) a strong commitment from the
administration and politicians (Barker and Molle 2002: 21).

Barker and Molle also argue that in the Asian context, ‘the growing importance of common
pool groundwater resources add greatly to the complexity of the problem’ (ibid.). Doing this
will require resource management and regulatory institutions with wide reach.
South Asian countries are at ground zero in all these. None of them has in place a system
of registering water users nor a law or a legal framework. In India, as well as in Pakistan, draft
groundwater bills have been making rounds for several years; but there is no will to make
them into a law because of doubts about their enforceability (Steenbergen and Oliemans 2002).
China has more of the necessary conditions in place to make a beginning. Starting with the
epoch-making 1988 National Water Law, which defined a new legal and policy framework for
water management, China has enacted three more laws and issued some 30 water management
regulations during the 1990s (Wang and Huang 2002). A slew of new laws are in the making.
The 1998 reforms, which marked a further transition from a planned economy to a ‘socialist
market economy’, pressured water bureaux at various levels to increase efficiency, reduce staff
and generate resources through service provision. In 1992, when the Communist Party voted
in favour of transition to a socialist market economy, the MWR proposed a strategic framework
for water conservancy reform that focused on five key areas: water investment system, water
asset management, water price and charge collection, water legislation and regulation, and
water services provision (ibid.). Institutional reform in China’s water sector has relentlessly
pushed this five-point agenda in recent years.
As of now, however, there is little evidence that this is having much effect on the ground.
Chinese as well as Western observers and researchers are critical of the ineffectual role of
the Chinese water bureaucracy in managing groundwater depletion in North China. Several
reasons explain this. First, the Chinese bureaucracy has for long been fed on the developmental
rhetoric of ‘protecting people against floods and droughts’ (Boxer 2001: 337); moreover, rising
from the farmers’ ranks, the local bureaucracy empathises more with farmers’ needs to eke out
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 251

a livelihood than the objective of long-term environmental sustainability. Second, there

are also informal kinship ties and network and cultural institutions such as quanxi, which create
a gulf between macro-level policy making and micro-level implementation. Finally, in their
exhortations, even national and provincial leaders betray this ambivalence between protecting
livelihoods and food security on the one hand and mitigating groundwater degradation on
the other.
There is growing, though scattered, evidence of successes in groundwater demand manage-
ment in North China. In Luancheng County in Hebei, Kendy et al. (2002) note that a cost-share
programme of water saving—in which the provincial, prefecture and county water bureaux
share 30 per cent each while the farmer contributes 10 per cent—resulted in a shift from flood
irrigation to sprinkler sets serving 2,900 ha, drip irrigation to 20 ha and buried pipe networks
to 6,700 ha. Similarly, a panel of UN experts studying basin management in the Huiahe river
basin, east of the Yellow river, noted that:

with the same irrigated area and water consumption, the grain output [in the basin] almost
doubled from 1980 and 1993, increasing from 40.4 to 73.6 million tons. This may point to
a significant improvement in agricultural and irrigation practices over a short space of time,
but is probably due largely to the uncontrolled expansion of groundwater irrigation to
supplement existing surface schemes (UNDP 2000: 8).

Later, the report says, ‘While the predominant approach has been supply oriented, demand
management has made its mark. In irrigation, efficient water-use is an important programme
that is reported to have had significant impact during the past 15 years’ (ibid.: 9).
In South Asia, such demand management initiatives by local governments or water bureau-
cracies are rarely to be found even in areas like Mehsana in North Gujarat, Ramnathapuram in
Tamil Nadu or Kolar in Karnataka—examples of Indian districts suffering extreme groundwater
stress. Here, to start with there is no legal or regulatory framework under which groundwater
use can be regulated; even if there were one, there is no administrative structure that might
enforce it. In any case, there is no water administration at the district or taluka (block) level
that might develop and implement anything like the strategy that the Chang Zhou water
bureau has come up with. Above all, even at the higher levels of the bureaucracy and political
leadership, there is no recognition of environmental sustainability as an important policy vari-
able; the focus of attention is still on how best to protect livelihoods. It is not surprising that
in most Indian states, electricity supplied to farmers by state-controlled power utilities tend
to become cheaper, not costlier, as one moves from groundwater-abundant to groundwater-
depleted areas.
To summarise the arguments, China has in place more of the socio-economic and institu-
tional preconditions needed to make direct as well as indirect management work on the
ground (see Table 13.3). In particular, (i) even as these are weakening, China’s village, township
and county level governance structures play a more proactive and effective executive and
regulatory role than comparable local governance structures in South Asia; (ii) China has in
place, for well over a decade, a water law and a water permit system that are already enforced
252 Tushaar Shah

Table 13.3: Comparing Water Institutions and Policies in

South Asia and China—Summary

South Asia China

1. Does the village government have No, except in Baluchistan Yes
significant regulatory role?
2. Are there significant taxes on No. Yes
agriculture? Are these collected?
3. Is there a system of registering and No Yes; but not enforced
licensing groundwater structures? Is it strictly
enforced?
4. Nature of the water bureaucracy? Fragmented; thin presence Less fragmented; but
more presence
5. Water as an economic good; does No; most users pay a tax Yes, most users pay a
water command an economic price? water price
6. Does the water administration have No. Yes; rice cultivation
capability to enforce broad-spectrum in NCP completely
measures? eliminated
7. Are there institutional limits to Only indirect; unenforced Avoided easily, even
‘competitive deepening of tube wells’? with privatisation
8. Adoption of water saving methods Very limited Extensive and growing
and technologies
9. Macro-economic safety valves: is there No; except in small pockets Yes, with the work
scope for shift of population from permit system
farm to off-farm livelihoods? liberalised
10. Institutional reform: is the focus just Focus on cost recovery through Chinese water admin.
on cost recovery or productivity and IMT in a ‘franchise mode’
environment sustainability? rather than IMT
Source: Based on author’s field work and notes in 2002–03, International Water Management Institute
and Tata (ITP) Water Policy Program.

on industrial and municipal users where as South Asian countries are still debating a water
law; (iii) the Chinese water administration is better integrated and has a greater and more
effective grassroots presence and reach compared to South Asia where water administrations
are fragmented and have thin or no presence at the local level; (iv) the Chinese are much
closer to transforming water into an economic good than South Asians; a large proportion of
Chinese water-use—domestic, industrial, agricultural—is paid for based on consumption or
its surrogate; most South Asian water charge is aimed at recovery of O&M and is collected as a
tax rather than as a price; (v) in search of viability for its water infrastructure and institutions,
China is transforming its water bureaucracy into a business-oriented service provider which is
likely to place water productivity at the centre stage; South Asia, in contrast, is trying to turn
over irrigation management to water user organisations; such institutional reform may achieve
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 253

better cost recovery but it is unlikely to mount effective regulation aimed at sustainable use; and
(vi) finally, with a work permit system being liberalised, a rapidly industrialising China is likely
to witness massive population shifts from water-stressed North to wealthy South and East,
especially the Pearl River Delta enjoying economic boom. China’s industrial growth presents
it with a safety valve to take population pressure off its irrigated land; and its challenge of
producing enough food is easier to meet than of creating millions of rural livelihoods, which
is South Asia’s central concern.
To South Asian policy makers, China’s experience offers four lessons.

(i) Local resource management or community rule making are unlikely to offer effective
solutions to unsustainable groundwater use in the South Asian rural context where
food and livelihood security are uppermost concerns of water users. Effective regulatory
frameworks and vigorous demand management require strong authority structures at
micro, meso and macro levels.
(ii) Making a national water policy or groundwater law has no meaning unless it is under-
pinned at meso and local levels by institutional structures to implement these.
(iii) The first essential step South Asian countries need to take in order to manage water
better as an economic good is to start charging a price for it rather than a tax. To do
this, two things seem essential: first, focus needs to expand from infrastructure creation
to service provision and resource management; second, ways need to be explored to
drastically reduce transaction costs of consumption linked pricing. In doing both these,
the Chinese experience is valuable.
(iv) Finally, in the medium to long term, a big part of the solution to the upcoming ground-
water crisis is economic growth and urbanisation, and shifting people from farm to
off-farm livelihoods.

M EXICO : A GGRESSIVE R EFORMS

IN THE G ROUNDWATER E CONOMY

Like India and China, Mexico too suffers from chronic imbalance of population and water
availability in different regions. Arid and semi-arid areas of Mexico account for 76 per cent
of the population, 90 per cent of the irrigated area and 70 per cent of the industries, but
these receive only 20 per cent of Mexico’s total precipitation (Barker et al. 2000). As a result,
groundwater depletion is rampant in the North, North-Western areas and in the Mexico
Valley. States like Sinaloa, Sonora, Guanajuato, Coahuila and Tamaulipas are water scarce but
have intensive agriculture; Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo are water
abundant but have the bulk of Mexico’s poverty. In the former, which constitute Mexico’s
food basket, dealing with groundwater depletion is a critical policy issue that Mexico’s water
reforms have tried to grapple with.
254 Tushaar Shah

Mexico’s irrigation reforms—of which groundwater reforms are an integral part—are a

product of its agrarian history and the larger programme of restructuring the economy that
began during the early 1980s. The agrarian structure we find in Mexico today can be traced back
to the series of peasant uprisings that culminated in the 1915 revolution and ensuing the 1917
Constitution. The far-reaching land reforms—driven by the principle ‘land belongs to those
who work it’—that were ushered in by the 1930s (but in fact took decades to consummate)
declared the Mexican state as the custodian of all land and broke up large feudal estates into
100–800 ha holdings. Two different forms of land rights followed—pequeña propiedad (‘small’
private property) and the ejido (or agrarian collective). The former had unattenuated ownership
rights over land; the ejidatarios (or ejido members) got a legal identity but had only usufruct
rights on land—they could use and inherit land but not mortgage or sell it. Up to 1983, 25,589
ejidos were formed.
Mexico enacted its first Irrigation Law in 1926; this was replaced by a Federal Water Law
in 1972. But it was the Law of the Nation’s Waters of 1992, combined with an amendment to
article 27 of the Constitution in the same year that became a watershed in Mexican agrarian as
well as water reforms. Up until 1989, all irrigation was managed by the Ministry of Agriculture
and Hydraulic Resources; and like in India, the government policy towards agriculture and
irrigation was guided by the socialist thinking of a welfare state. The reform process pursued
four fundamental and far reaching aims:

• Make water infrastructure self-financing by withdrawing the government from its

management.
• Improve the efficiency of water-use by establishing tradeable private rights on water as
well as by involving users in managing water infrastructure.
• Restrict and even reduce groundwater depletion by the Comisión Nacional del Agua (CNA)
operationalising the authority to issue rights (concessions) to draw groundwater and by
enforcing the concessions.
• Achieve basin level optimality in water-use through basin level co-ordinating
mechanisms.

Did Mexico’s reform process achieve all these aims? A discussion of this question is presented
elsewhere (Shah et al. 2004a); here we focus on how far Mexico’s water reforms have helped
achieve sustainable management of its groundwater economy.
Before 1992, groundwater rights in Mexico were tightly linked to land rights, much like
in Asia today (Wester et al. 1999). There was some discussion of creating private water rights
separate from land rights during the 1980s itself; and a National Registry of Water Rights was
created well before the sweeping reforms in the water sector took place in 1992. In 1989, the
National Water Commission (or CNA) was created as the first step to separating the management
of water from that of the agrarian economy, recognising the declining role of agriculture in
Mexican economy and the growing non-agricultural demand for water.
The new Law of the Nation’s Waters aimed to (i) ‘provide for administrative modernization,
planning and programming’ in the water resources sector; and (ii) ‘reinforce a more efficient and
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 255

rational use of natural resources’ (Shah et al. 2004a). The National Water Registry was charged
with the responsibility to maintain a national register of newly-created private property rights
in water. The design manual of the CNA provided that no user could impound or divert more
than 1,080 m3/year of water except by obtaining a ‘concession’ from the CNA. In sum, all
water used for purposes other than domestic personal use, had to be ‘titled’.
Thus, Mexico has sought to create tradable private property rights in water by: (i) first,
declaring water as national property, thereby severing the linkage between land rights and
water rights; (ii) allowing existing users to get their use ‘regularised’ by obtaining a concession
from the CNA; (iii) by setting up a structure for enforcing the concessions; and (iv) by levying
a volumetric water fee from concession holders (barring irrigators), which would help generate
resources to maintain water infrastructure. Under the new Water Law, all diversions of water
other than for direct personal use are allowed only through concessions. Even sand-mining
in river beds—these are considered Federal property—requires a concession. Concessions for
different users, uses and sources are for different periods and specified volumes. The Law en-
joins the concession holders to abstain from over-stepping the agreed volumes, to establish
mechanisms to measure volumes used and report these periodically to the CNA.
What has been the outcome and impact of this rights reform? Mixed, as of now. Large water
users, especially industrial and commercial establishments, have been quick to secure proper
concessions and pay water fee to the CNA. This has been a significant source of revenue for the
CNA. Surface irrigation associations (Water User Associations or WUAs) are few, organised
and therefore easy to bring within the purview of the concessions; and since each WUA holds
a concession on behalf of its members, it is administratively simple to formalise their water
rights. Similarly, Municipal Councils are to obtain concessions that cover all users within their
ambit. By and large, municipal diversion has conformed to the volumes they are entitled;
however, municipal water boards have regularly defaulted on the payment of water fees to the
CNA, which recently had to write off M$ 72 billion owed by them to it by way of accumulated
water fees. One expectation was that the new system of rights would stimulate an active
market in water; however, this expectation has been largely belied because ‘water rights are
not rigidly enforced and legal processes to redress grievances are difficult, costly and drawn
out’ (Scott and Silva-Ochoa 2001).
The real difficulty has been with water rights of numerous agricultural users who account
for over 80 per cent of the water-use and seem to be at the heart of the matter. In particular,
there are three problems: (i) Getting agricultural users to get ‘regularised’ by obtaining a con-
cession; (ii) coping with the administrative workload involved in processing applications for
concessions and issuing them; and (iii) enforcing the terms of the concession. Even amongst
agricultural users, tube well irrigators have responded to the law quite well. Most tube well
irrigators we interviewed, on private farms as well as in ejidos, held a concession or had
already applied for one. One reason perhaps is that tube wells in Mexico are quite large, by
Asian standards. A typical tube well in Guanajuato goes to a depth of 150–250 m, has a lift of
60–90 m, and has a 75–150 hp motor-pump and a 6 inch outlet pipe yielding 30–60 litres per
second. Thus, a typical tube well may have a command area of 40–80 ha; only large private
256 Tushaar Shah

farmers have individual tube wells. Most ejidatarios share tube wells through informal ‘well
societies’ similar to the tube well partnerships and companies found in North Gujarat (Shah
and Bhattacharya 1993).
Another reason why tube well owners keenly seek ‘regularisation’ by securing concessions is
that they are linked to the formal economy through their dependence on the Federal Electricity
Commission (FEC) for power supply. The FEC would require a concession before issuing an
electricity connection for a new tube well. Then, there is also an incentive for existing tube
well owners. Power supply to agricultural users in Mexico is subsidised; farmers pay around
M$ 0.23–0.28/kWh against the average power tariff of M$ 0.55–0.65/kWh. And although
the CNA and the federal government have yet not used that stick, they have certainly issued
threats that tube wells without concessions would attract commercial power tariff, while
‘concessioned’ tube wells will keep enjoying subsidised tariff. This is a major factor; an average
tube well in Mexico probably uses 50–80,000 kWh of power in a year; and access to power
subsidy at current rates would mean a saving of M$ 12–18,000/year in their electricity bill—
high enough to make it worth getting the concession.
However, it is one thing to issue a concession to a tube well, it is quite another to specify
its volumetric water right, and yet another to limit its pumping to the volume specified. The
‘concession’ in itself is nothing more than the registration of a well, which is easily done from
the records of the FEC in the Mexican context, where all groundwater pumping is done by
electric pumps. The creation of a water right lies in entitling each concessioned tube well to a
particular volume of extraction. We found, however, that the volumes entitled are based on
a combination of the current use implicit in the yield of the well and the area owned. Thus,
groundwater concessions merely regularise the status quo and do not aim to curtail present
levels of groundwater use, except through ban on new tube wells which can be more efficiently
imposed simply by putting a cap on new agricultural power connections.
Monitoring the actual extraction and enforcing it to ‘entitled volumes’ has proved impossible
even in a small state like Guanajuato where agricultural tube wells are all of 15,000 in number.
The CNA has legal powers to undertake surprise inspections and monitor water-use under
concessions. However, it has only two field teams in Guanajuato; and if these were to make a
single inspection visit to each irrigation well, it would take several tens of years to complete
one round. Now, the state CNA has got seven brigades of two members each against a request
for 20 brigades. This is better but is still much less than what is needed to begin to monitor
actual groundwater extraction. In law, concessions are supposed to forfeit if the concessioned
volumes are not used by the holder; however, this provision can be enforced only if there is
regular monitoring of water-use by concession holders. This is proving well nigh impossible;
and there is already talk of extending the ambit of the ‘environmental police force’—already
created at the Federal level primarily to enforce industrial pollution—to cover groundwater
extraction.
Compared to tube wells, a far trickier animal is the bordo, a small tank-like water harvesting
and storage structure—and presas that are somewhat larger—which have been proliferating
in the uplands of Mexico at a frightening pace.5 Bordos and presas too are growing especially
in up-land areas with intensive livestock farming for meat or dairying. In Guanajuato alone,
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 257

around 200 large presas are organised as Unidades de Riego6—nominally controlled by the state
agriculture department but are in fact farmer controlled and managed as much as smaller
bordos and presas are. If the tube wells listed as unidades (because they have received some
government assistance for drilling and so on) are included, together, these informal water
structures irrigate more land in Guanajuato than all the WUAs do together. Under the new
Water Law, each of these structures needs a concession; but most, as yet, do not have them.
Bordos and presas present a catch-22 situation for the Mexican experiment in creating private
water rights: if their owners persistently avoid applying for concessions, the intent of the Water
Law will be frustrated in substantial ways. However, if they begin applying for concessions in
large numbers, it may raise important issues of administrative logistics as also of equity and
integrated river basin management that Mexico is trying to achieve.
In the hilly upland areas of Mexico, and the catchment areas of major river basins, bordos
have emerged as the backbone of a rainfed crop–livestock farming system. Conditions in these
hilly upland areas are worse than in the plains. The new Water Law, under which all water
bodies are required to be concessioned by the CNA, has created enormous confusion for owners
of the bordos which store 5,000 to 50,000 m3 of water. Besides finding it pointless, the up-land
farmers we interviewed were worried about the hassle and transaction costs which are out of all
proportion to the value of bordos. Concessions have set into motion a new race for privatising
the rainwater run-off. Another major concern was also about how the Water Law hits the poor
in the remote areas particularly hard. The government keeps issuing ordinances and new time
limits for compliance but people in remote areas do not even know about these for months
and get left out. In the meanwhile, the smart and aggressive use these proactively to entrench
and strengthen their positions by legalising them. They have found that getting concessions
is an easy way of establishing private rights over what was so far open access run-off.
This kind of mass manipulation also occurred in the bajío areas, the low lands of south-
central Guanajuato, for their intensive groundwater use in agriculture. Here, groundwater de-
pletion is a 50-year-old problem; the first ban on new groundwater structures was announced
in 1948 and since then 14 such bans have been issued. However, every announcement of an
imminent ban—or injunction to regularise existing tube wells, such as in 1995—here stimulated
a flurry of tube well-making activity in the hope that if made before the deadline, they would
get regularised. Indeed, intended bans and injunctions for regularisation can be counted as
one of the chief reasons for the runaway rise in tube well density in central Guanajuato.
One such injunction was issued without a time limit in 1995; another with a time limit in
1996; and yet one more was issued in February 2002 with a time limit up to September 2002.
Farmers also used other ways to manipulate the concession-grants. Many made new wells in
the name of ‘repositioning’. Fransisco García, a senior CNA official lamented that in 2001,
against 250 applications for repositioning wells, 1,000 new wells were made commonly with
power connections drawn from a concessioned transformer.
The CNA’s decision to form and support COTAS (Aquifer Management Councils) was born
out of the recognition that concessions and private water rights, by themselves, would be of
little help in getting the water users in the ‘informal sector’ to play the ball-game of sustainable
water management, and that new mechanisms and structures needed to be experimented with
258 Tushaar Shah

to engage this vital sector in implementing the spirit of the Water Law. To their protagonists
in the CNA, COTAS were government promoted non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
fashioned as user organisations; and Guanajuato, where these early experiments first began
under the leadership of Governor (now President) Fox, continues to lead Mexico’s COTAS
experiment to date. Of the 47 COTAS in Mexico, 14 are in Guanajuato, one for each of the
14 aquifers delineated in the state. Now COTAS have been adopted as a national model and
the CNA is promoting them in the rest of the country. However, federal COTAS differ from
Guanajuato COTAS (Technical Councils for Water Management) in that the latter are termed
water management councils that sound more inclusive whereas the federally promoted COTAS
(Technical Committees for Groundwater Management) seem limited in their scope. Guanajuato
COTAS concern themselves with managing all water resources; COTAS in other states focus
squarely on groundwater. Guanajuato COTAS are also supported more liberally with state fi-
nancial support; each is provided a rented office, a car and salaries for a manager, a technician
and an administrative assistant. Federal COTAS have far more meager support from the CNA.
Everywhere, however, COTAS have key design features that are common: their operational
domain is defined by an aquifer boundary, which clearly gives primacy to their groundwater
management role; they are all designed as representational non-profits. Registered as a Civil
Association, each has a general assembly, an elected board and a small hired staff. Recently,
all the Guanajuato COTAS were federated into a State Water Management Council with a rep-
resentational structure akin to a COTAS. The Office of the Guanajuato Water Resources Council
(CEH) is the organisation that represents all water users in the state. In its evolutionary process,
the state council first brought the 14 COTAS together in this representational structure; but
its ultimate goal is to bring all water users/stakeholders into the forum. They already have six
representatives of surface irrigators now, four from two important irrigation districts of the
state and two more to represent the 200 odd Unidades de Riego.
The idea of COTAS is bold; and the expectations from these structures high. A COTAS is
expected to be an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) promoter in the state,
bringing together different actors and stakeholders to protect the water resources in quantity
and quality (Shah et al. 2004a). The State Water Commission of Guanajuato (CEAG) expects
that a COTAS should become a local water management organisation, and mature to a stage
where it becomes a rallying point for all water users; that as they get formally recognised by
the Water Law (which for the present they are not), they will come up with and implement
practical water management and conservation actions and policies; they will mediate water
conflicts; and enforce/implement national water policy on the ground level (Sandoval 2004).
A common expectation is also that the COTAS—particularly, their state-level federation—will
become a powerful instrument of implementing the Law of the Nation’s Waters; they will
interact with authorities and water regulatory agencies and provide decisive inputs on the
creation, establishment, control and changes in water management plans. Above all, COTAS
are expected to mediate between the state and the federal water authority and water users they
represent. This is why COTAS were designed as representational organisations.7 The sub-text
in all this is that with their closer grassroots presence, COTAS will do what the CNA cannot:
restrict groundwater extraction by enforcing the Water Law.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 259

Will Mexico’s COTAS fulfill these multifarious, often conflicting expectations? These are
still early days; COTAS, even in Guanajuato, the state that pioneered them, are all of four
years old; and according to Francisco García, Deputy Director of Water Administration, CNA,
Guanajuato, COTAS will take time to become effective. ‘After all, Texas took 16 years to con-
stitute its first aquifer management organisation through a state assembly decree, and 5 more
years to actually put it on the ground. Mexico’s COTAS need to be given time to congeal and
find their feet’ (Shah et al. 2004a). Guanajuato’s COTAS had until 2004 to find their feet; after
that, the financial support from the state’s water commission would have ceased and COTAS
left without alternative sources of funds would have had to liquidate their operating systems,
and would, in effect, cease to exist.
Stuck in such a situation, the normal propensity of a member organisation would be to turn
to its members for sustenance; it would begin providing services that its members value and
in turn expect them to contribute fees for such support. This is what Guanajuato’s módulos
(WUAs) do; for instance, as a member organisation, the Irapuato módulo offers its members
better irrigation service and has jacked water fees five times in five years, partly to fund its own
growth and partly to improve existing services. A fundamental design flaw in COTAS may well
be its concept itself: it is not allowed to provide what a majority of its members value most, i.e.,
unrestrained access to groundwater, and its members are reluctant to pay it membership fees
for enforcing the Water Law on them, which its creators think is the mandate of the COTAS.
It is not surprising then that industrial players—whose water-use was closely regulated even
before the new Law—have been quick to take to the COTAS and even dominate them; but the
farmers, the prime target of the Water Law’s groundwater provisions, have been staying away
from the COTAS.
As a result, COTAS are ploughing along without a strong sense of direction. Most have no
notion of formal membership. With its 20,000 concession holders, Guanajuato’s 14 COTAS
should each have 1,000–15,000 members with full user participation8, but their general as-
sembly meetings often have just a few dozen participants. The Ocampo COTAS, one of the
few which offers formal membership, has less than 100 members of the several hundred
groundwater concession holders; however, Ocampo is not an important groundwater irrigation
region. COTAS are little known amongst common people and their presence on the ground is
thin or non-existent. Some 45 farmers we interviewed in various parts of Guanajuato—these
included all types, small holders as well as large farmers, men and women, a few young and
mostly old farmers—all were uniformly blank on COTAS. Most COTAS boards were elected
by a general assembly attended by a small fraction (often 5–10 per cent) of total concession
holders.9 Partly for this reason, the office bearers of COTAS enjoy little regard and allegiance
of the wider public and citizenry, neither do they seem under pressure to respond to an
aggregate of member priorities from COTAS. Many elected office bearers of COTAS seek to
pursue their own ideals or have their own passions and ‘bees in their bonnets’, and they
drive their COTAS in that direction rather than working on aggregated priorities of members,
as would be the vogue in a responsive member organisation (Shah 1996). For instance, the
president of a predominantly agricultural COTAS was able to focus all its work on issues related
to industrial water-use that he feels strongly about, although most concession holders in the
COTAS domain are farmers.
260 Tushaar Shah

A major reason for member apathy is that the high-ground assumed by the COTAS leadership
often fails to connect with the here-and-now priorities of its members. In Jaral de Berrios, one of
the best performing COTAS according to the Guanajuato Water Commission, only a couple of
dozen farmers, all above 70 years of age participated in a council meeting to strategise for
groundwater management.10 Concerned about the bleak agricultural future of the region, the
COTAS president, a large private land holder, delivered an impassioned speech advocating
the need to restrict groundwater use by regulating the area under tube well irrigation and
presented an elegant formula to link total groundwater draft to the previous year’s rainfall.
The old farmers in the audience were unmoved. One 75-year-old ejidatario got up and said,
‘My farming is already down to 2 hectares; how much more do you expect me to cut?’ Another
rose and said, ‘It took me six years after making an application to get my concession; and by
then, my tube well needed to be deepened and I was ready for a new concession. Can’t the
COTAS help us cut through this maze?’ Yet another farmer described how he put his life’s
savings in an expensive drip irrigation system, which failed and irrevocably damaged his well
and pump due to lack of technical support.
In sum, the present role and future direction of the COTAS are unclear to say the least.
The CNA expects them to implement the Water Law; in particular, help contain groundwater
extractions to concessioned limits and help curb illegal well-drilling. Ambitious COTAS
presidents, such as in Jaral de Berrios, want to transform the COTAS in to a strong water user
organisation that can mediate between the users and the authorities. Many COTAS managers
view their role as one of promoting IWRM. There is no indication yet that COTAS are ready
to play any of these roles. However, what they have been doing may not be without value.
Many COTAS have been monitoring water levels; most have been carrying out water education
campaigns. They have served as forums in which users can participate in discussing their water
problems. And others have been trying to promote technification. At least in one COTAS,
farmers shifted wholesale from cultivation of wheat to barley which uses less water.11 In any
case, regulating agricultural use of water, especially of groundwater, is a challenge that has
nowhere been met fully; and perhaps, the CNA will be well placed to support COTAS for a long
time to come, with full recognition that they will not be able to achieve the ulterior goal behind
the CNA support, that is, to help CNA implement the provisions of the Water Law on the
informal water sector. Considering that the 14 Guanajuato COTAS have cost the State Water
Commission (CEAG) less than US$ 2.5 million to support for five years12, one can easily argue
that the capacity building and attitudinal impact COTAS can produce through targeted research
and public education activity may justify such investment in view of growing importance of
water in Mexico’s evolution. An early vision of the COTAS was that they would foster self-
policing by users themselves taking the responsibility of self-monitoring their extraction to the
agreed volume. Even though idealised, some believe that such a scheme can work in Mexico
aided by European-style ‘water notaries’ that might be used to certify the actual extraction.
We believe many conditions will need to be fulfilled before such a schema might work
reasonably well; one of these is high quality public education on groundwater issues. And
COTAS are certainly equipped to deliver this.
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 261

C ONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have reported results of field research on groundwater management insti-
tutions and policies in three regions of the world where agriculture, food and livelihoods depend
heavily on intensive use of groundwater which is becoming increasingly unsustainable. My
purpose was to review institutions and policies in place to promote sustainability and draw
lessons from comparative analysis. Table 13.4 summarises my key conclusions from such a
comparative analysis. My overriding impression is that South Asian countries have not even

Table 13.4: Groundwater Governance: Comparative Analysis of Institutions

and Policies in South Asia, China and Mexico
South Asia China Mexico
1. Government share in GW Miniscule; <0.01% No No
provision to agriculture
2. State provision of GW Significant Significant Significant
to urban settlements
3. State participation in Yes Yes Yes
GW monitoring
4. Incentives to private Significant in India and Sri Lanka, None or None
investment in often perverse; discontinued in insignificant
groundwater Pakistan, Nepal, B Desh
development
5. Incentives to operating Huge in India; less in other Nil or Yes, energy
costs countries insignificant subsidies
6. Targeted disincentives in None None None
capital or operating costs
7. Registration of GW No No Yes
structures
8. Permits to abstract No Yes, but mostly Yes, but water
groundwater to villages, quantities
municipalities unenforceable
and industries
9. Promotion of water Ineffective Yes, strong Some
saving technologies
10. Promotion of small-scale Strong in western India; but South-North Yes, in highlands
water harvesting and growing elsewhere water transfers where bordo’s are
recharge works in India the mainstay of
livestock farmers
Source: Based on author’s field work and notes in 2002–03, International Water Management Institute
and Tata (ITP) Water Policy Program.
262 Tushaar Shah

begun to address the problem in any serious manner; China has, but will take time before its
initiatives bear fruit. Mexico has gone, by far, the furthest in creating a legal and property rights
structure that might be drawing a leaf from an institutional economics text book. Interestingly,
we find no evidence that these have helped Mexico move towards sustainability; and Mexico’s
efforts need to produce better results before they can be held out as a model that other
groundwater-using countries can follow. However, the comparative analysis does suggest the
outline of a framework that tells us what might work where.
How countries respond to the challenge of sustainable management of their groundwater
economies depends on a constellation of factors that defines the peculiar context of each
country. This constellation of factors differs vastly across regions and countries; and these
differences have decisive impact on whether an approach that has worked in one country will
work in another with a different context.
As a simple illustration of this point, Table 13.5 sets out some key variables that define the
organisation of the groundwater economy in six different countries that make intensive use
of groundwater in agriculture. The United States uses around 100 km3 of groundwater for
irrigation; but to manage its economy, it has to monitor and regulate only around 200,000
pumping plants, each producing around 500,000 m3 of groundwater per year. Mexico is in
the same league as the USA. India uses 150 km3; but to manage this groundwater economy, it
has to manage the owners of over 20 million small wells, each producing an average of 8,000 m3
of water per year. Clearly, the task of US groundwater managers is enormously simpler compared
to their Indian counterparts. With just 95,000 agricultural tube wells, the task of governing
Mexico’s groundwater economy is even simpler.13 The nature of the political system also matters.
Iran has been able to impose a complete ban on the sinking of new tube wells throughout its
central plains that encompass two-thirds of the entire country (Hekmat 2002).

Table 13.5: Structure of National Groundwater Economies

% of Population
Annual Groundwater- No of Groundwater Extraction/structure Dependent on
Country use (km3) Structures (million) (m3/year) Groundwater
India 150 19 7,900 55–60
Pakistan–Punjab 45 0.5 90,000 60–65
China 75 3.5 21,500 22–25
Iran 29 0.5 58,000 12–18
Mexico 29 0.07 414,285 5–6
USA 100 0.2 500,000 <1–2
Source: Based on author’s field work and notes in 2002–03, International Water Management Institute
and Tata (ITP) Water Policy Program.

But, as we noted, Mexico has been trying to ban new tube wells in its bajio for 50 years and has
yet not succeeded. China has a large number of tube wells scattered over a huge country-side;
yet chances are that over the coming decade, it will be able not only to bring these within the
ambit of its permit system but also succeed in influencing their operation. Doing something
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 263

like this in India or Pakistan will remain unrealistic for a long time to come because of the
political structures and systems that exist in these countries.
Besides what is feasible and practical, there is also the question of the social impacts of
approaches adopted. In Mexico and the US, where a miniscule proportion of people depend
on groundwater for livelihoods, governments may easily adopt a tough regulatory posture.
In South Asia, where over half of the total population may directly or indirectly depend on
groundwater use for their livelihood, it is not surprising that political and administrative
leadership is reluctant to even talk about regulating groundwater use, leave alone acting on
it. In fact, even in China, where political resistance from farmers is not an overriding issue,
and Mexico, where irrigator class is small enough to be ignored, governments have steered
clear of tough regulatory measures. Those strategies are much more difficult to implement in
the context of South Asia.

Notes
1. Chinese farmers pay several types of land tax—notably, crop tax, education tax, water use tax,
electrician tax, and the like. In Xiaotan Village, Yanjin county in Henan, for instance, half of
the annual tax collection of Yuan (Y) 20,000 is turned into the township government and half is
retained by the village leader. Of the village share of Y 10,000, some 15 per cent is earmarked for the
maintenance of tube wells.
2. Water purchased from a 5 hp diesel pump with an hourly discharge of 12,000 litres costs Rs 50 in
most parts of eastern India.
3. Water purchased from a 75 hp electric pump with an hourly discharge of 55,000 litres costs Rs 90
in north Gujarat.
4. The village electrician’s reward system encourages him to exert pressures to achieve greater efficiency
by cutting line losses. In Dong Wang Nu village in Ci County, the village committee’s single large
transformer, which served both domestic and agricultural connections, caused heavy line losses at
22–25 per cent. Once the network reform programme began, he pressurised the VC to sell the old
transformer to the Township Electricity Bureau and raise Y 10,000 (partly by collecting a levy of
Y 25 per family and partly by a contribution from the Village Development Fund) to get two new
transformers, one for domestic connections and the other for pumps. Since then, power losses have
fallen to the permissible 12 per cent here.
5. IWMI estimated the number of these at 29,000 in the late 1990s (Shah et al. 2004). The State Water
Commission believed that although bordos are traditional structures, a large majority of these came up
during the past 10 years as a popular response to growing water scarcity. Local farmers we interviewed
supported the view that a majority of bordos found today are less than 8–10 years old.
6. These are used by rainfed farmers, essentially to get one irrigation to establish the rainfed sorghum
crop.
7. In a typical COTAS in Guanajuato, accordingly, the general assembly elects a 10-member board that
has a President, Treasurer, General Secretary, one representative each from agricultural users, public
services (which includes domestic and municipal users) and industrial users. A back up candidate is
elected for each of these, which takes the total board size to 10. The General Assembly generally meets
twice every year; the board meets every month. There are few women on elected boards; however,
five are hired as employees by different COTAS. In keeping with their broader, more ambitious
264 Tushaar Shah

mandate of IWRM, the Guanajuato COTAS drew representatives from various stakeholder groups
although their domain was defined by the aquifer boundaries. In these 14 COTAS, 12 of the 29 elected
representatives of farmers represent surface water irrigators whereas 17 represent groundwater users.
In theory, only concession holders are official members of the general assembly of a COTAS; however,
in practice, the State Water Commission staff ends up spending a great deal of effort in getting all
users to participate.
8. As a matter of fact, the State Water Commission (CEAG) has tried to break out of the norm that only
concession holders can be COTAS members; it has been trying to broaden participation into COTAS
affairs from wider cross-sections of the citizenry.
9. For instance, in the four-year-old Silao and Romita COTAS, which also cover the town of Guanajuato,
the general assembly including 2,049 well owners, 93 per cent of them agricultural, should reflect
farmer concerns. However, a general assembly attended by some 100 members elected a manager of
the General Motors as the President, a manager of the Leon airport as the Treasurer.
10. Jaral de Berrios aquifer, shared by Guanajuato and the neighbouring state of San Luís Potosí, faces
critical problems of over draft but has only a few hundred wells. The Guanajuato side in fact has
only 334 wells, 89 per cent of them agricultural. Only 200 of these are concessioned yet others have
applied some years ago and are waiting to receive their concessions. These large tube wells, going
to 250–280 m and using pumps of 75–100 hp produce discharges of 25–40 litres per second which
they deliver into a large tank and from thence, water conveyed by buried pipes to different fields.
Typically, a well irrigates 30–35 ha and if all users use drip irrigation, the area irrigated can go up to
55–60 ha. However, only 3 per cent of the tube well irrigated area uses drip; and farmers feel reluctant
to ‘technify’ their irrigation systems because of the dismal after-sales support of irrigation equipment
companies. Many would also expect government support to install such technologies. Wells are
private as well as group-owned, the latter common among ejidatarios.
11. This is a great achievement; however, besides the educational effort of COTAS, the key catalyst to
this change has been the establishment of a Corona beer plant in its territory that created a steady,
remunerative market for barley far better than wheat. This suggests that in the complex business
of groundwater regulation, an ounce of positive incentive may do the work of a ton of regulatory
effort.
12. The cost of catalysing and sustaining COTAS in Guanajuato has been met by the State Water Com-
mission (CEAG) through providing them budgetary support as follows:

Support to 14 Guanajuato COTAS

1998 US $153,471
1999 US $459,184
2000 US $607,142
2001 US $510,204
2002 US $766,490

13. However, in actuality, even in Mexico, enforcing concessions on agricultural tube wells has proved
almost impossible. Similar is the experience even in Spain where With the passing of the 1985 Water
Law, it was declared as of ‘public ownership. This represented a fundamental change in relation to
water rights. Yet this drastic change, compounded by lack of knowledge and a poor information
campaign (in relation to the legal changes and to groundwater use) has led to many situations of
‘hydrologic disobedience’ in relation to water rights and abstraction in almost every stressed aquifer.
Indeed the question remains as to what came first, hydrologic disobedience or stressed aquifers. A
typical example of this situation is the Upper Guadiana basin (Lopez Gunn and Llamas 1999).
 Governing the Groundwater Economy 265

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 Section IV
The Way Forward
268 K.J. Joy et al.
 14
Multi-stakeholder Participation, Collaborative
Policy Making and Water Governance: The
Need for a Normative Framework

K.J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape and Seema Kulkarni

The overthrow of opinion is not immediately followed by the overthrow of institutions;

on the contrary the new opinions dwell for a long time in the desolate and haunted house
of their predecessors, and conserve it even for want of a habitation (Nietzsche, 1909–13,
Section 8, Number 466 as quoted in Connick and Innes 2003: 177).

G OVERNANCE AND M ULTI - STAKEHOLDER P ARTICIPATION

Governance is emerging as one of the important themes in development discourse. It may not
be wrong to say that ever since the Dublin Conference in 1992, governance has become an
important theme in the discourse on water too. The Global Water Partnership (GWP) Frame-
work for Action stated that the ‘water crisis1 is often a crisis of governance’ and identified
making water governance effective as one of the highest priorities for action (GWP 2000 as
cited in Rogers and Hall 2003). Water governance as a theme draws its urgency from, and is
very closely linked to water sector reforms that are underway in most of countries.
In broad terms, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines water gov-
ernance as ‘the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place
to develop and manage water resources, and the delivery of water services, at different levels
of society’ (UNDP 2007). It involves (i) political concerns related to democracy, human rights
and participatory processes; (ii) match and mismatch between the politico-administrative
system and the ecological system or in terms of operation and management of services; and
(iii) financial accountability and administrative efficiency (ibid.). The issue of governance is
at the interface of state and (civil) society. In the contested arena of state-society relationships
and interactions, the governance system is supposed to provide the power balance (Rogers
and Hall 2003); and the present-day discourse on governance pitches itself more towards the
society-end of the continuum (more society-centred) and tries to move away from statism (less
state-centred). The governance agenda is also an integral part of the political reform towards
270 K.J. Joy et al.

democratisation, decentralisation and devolution of power, and it explores the ‘non-state

spaces’2 such as community and civil society (Shah 2004) to hothouse new institutions.
Water governance cuts across different geo-hydrological, social, political and administrative
scales and boundaries. It is as significant and relevant in the context of a micro-watershed of let
us say 500–1000 hectares (ha) as it is in the context of a sub-basin, a basin, a nation-state and
even a region comprising many nations, as well as upstream-downstream, inter-basin, inter-
state, and international relationships. In the context of India and its neighbouring nations, the
new-found ‘national’ interest in the interlinking of Indian rivers has added one more inter-
national dimension to the issue of water governance. Similarly, the talk of ‘virtual’ water trans-
fers across the globe, the overall ambience of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG),
international trade agreements, and inclusion of water resources in the General Agreement
on Trade and Services (GATS) add yet another scale and dimension to the issue of water gov-
ernance. Thus, it is important to bear in mind that when we talk about water governance, it
includes not only localist, ‘small is beautiful’ type of scenarios, but we also refer to issues at
a much larger scale, including the global restructuring of the water sector. Similarly, we are
talking about many different types or sets of ‘actors’ who have different ‘stakes’ in water and
whose actions (or non-actions) can affect the water sector in many different ways.
Today, there seems to be an overwhelming opinion in favour of the participatory approach
in water governance (participatory water governance, or PWG), and of the necessity to make
necessary institutional and legal changes to make water governance more decentralised. The
National Water Policy also recognises such a need. Several scholars are arguing for Multi-
Stakeholder Participation/Platforms3 (MSP) to facilitate decentralised water governance. MSP
and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) have gained currency as the new-found
approaches to resolve some of the issues confronting the water sector (Ballabh 2004). To ensure
good governance, the involvement of the public is needed and the interests of all stakeholders
need to be included in the governance system (Hague Ministerial Declaration 2000). Given the
complexity of water use within society, developing, allocating and managing water equitably
and efficiently and ensuring environmental sustainability requires that different interests,
needs and voices be heard and accommodated in decisions over common waters (Rogers and
Hall 2003).
Collaborative policy making, an important arena of MSP, has become increasingly significant
for environmental management. Collaborative dialogue among stakeholders is the most pro-
ductive way to address many complex and controversial policy questions (Yankelovich 1999).
According to Connick and Innes (2003: 177):

When the process is well managed, the stakeholders are interdependent, the issue demands
action and the stakeholders cannot address their concerns by working alone, they are likely
to stay at the table and develop new ideas and strategies. Sometimes even if no agreements
are reached at the end, the results indicate that the process itself was very valuable. Un-
fortunately, however, very often the focus is on agreements—a process is considered a failure
 The Need for a Normative Framework 271

if no formal agreement is reached, or if an agreement is reached without some participants’

assent, or if someone challenges the agreement, etc. This focus on agreements misses the
most important aspects of collaborative dialogues—specifically the way they reshape the
policy context and instigate new forms of action.

T HEORETICAL U NDERPINNINGS

Multi-stakeholder processes and collaborative policy making efforts, to a great extent, are theor-
etically founded on Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality (and deliberative
democracy), which reflects a consensus-building process built on interests (Connick and
Innes 2003).4 Habermas developed the notion of the public sphere, distinct from state and
economy, in which citizens participate and act through dialogue and debate to eventually
build consensus based upon reason. In his deliberative democracy model, Habermas proposed
that a rational and reasoned consensus could be built among the opposing viewpoints through
arguments and counter-arguments—deliberations (Habermas 1981). What needs to be done
for building this consensus among interest groups is to institutionalise appropriate procedural
means so that various opposing views can be expressed and the better argument can come
into play (Shah 2004). However, there has also been a critique of this belief that consensus
can be achieved as a result of a free deliberative process, especially from academics like Mosse
(1997a, 1997b). According to Mosse, the notion of the common good of various actors (or
stakeholders) drastically vary; they have different worldviews and come in conflict with each
other, depending upon actors’ location; and whether the different actors can easily arrive at the
location of ‘rational communication’ in order to resolve conflicts itself is questionable. Later
researchers have also talked about the possibility of ‘elite capture’ of participatory processes.
Another context of multi-stakeholder processes and collaborative policy making emanates
from the critique of the modernist paradigm of governance and its legitimacy. According to
Connick and Innes (2003), in the conventional paradigm of governance (which some call the
‘modernist’ paradigm of governance), the formal institutions of governance include legislative
bodies, administrative and executive agencies responsible for implementation and independent
judiciary for arbitration, especially in countries that have adopted ‘democratic’ polity and way
of governance. Here, the governance framework gains its legitimacy because the leaders or legis-
lators who make the laws are elected by the people, the persons who manage the administrative
machinery are often appointed by those who are elected and courts are supposed to follow
certain accepted procedures and apply agreed-on criteria in making decisions. The assumption
is that the world works like a machine, in a predictable manner, and with adequate information
and expertise, one can come up with policies, programmes or regulation that will meet a de-
fined social objective and produce the desired outcomes. It also assumes that procedures for
adjudication will resolve differences and the results will be fair and beneficial for society.
272 K.J. Joy et al.

The critics say that there are many problems with such an idealised version of governance—
the most important being the waning legitimacy, trust and confidence in the state and its
various institutions. They see the world as:

a complex, evolving system, the behaviour of which, unlike a machine, cannot be controlled
by any agency, person or institution, regardless of how clever and well informed.... In the
right circumstances (and assisted by appropriate institutions, norms, and heuristics) complex
systems, whether natural, social or physical, can become intelligent adaptive systems. These
systems can respond proactively to stresses, demands, and information from the envir-
onment, and to unanticipated consequences of their own internal dynamics, with the result
of not just surviving but also moving to higher levels of performance . . . [I]n the process,
the whole system evolves and develops’ (Connick and Innes 2001: 8).

They also conceptualise multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) in the need to build new institutions—
institutions that mesh better with collaborative policy making and offer new expectations
about outcomes and new criteria for success. Development of new institutions is also more
suitable for the post-modern information era.

Water as an Ecosystem Resource

The necessity of MSPs, to a great extent in water management, is related to the very nature of
water as an ecosystem resource and its characteristics. Some of these important characteristics
are as follow:

(i) Water is divisible and amenable to sharing.

(ii) It is a common pool resource (CPR). While this is true of all forms of water it is presently
clearly accepted only in respect of surface water. Groundwater falls predominantly within
the private property regime and is exploited and managed privately, though there is an
increasing awareness of the need to treat it as a CPR and manage it accordingly.
(iii) It has multiple and competing uses and users and there are resultant trade-offs involved.
(iv) The problem of excludability is inherent in its nature. The exclusion costs involved are
very high.
(v) It involves the issue of scale and boundaries and evolving some understanding around
them. For example, what does one call local and exogenous, downstream and upstream
and what are the relationships between these entities?
(vi) The way water resource development is planned, used and managed causes externalities—
both positive and negative—and some of the externalities may be unidirectional.

These important characteristics of water as an intrinsic part of the ecosystem and CPR do
have a bearing on the question of water governance and the institutions crafted for the same.5
These characteristics also have certain other immediate fallouts. One, they have the potential
 The Need for a Normative Framework 273

both to become an instrument of equitable and sustainable prosperity for all those who depend,
directly or indirectly, on water for their livelihoods as well as to trigger contention and conflict,
thus becoming an instrument of polarisation and exclusion. To quote from the Report of the
World Commission on Dams (WCDs):

The unfolding scenario for water use in many parts of the world is one of increasing concern
about access, equity and the response to growing needs. This affects relations between
rural and urban populations; upstream and downstream interests; agricultural, industrial
and domestic sectors; and human needs and the requirements of a healthy environment
(WCDs 2000).

In terms of scale, these conflicts range from conflicts between micro watersheds to river basins
and from riparian states to nations. In fact, one of the immediate and compelling reasons
for MSP is in its potential for conflict resolution. Two, given all this, it follows that we need
to design institutional mechanisms and social processes which can regulate the actions (and
non-actions!) of the different stakeholders. MSP could be a good instrument for this collective
regulation.

Multi-stakeholder Participation on Ground: Experiences

from the United States of America
Though in India MSPs are in their nascent stages, in countries like the US multi-stakeholder
participation is fast becoming an integral part of the governance system.6 The CALFED Bay-
Delta Program in the state of California is often cited as a good example of collaborative policy
making and MSP in water management (see Box 14.1).

Box 14.1: CALFED Bay-Delta Program

CALFED Bay-Delta program is a collaborative policy making and a multi-stakeholder water management
process among the 18 (now 23) state and federal agencies that had responsibilities for managing
water supply and protecting related natural resources. The process grew out of endangered species
protection, but has come to encompass water supply development and allocation, flood protection,
water quality and habitat restoration. This is the first time that such an extensive collaboration had
been tried among so many state and federal agencies in California, many of which had been at odds
with one another for decades. The process also involved stakeholders from non-governmental interest
groups, Native American tribes and local and regional agricultural and urban water agencies. It was
state-wide effort in that it focussed on developing a consensus-based plan for restoring and protecting
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem.
It was to resolve decades-old conflicts over water use and environmental protection. Its tasks
included: identifying the actions needed to protect the environment and water supply; developing
new operations and management strategies to help make better use of water; and making decisions
(Box 14.1 continued)
274 K.J. Joy et al.

(Box 14.1 continued )

about needed facilities and environmental restoration projects. In this case, agencies and stakeholders
developed historic and extraordinary proposals in a largely collaborative manner. This process
produced innovative ideas for new institutions and practices, and also seemed to have brought to an
end 100 years of water wars. Though there are occasional skirmishes and dissatisfaction among certain
stakeholders, the collaborative water management and many projects that got initiated through this
process continue to move forward with backing from a wide array of stakeholders and agencies.
Source: Connick and Innes (2003: 177–97).

Another arena where MSP has been significant is in the case of the review of existing dams and
dam removals (or decommissioning of dams). There is a very elaborate and systematic review process
that takes place in which all interest groups come together and explore different options before a
decision is taken. For example, in the case of the Englebright dam (on Yuba river in California),
which was assessed on various aspects during 2003–04, three distinct interest groups/teams were
involved in the process: one, the river team consisting of people and groups who were basically
interested in restoring the river; two, the lake team who were interested in maintaining the
lake/reservoir because of various interests like recreation, or other economic interests; and
three, the agency team, which consisted of government agencies, utilities, and the like. Experts,
academics and their institutions also played a significant role in this. Different options were
explored (such as, fish ladders, removal of dam, flooding, maintaining the dam); these options
were discussed with the stakeholders and from this process the final decision was taken. Sci-
entific knowledge played a big role in the decision making process. The procedure, structure,
protocol, methodology and study plans were agreed upon by the stakeholder groups right at
the beginning. The stakeholder groups oversaw all these.
The value of this process could be gauged from the observation of Mike Matz:

…the belief that different stakeholders can come together and then work out a plan to the
satisfaction of all looks is rather tricky. There are issues like: why should different opposing
interests come together? Also, through MSPs all are looking for an ’agreement’ which satisfies
all as an end product. Success is decided based on whether an agreement has been reached or
not. But even the process, the type of interactions between some of the stakeholders and
the socio-political capital it generates are also important. These are related to: (i) Social and
political capital, (ii) Agreed-on information and shared understanding, (iii) End to stalemate,
(iv) High-quality agreements, (v) Learning and change beyond what the original stakeholders
came with, (vi) Innovation, (vii) A cascade of changes in attitudes, behaviours and actions,
and (viii) Institutions and practices that involve flexibility and networks. (See Connick and
Innes 2003 for details.)

However, there are also deep-seated suspicions amongst some of the stakeholders. For ex-
ample, there is lot of suspicion about the conservationists’ agenda because of the country’s
historical legacy and the way it affected some of the Native American tribes/communities.
 The Need for a Normative Framework 275

The conservationists evoked legislations like ‘The Extinct Species Act’ (especially in the case
of fish) to force Native Americans as stakeholders to collaborate on conservation, and thus
provided a platform for compromised the interest of these marginalised people in the final
outcome.
There are two important principles, which all the stakeholders agreed to right at the outset
of the review process that guided the dam review process. One, people would be kept ‘whole’;
meaning if whatever course of action is decided through the multi-stakeholder processes and
that action negatively affects certain people, then they would be given adequate compensation;
and two, any action taken would not be allowed to flood the downstream. This prior agreement
on these principles helped decrease conflicts. So, deciding the principles became the guiding
force of any conflict resolution in the MSP. If agreement on principles is reached, other issues
can be resolved easily.
The role of ‘public’ science is also very important in multi-stakeholder processes. In situations
where the conflict is very active and sharp, science helps to narrow down the uncertainty factor
(or narrow the boundaries of uncertainty), helps to produce synthetic concepts (‘composite
rationality’) and also helps to put issues in a larger context or create a larger picture. Similarly,
public perception about issues is another factor that affects the multi-stakeholder processes.
The US experience shows that the strength of these two—science and public perception—can
come together to make MSP more meaningful. How scientific and cultural concepts and the
organisation of knowledge and scientific research affect public discourse about and action
toward environmental problems is an issue that needs to be further explored in the context
of MSP-processes.
Multi-stakeholder participation in the water sector in the US (especially in California) is
also affected by some of the laws in place. The notable ones include The Clean Water Act, The
National Environment Policy Act, The Extinct Species Act, California Water Rights Law, and The
Public Trust Doctrine. Similarly there is a distinct public perception in favour of environmental
needs. Hence, during times of water scarcity, the first cut is applied to agricultural use and this
is, by and large, socially accepted. Broadly speaking, the experience in the US shows that the
MSP is not a completely open-ended, unbound process; it is very much a guided, ‘bounded’
process. It takes place on the basis of agreed upon principles and procedures and also within
the overall policy framework that governs the water sector.

M ULTI - STAKEHOLDER P ROCESSES IN I NDIA

In India, the efforts at initiating MSP processes has been comparatively recent and that too
limited only to a few river basins.7 Many of them have been initiated by donors and/or outside
agencies as part of research studies and have not come up from the felt needs of the direct
stakeholders themselves. One notable example of a MSP-like process is the dialogue between
the water users from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on the vexed issue of sharing the Cauvery
waters. Here, the process of dialogue was initiated by some of the researchers associated with
the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). Though this dialogue may not have
276 K.J. Joy et al.

resulted in any path-breaking agreements to break the deadlock, it helped the farmers’ repre-
sentatives from both the states to be involved in dialogue process with each other, face to
face, and understand each other’s constraints and viewpoints.
In South Maharashtra, the Shetmajoor Kashtakari Shetkari Sanghattana (SKSS)—a rural
toilers’ organisation—along with the Maharashtra Rajya Dharangrasth va Prakalpagrasth
Shetkari Parishad—an umbrella organisation of the project-affected persons (PAPs) —was able
to bring together two important stakeholders with seemingly entirely conflicting interests,
namely, the drought-affected farmers and the PAPs (or displaced persons), on to one platform
and organise combined agitations and force the government to come to the negotiating table.
Though this initiative may not be considered a typical case of the multi-stakeholder process, the
efforts did help to expand the arena of contestation and negotiation, forcing the government
to discuss with the direct stakeholders and even explore the possibility of restructuring some of
the projects. For example, reducing the height of one of the dams to bring down submergence,
or changing the conventional norms of water allocation based on landholding in a designated
command to a norm allocating a share of water to villages on the basis of their population,
and so on.
For a number of years, the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management
(SOPPECOM) has been working in the water sector and has initiated MSP-like processes around
many specific issues. Sometimes, this has taken the form of a bilateral or a multi-lateral dialogue
between the major stakeholders and though it has not often led to the establishment of a
formal MSP, MSP-like initiatives have constantly emerged. We could mention here the mutual
interaction between SKSS, SOPPECOM and the state government and departments where
SOPPECOM has attempted to play the role of initiating an MSP-like process around specific
issues and projects. The more notable examples are the Chikotra Valley issue, the Uchchangi
Dam issue and the Tembu Lift Irrigation Scheme. SOPPECOM has played an important role
in initiating MSP-like processes in all of these, which have led to very positive outcomes.
In Chikotra Valley, the movement is demanding an equitable access to the water from the
Chikotra valley project for all upstream areas. This has brought in the displaced as well as up-
stream farmers as stakeholders into an MSP-like process. A process of continuous interaction
is ongoing between the Chikotra Valley farmers, the classical command area farmers, the dis-
placed farmers, the government officials and ministries, as well as noted irrigation experts. In
the case of the Uchchangi Dam, the farmers in Uchchangi were opposed to the dam because
of the area that would be submerged by the dam, and also because they felt that the same
objectives could be achieved by smaller dams at different sites. Here too, SOPPECOM helped
initiate and maintain an MSP-like process where there was an effort to reconcile the stakeholder
interests. A final compromise solution of a dam with reduced height was accepted as an interim
solution.
The issue of the Tembu Lift Irrigation Scheme (TLIS) is perhaps the one that comes closest
to an MSP. The TLIS is a large lift scheme that will irrigate 79,600 hectares (ha) in South
Maharashtra by lifting water from the Krishna River. It involves many important issues. SKSS,
the South Maharashtra-based movement, has demanded a restructuring of the scheme to
ensure equitable access to all farmers in the drought-prone region through which it passes,
 The Need for a Normative Framework 277

including local lifts wherever needed. The other issues are the cost of energy that is involved
in lifting the water, how it is to be paid for and what is to be the cost. With the help of an
International Water Management Institute (IWMI)-supported study on co-management of
energy and water8, SOPPECOM held a series of meetings of all the stakeholders involved: the
farmers and their leaders, the irrigation officials, the ministry representatives, the electricity
board officials, the energy development agency for the state, environmental groups and other
experts and interested groups drawn from civil society. The meetings were extremely helpful
in facilitating and extending the understanding between various stakeholders. Since then, the
state government has started joint exploration of the possibilities of restructuring the scheme
for equitable access for all farmers in the Atpadi taluka portion of the scheme on a pilot project
basis. The farmers on their part have shown readiness to take over the scheme, pay full water
charges in advance every season and pay the full electricity charge, provided they are charged
on rates on par with all other farmers.

MSP S IN A P OLARISED P OLITY :

N EED FOR AN I NCLUSIVE F RAMEWORK

Another aspect is especially important in the Indian context. In India, struggles and viewpoints
about water issues have been highly polarised. The richness and diversity of contexts in
India—bio-physical, social, economic as well as political—creates a fragmented polity and tends
towards polarisation rather than synthesis. Viewpoints tend to crystallise around polarised
positions with no meeting ground. This also characterises the state-civil society relationships.
Intransigence leads to a long drawn-out war of attrition between different vulnerable sections,
and the only ones to gain from the process are often the bureaucracies and the vested interests
which profit from this polarisation. MSPs and especially MSP-like processes become much
more important in such contexts. If we look at many of the struggles around us, it could be
argued that MSP-like processes would have resulted in better outcomes than what polarised
wars of attrition have resulted in.
However, based on our experience so far, we feel that there are a few aspects that need
urgent attention if MSP-like processes are to graduate to meaningful, stable MSPs and foster
decentralised water governance. MSPs will need to take into account the following:

• The heterogeneity of stakeholders and give proper attention to it.

• Take prior rights and context of MSP formation into account.
• MSPs will have to be informed by an innovative approach to water sector reform that
will allow accommodation of different stakeholder interests.
• MSPs will need to be supported by access to reliable data, information and decision
support systems.
• Lastly, MSPs require the presence of a committed support and resource agency.
278 K.J. Joy et al.

Above all, there is the question of a (normative) framework under which the MSP would
take place. As Rogers and Hall (2003: 11) point out, ‘one of the key elements of governance is
to create an inclusive framework (institutional and administrative) within which strangers or
people with different interests can practically discuss and agree to co-operate and co-ordinate
their actions’. This is all the more important in the water sector as there are sharply divided
opinions about some of the crucial issues confronting the water sector and the framework
adopted on these crucial issues could tilt the MSP process and governance in one way or another.
For example, there is the debate about whether water is a social good or an economic good.
If we say that water is a social good and see it as a basic human right then the resulting process
of negotiation and contestation would be quite different than if we take a stand that water is
an economic good or commodity. Similarly, there is a sharp difference of opinion about the
way we look at source creation and the controversy about ‘large versus small’ is part of this.
The framework adopted in respect of this issue will certainly influence the direction of the
MSP process one way or another.
In fact, we may often need a framework that creates the space for a dialogue before an MSP
can be initiated. For example, if the framework accepts that the displaced marginalised com-
munities like the adivasis (tribal people) should suffer for the ‘greater common good’ (a view-
point that still dominates the mainstream water sector establishment), or that no large dam is
acceptable even though it may provide reliable water supply to severely drought-affected areas
(a viewpoint that dominates the opposition to dam building per se), then it leaves very little
room for the displaced losers and the drought-affected beneficiaries to even sit together and
talk. However, if we take a viewpoint that there is a need to integrate the small and the large,
and that in this process we could also attempt to reduce destructive submergence as much as
possible and store as much as possible of the monsoon and post-monsoon flows in the so called
service/command areas and not behind the dam as it is being done today, then it opens up
space for a joint exploration by the two important stakeholders: the would-be project-affected
and the its beneficiaries.
Tackling issues related to equity also needs a similar, integrative framework. We need a
similarly accommodative framework if MSPs and MSP-like processes are to become feasible
and productive. There are issues of whether the MSP-like processes are supposed to substitute
formal, political institutional processes or supposed to aid them. Finally, all these issues also
need to be seen through the perspective of the overall developmental objectives. Generally,
there seems to be a consensus that sustainability, equity and participation/democratisation
should be the over-arching, foundational objectives of any development. To translate this con-
sensus to practice, one needs to go into the details of these concepts; and often the devil lies
in the details. Unless we can build up a certain level of mass awareness about these issues and
develop a mass/societal mandate about these to lend legitimacy to MSP processes, it would be
difficult to build up MSPs as viable forums of governance. Immediately after Independence,
there seems to have been some consensus on the developmental priorities and the path to that
development, but today this seems to have broken down and new issues have come up. Hence,
there is a need to rethink many things and evolve a minimum set of normative principles
 The Need for a Normative Framework 279

which can guide future governance. We discuss some of these important concepts and issues
around which we need to develop a framework below.

The Role of MSPs and the State

The first point that needs to be considered is the issue of what exactly should be the role of
MSPs? Though often couched in ‘what is’ terms, it is essentially a ‘what should be’ question,
a normative question. In view of the importance that civil society institutions are acquiring
vis-à-vis the state this is a legitimate concern, and it is of founding importance in the formation
of MSPs.
In the overall context of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, today, there is a ten-
dency to call for a withdrawal of the state and hand over those functions to user institutions or
to the private sector. MSPs may tend to be seen in the same light as taking over state functions
in respect of water. In our opinion this would be erroneous. First, we need to note that the
taking over of some of the state functions by user groups is not necessarily synonymous with
privatisation, though it often tends to be seen in that light since the state has withdrawn from
those functions. However, users exercising collective control over the resource they share and
use are a different phenomenon than turning over the functions to profit-driven corporate
bodies, and this distinction needs to be emphasised. Similarly, there is a need to make a distinc-
tion between the allocative functions and the service delivery functions. While service delivery
could be legitimately seen to be open to privatisation, allocative functions remain essentially
political and need to be taken over by bodies that aim not at profit-making through providing
services or goods, but at representing adequately the interests of collectives they represent.
However, the question still remains; should MSPs then serve as the body that decides on
water allocations since it incorporates practically all stakeholders? In our opinion, MSPs are
not bodies that take these decisions, but bodies that facilitate these decisions. There is no
clear way in which stakes can be measured, represented and weighted in any decision making
process that the MSP may attempt to set up; and any attempt to do so would immediately be
saddled with the problem of either replicating the political mechanism that may be in place
or building up an elaborate quasi-political process outside the existing political processes. User
control, when it is limited to manageable proportions and single uses, is an attractive option
because of its apparent simplicity. However, as soon as we allow multiple uses and stakes, the
situation changes and it is difficult to see a decision arising without a political process, without
a state.
In our opinion, MSPs would simplify polity and result in the ‘withdrawal’ of the state from
many spheres, not by aiming to replace the state as a decision making body but by facilitating
the process of decision making itself. As things stand, most stakeholders are not aware of
the nature and extent of stakes of the others. MSPs make every stakeholder aware of other
stakeholders and the nature and extent of that share, and, by bringing them together, force
them to engage with one another. Implicit in this is the assumption that it is better to have a
consensus of some sort or the other; the assumption that some common solution is necessary.
280 K.J. Joy et al.

This orients stakeholders towards, at least, exploring various scenarios rather than remaining
within the confines of a single preferred solution that universalises their own stake. In some
ways, one may say that the main function of MSPs is to see that there is a ‘level playing field’
for all stakeholders and bringing them together on such a field. Its role is to bring stakeholders
together so that they can fruitfully engage with each other, sharpen and/or narrow down issues
and explore possible scenarios that could provide a consensus.
There is also the debate about the need for ‘nested’ institutions, multi-layered institutions
as against the single-point joint management institutions. (For a detailed discussion see
Ostrom 1990 and Lele 2002.) This is valid in the context of MSPs too. If we have to address
issues like scales, positive and negative externalities and the unidirectional impacts of water,
then it is best to design MSPs at different scales and ecosystem units (like micro-watershed,
sub-watershed, watershed, river basin). Similarly, the need for nesting and multi-layering also
arises from the heterogeneity of stakeholders.
For this, one may distinguish between different types of stakeholders in terms of the rela-
tionship that the different stakeholders have with water. This may involve working out a
contextual typology of stakeholders in relation to water. A first distinction could be made
between the direct stakeholders and the indirect ones. The direct stakeholders in a quantum
of water may be identified as the ones who depend on the use of that water for their liveli-
hoods, whether directly or indirectly. It could include agriculturists, labourers, pastoralists
and shepherds, fishing communities, craft persons and women. In this context, water-use that
entitles persons to become direct stakeholders may include water for drinking and domestic
use, for cattle, for agriculture, for industries, for craft-based production systems, for recreation,
and the like. There is also a need to explicitly acknowledge two kinds of stakes as direct stakes.
First, the persons displaced as a consequence of water-related projects need to be treated as
direct stakeholders and as a separate category of stakeholders with full right to be involved in
the MSP processes. Second, there is now an increasing awareness that the ecosystem requires
a minimum water-use and there is a need for basically keeping certain portion of the flows
and storages unbound and ‘unutilised’ so that the river systems, ponds and lakes can perform
their ecological functions and services. The ecosystem, therefore, needs to be treated as a
stakeholder with a direct stake.
After this come the indirect stakeholders, like the state and its different agencies, civil
society organisations and groups, professionals, experts and others who may be related to
water from the point of its ‘governance’ rather than direct use. Here, the term ‘governance’ is
used as an umbrella term including all aspects like water resource planning, source creation,
distribution, regulation and cost recovery. Depending on the specific context and scale, the com-
position of both the direct and indirect stakeholders could change. Once we identify the differ-
ent stakes and the respective stakeholders within a specific context and scale, it lays the ground
for other processes: the actual process of negotiations, different roles, norms of access, priorit-
isation of water-use, how and where to apply cuts in scarcity situations, how to price water
for different uses, and so on.
 The Need for a Normative Framework 281

A Set of Minimum Principles

One of the important agendas in the formation of an MSP has to be to evolve a simple and
minimum set of principles that can serve as a common reference point in the deliberations
at the MSP. As elaborated elsewhere (Paranjape and Joy 1995; Joy and Paranjape 2004) we
believe that sustainability, equity and participation form a set of minimum principles that
can be referred to in resolving issues. Obviously, this does not obviate the differences in
interpretation that surround these terms and the variations can be certainly very wide. Our
view of the matter is detailed in the Normative Framework that we have worked out for
the Watershed Review that we did as part of CISED (Joy and Paranjape 2004); what follows in
Box 14.2 is a very brief summary of the essentials.

Box 14.2: Minimum Set of Principles for MSP

Sustainability
• Environmental sustainability as mediated by human intervention.
• Sustain the underlying bio-physical process.
• Conserve and enhance the primary productivity (productive and assimilative potential) of the
ecosystem.
• Use water within renewability limits: use annual flows, stock to be used only in bad years with
the understanding that it would be replenished in good years.
• Minimise import of water, do it in a fair manner.
• Sustainability as dependability.
• Global aspect, especially in technology choice, reduction in non-renewable and non-local materials
and energy use.
Equity
• Inequality inscribed into the social structure: class, caste, ethnicity and gender.
• Spatial aspects of inequality: location within watershed, command deciding the access to water;
upstream and downstream and off-site impacts.
• Inter-sectoral equity: water use prioritisation.
• Assurance of a basic service needed for livelihoods assured to all at affordable costs.
• Separation of land rights and water rights.
• Women’s access to water (domestic and for other productive uses).
• Sensitivity to the problems of project affected persons, exploration of options which reduces
submergence, exchange of behind-the-dam submergence with submergence in service area, re-
habilitation as an upstream area development programme with water rights and this to be made
part of the project.
Participation
• Goal as well as means.
• Separation of allocation and regulation functions (governance functions) from service delivery or
production-related functions.
• Democracy: Primacy of local community in decision making, accountability.
(Box 14.2 continued)
282 K.J. Joy et al.

(Box 14.2 continued)

• Representation of women, landless and other resource poor sections.

• Right to information.
• Participation of the would-be project-affected persons in the decision-making process.
• Outsiders have a definite role.
• Capability building for informed choice.
• Raising issues related to equity and sustainability.
• Two-way traffic and learning.
• Accountability of larger structures and agents to the local community.
Source: Adapted from Joy and Paranjape 2004.

Water: Right or Economic Good/Commodity?

One vexed question on which any MSP would have to come to some understanding is the
issue of whether water is a basic human right or an economic good? These are two different
directions and perspectives that will create their own pulls within an MSP. In our opinion, water
is both, a basic human right as well as an economic good. The problem lies in demarcating
where the human right ends and where the economic good starts and vice versa. The problem
is rendered even more difficult because at least in form, even the right is delivered in the form
of an economic good.
In our opinion, and we have been advocating this opinion for a fairly long time, a distinction
needs to be made between basic service and an economic service. The basic service is what
everyone receives as a right and the economic service is what anyone receives over and above
that basic service. This distinction is not only in terms of quantum, but it also carries with it
different ways of dealing with the quantum, pricing and cost recovery. While the former has
to have a high degree of dependability and must be affordable for all, the latter will have to
be variably tied to opportunity and full cost recovery.
Introducing these distinctions does not truly resolve the question of water as a right and as
an economic good/commodity issue. All the terms still remain to be decided: what quantum
of service should be treated as basic service? what price is to be considered affordable to all?
These questions do not disappear. However, they are framed in a manner that allows a broader
dialogue and is more closely related to final outcomes. It makes issues tractable and facilitates
consensus building and decision making. This is precisely what the role of MSPs should be.
MSPs, since they generate this need for information, may be expected to facilitate the col-
lection of this information. There are various ways of doing this. They range from the strictly
scientific (collection by meteorological and department scientists in person) to the strictly
participative (participatory rural appraisal and allied activity). None of them by themselves
have been found satisfactory and by now some kind of consensus has begun to emerge that a
combination of scientific and participatory techniques is needed. Some of the techniques that
 The Need for a Normative Framework 283

attempt to arrive at an optimal blend have been described extensively in many SOPPECOM
papers (especially see SOPPECOM 2001). There is a need for such information to be collected
and pooled if MSPs are to play a truly facilitating role in the water sector.
One precondition for the meaningful functioning of MSPs is this whole area of reliable
data and information. And as things stand in India today, this is also one of the weak links
in the whole process. Most of the data is collected and managed by the government agencies.
The reliability of the data is very often under question. For example, we have seen that in the
context of inter-state river conflicts in India it is said that the contending states keep two sets
of data and a particular state uses the set of data which is advantageous to it as per the context.
Also it is very often extremely difficult to get access to data where there is such conflict. Then
there is the question of getting access to it as most of it is under the ‘secrecy’ domain. This is
irrespective of the fact that an official Right to Information Act is in place in many states. The
inter-state water disputes have further complicated matters. So, one of the primary tasks is to
generate reliable data both through participatory and other scientific methods. There is lot of
discussion about natural resource data management systems (NRDMS), but there is very little
that is being done on the ground to combine various methods of collecting data, synthesising
and analysing them and also making them available to different stakeholders in a usable form
so that rational decisions and informed choices can be made. In fact, agreed upon data is one
of the outputs of multi-stakeholder processes (Connick and Innes 2003). All these should lead
to decision support systems and they should be able to simulate various scenarios in terms of
resource availability, resource-use prioritisation and resource-use efficiency.

An Agency Committed to MSP and an Innovative Approach

It is all fine sentiment, but what function can MSPs serve if there are, at least on the face of
it, seemingly irreconcilable differences between stakeholders? The need for an innovative ap-
proach and the need to eschew standard stereotypes cannot be overemphasised. It needs to
be acknowledged that, in the form in which it takes place, much of the debate between small
versus big and traditional versus modern, similar stereotyped dichotomies are essentially sterile
in terms of suggesting ways of resolving the situation.
The case for going beyond these sterile dichotomies has been argued in detail elsewhere
(Paranjape and Joy 1995). Here, we shall just deal with one example, that of the small and
the big water sources. Big sources may be tapped by diverting the water and using that
water to fill and refill local storages, and reducing behind-the-storage to a small regulatory
storage that will minimise behind-the-dam large submergence. In addition, since instead
of devising an independent centralised irrigation system of its own, the big system delivers
water to dispersed local systems that have an identity and organisation independent of the
big system; the big source serves to strengthen and supplement local sources rather than to
replace them. In effect, this creates the possibility of reinforcing a synergic bond between
the large and the small that has the potential to bring stakeholders to an arrangement of
mutual benefit. In the alternative to the present Sardar Sarovar Project (ibid.) the attempt is
284 K.J. Joy et al.

precisely to combine the big and the small into a single system that meets the requirements
of sustainability and equity.
It would be wrong to expect such MSPs, as we are advocating, to come up on their own.
Ironically, while there are many kinds of stakeholders in the water sector, there are none that
have a natural stake in MSPs! We therefore need to create an agency from within the water
sector organisations that will be committed to the MSP process and willing to shoulder the
responsibility involved. Further, that agency needs to also adopt the minimum set of principles
and an innovative attitude that eschews sterile dichotomies if it is to bring all the stakeholders
to the table with mutual common concerns. Without this process, we are afraid that all the
talk about basin wide organisations, regulatory bodies and the like will really fall to pieces.
It may remain so in namesake, but will not be able to go beyond where the political process
carried us today.

Notes
1. Chapter 1 ‘Governance of Water: Issues and Challenges’ (by Vishwa Ballabh) captures some of the
important issues related to water crisis in India. Also see Vaidyanathan (2006).
2. The issue of what is non-state space itself is open to debate as there could be a divergence of views
as to where the boundary of the state ends and where sphere of the community/civil society really
begins.
3. The term MSP is used to mean multi-stakeholder process, participation and platform.
4. This small section on the theoretical basis of multi-stakeholder platforms and collaborative policy
making is largely drawn from Esha Shah’s (2003) book, Social Designs: Tank Irrigation Technology and
Agrarian Transformation in Karnataka, South India, and her 2004 work on ‘Community, Participation
and Democratisation’ for a study of Community Managed Natural Resource Management initiated by
the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED). Also, we have
used Connick and Innes (2003) extensively throughout this section.
5. There is considerable amount of literature available on some of the points discussed above especially
about CPRs, their defining characteristics and the ‘fit’ between these characteristics and the institutions
to manage them. See a recent article by Sharachchandra Lélé titled ‘Beyond State-community
Polarisation and Bogus Joint“ness”: Crafting Institutional Solutions for Resource Management’.
6. This section on the experience of MSP in the US, especially California, is based on the discussions
and interactions K. J. Joy had with a broad section of academics and activists and they include Judith
Innes, Mathias Khondolf, Tim Duane, Jeff Romm (belonging to various departments of University
of California at Berkeley), Mike Matz (Ph.D. student in Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley),
Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security), Patrick McCully
(International River Network), Steve Rothert (American Rivers), Carolina Balazs (Natural Heritage
Institute), Nigel Quin (Laurence Berkeley National Laboratory), Thomas Graff (Environmental Defence),
Pete Downs (Stillwater Sciences), Marcin Whitman (California Department of Fish and Game), and
some of the literature he could trace during his visit to California on a Fulbright Fellowship.
7. One of the first serious attempts in India to look at the MSP from an academic point of view was by
the Wageningen University as part of its Ph.D. programme. The workshop held at Hyderabad two
years back [give date here] on MSP and Deliberative Democracy brought together researchers, activists,
NGO personnel and bureaucrats for the first time on this issue.
8. For details see, Joy and Paranjape (2002).
 The Need for a Normative Framework 285

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UNDP (2007). ‘Effective Water Governance’, available at http://www.undp.org/water/about_us.html,
last accessed 20 September.
Vaidyanathan, A. (2006). ‘India’s Water Resources–Contemporary Issues on Irrigation. Mumbai: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
WCED (1987). Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press.
World Commission on Dams (2000). Dams and Development, A New Framework for Decision-Making. London
and Sterling, VA: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
Yankelovich, D. (1999). The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation. New York: Simon
and Schuster.

Websites
http://www.irn.org/revival/decom/index.asp?id=bulletins/rrb38.html
http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/Publications/RiversReborn/yuba.html
 15
Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue as an
Approach Towards Sustainable Use
of Groundwater: Some Experiences
in the Palar River Basin, South India
S. Janakarajan

I NTRODUCTION

The basic motive of this chapter is to demonstrate how groundwater, which is regarded as a
common pool resource (CPR), has been subject to over-extraction and pollution due to un-
limited access enjoyed by individuals and also due to competing users. This has implications
for increasing rural indebtedness, rural unemployment, rural poverty, social inequity and
conflict in many parts of India, particularly in the state of Tamil Nadu.
For rural agricultural populations, groundwater has almost replaced land as a determinant
of social and economic status. Further, increasing groundwater access has undermined main-
tenance of tank irrigation1 systems and other surface sources. In the process, it has shifted the
determinants of water access away from communities and into the hands of individuals. Access to
groundwater has never been equitable due to its natural variability and availability; this has
contributed to the growing inequity in resource conditions, landownership and wealth. Patterns
of inequity are socially embedded and exacerbated by factors such as inheritance patterns. In
many cases, the ownership of individual wells is now divided among many people. This can
be a source of conflict and often results in differential access between dominant owners and
others who are less capable of exercising their partial ownership rights. Competition and conflict
are increasing in the face of pollution and substantial decline in the water level. Falling water
levels are leading to greater competition and, in many areas, large financial losses as existing
wells become dry or new, unproductive wells are drilled. In many areas, shallow dug wells have
gone dry and farmers now drill multiple bores alongside or within existing dug wells. The fall
in the water level is are also leading to decline of traditional surface sources, such as ‘spring’
channels (sub-surface flow/streams), which used to supply irrigation water to thousands of
288 S. Janakarajan

hectares (ha) of land. In other words, increasing access to ‘private source of irrigation’, namely,
wells, has contributed to rapid decline in the collective action of community-based natural
resources.
The decline in the water level and pollution are affecting the availability and reliability
of water supplies for irrigation and other uses. Although farmers have responded to scarcity
by adopting some water-use technologies, water scarcity has resulted in reduced yields and
crop pattern changes; this has a direct impact on agricultural incomes. Informal markets, for
example, initially emerged as farmers with access to surplus water supplied water to adjacent
farmers who either lacked the financial resources to dig their own wells or had insufficient
supplies in their wells. Now, water markets are declining as farmers reserve all available supplies
for their own use. Furthermore, even where water markets continue to exist, their operation
is often highly inequitable since they function as part of interlocked land and labour markets
where purchasers are dependent on the goodwill of water sellers. As water becomes increasingly
scarce, dependency relations intensify with purchasers in an ever-weaker bargaining position
(Janakarajan 1992; Shah 1993).
What does this imply for policy? The evidence of increasing poverty, due to degradation of
the groundwater resource base, implies that government policies supporting further ground-
water development in areas suffering from overdraft must be changed. Policies such as supply
of highly subsidised power for all sections of farmers are problematic. Furthermore, there is a
great deal of ambiguity in defining rights over groundwater; as per the existing norms, anyone
who has got access to a piece of land is also the de facto and de jure owner of the groundwater
underneath. Since the amount of groundwater that can be extracted is not dependent upon
the extent of land owned, there are seemingly no limits to the amount of groundwater that
can be extracted provided a land owner possesses resources to drill deep bores, or there is
availability of potential aquifers and diesel or electrical energy for pumping. In addition to en-
couraging indiscriminate and wholesale pumping, the benefits from such policies are largely
captured by wealthy sections of the rural population as well as by the urban rich who extract
and transport groundwater from rural to urban areas for industrial and other uses. The urban
users not only take away potable water from rural areas but also turn out the used water as
sewage and effluents back into the rural areas. This requires a strong policy intervention to
regulate water transport as well as to control pollution generation. Such policy interventions
are often either ineffective or fictional. Overall, policies that support more equitable access
to—and sustainable use of—available groundwater resources are essential. Furthermore, in
areas where inequity is high and current groundwater use patterns are unsustainable, policies
to support the efforts of marginal populations to shift out of agriculture and into other forms of
livelihood may be required. Inherent inequities in power relations within rural communities of
South Asia imply that ‘simple’ legal or other reforms to directly address groundwater overdraft
and pollution are likely to be insufficient. Therefore, to make policies effective, appropriate
law enforcement and monitoring mechanisms need to be evolved.
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 289

U SE AND A BUSE OF G ROUNDWATER

The expansion of groundwater irrigation in India has two distinct phases: the first, beginning
from the mid-1960s up to 1990; and the second from 1990 onwards. The first phase began with
the introduction of high-yielding crop technology and ended around the time the economic
liberalisation process began in India and elsewhere in South Asia. The second phase began
with the opening of the Indian economy to the international market. The first phase was
the period in which well irrigation was growing at an exponential rate. During this period,
groundwater irrigation proved to be more profitable for well-owning farmers as it helped to
increase productivity and farm employment, stabilised production and livelihoods, reduced
vulnerability and intensified cultivation, and, above all, helped to build capital formation
and household savings. Indeed, over the past few decades groundwater has played a critical
role in increasing India’s food production ( Janakarajan and Moench 2003). Furthermore, well
irrigation has been considered a key factor in addressing issues such as poverty reduction.
The reverse is also equally true when groundwater overdraft and pollution reach unbearable
proportions (Moench 1992a, 1992b; Janakarajan 2003). This is exactly what has happened in
the second phase. In many areas, the twin problems of groundwater overdraft and pollution
have not only resulted in the reduction of groundwater stock, but have also adversely affected
crop yields, farm income and health, and aggravated the problem of rural-urban migration
(forced migration). Farmers have started feeling the burden of maintaining a well due to
‘competitive deepening’, leading to the continuous fall of water tables, increased unit cost of
pumping water and competing demand for water from industries and urban domestic users.
And for many, wells have become a source of debt accumulation; this is particularly true in the
low rainfall regions of South India, where although the first phase of groundwater expansion
contributed to welfare (both for individuals and for the society), the second phase of intensive
groundwater use has contributed to illfare.
In the second phase, covering the past decade or so, the key issues which attracted the
attention of many researchers centered on the theme ‘hard times’ or ‘adversity’. Some of the
broad issues of this phase were: mining of groundwater, increasing investment on wells,
conflicts and competition, rural-urban water transactions, mismatch between extraction
and recharge, groundwater pollution, sea-water intrusion and groundwater-energy nexus
as a mechanism to control groundwater over-extraction. (See for instance Bhatia 1992;
Janakarajan 1997a; Janakarajan and Moench 2003; Moench 1992a, 1992b; Moench et al.
1999; Rao 1993; Vaidyanathan 1996.) Until recently little data was available to document
the extent of water level declines in specific locations.2 The local level information was avail-
able only through individual researchers and their observations, for example, the field-level
data gathered by this author in a couple of river basins called the Palar and the Noyyal in Tamil
Nadu shows a rapid decline in the groundwater table over the past couple of decades ( Janakarajan
and Moench 2003). The steep decline in the water table has also been accompanied by changes
in modern water extraction technologies. As a consequence, there has been an intensive and
290 S. Janakarajan

extensive competition between well owners within rural areas in groundwater extraction. In
addition, because many farmers have installed lateral as well as vertical bores, water availability
in adjacent wells is often severely affected.While disputes over water and well deepening are
common, no dispute from lateral bore installations was reported in our survey, even when
they penetrated adjacent farmlands. Despite the extent of competition and conflict over well
deepening, farmers did not seek justice through the court of law because groundwater property
rights are known to be quite ambiguous. This has heavy implications for future well users and
adds tremendously to the costs faced by current users (Janakarajan 1997b). It is significant
to note that competitive deepening is virtually absent in villages affected by pollution since
farmers have no incentive to use groundwater for irrigation.
From the field data, it appears that ownership of wells and access to groundwater is quite
diffused across all types of farmers. For instance, surveys carried out in three river basins in
Tamil Nadu, indicate that over two-thirds of wells are owned by small and marginal farmers
who own less than 5 acres of land (Janakarajan 1997a, 2001). The capacity of these wells,
measured in terms of water yields and water quality, is quite poor compared to those owned
by larger farm operations. Since these wells remain dry for most of the year, incidence of crop
failure is very high among the smaller farmers. As a result, many who are already heavily in
debt tend to sell their land or abandon their wells. This class of farmers does not also have the
option of purchasing water from water sellers, since the water market in the rural areas is on
the decline due to groundwater depletion. Further, resource-rich farmers, who have surplus
water, are keen to sell to urban users because the water commands a better price (Janakarajan
1997b; 1999; 2001).
Local groundwater conditions, given the inequity in its use pattern, variability and hydro-
geological conditions, and the presence or absence of pollution, have a large impact on the
costs of wells and irrigated areas. Well irrigation has become a gamble; not all those who invest
in wells are successful. Many lose in the race of competitive deepening or the wells fall into
disuse because of pollution. Many well owners either sell their land or become trapped in a
cycle of debt as they construct new wells. As a retult, a new dimension of inequality emerges.
Those who are able to keep up with competitive deepening emerge as potential water sellers;
others are forced to buy water (Janakarajan 1997b; Vaidyanathan 1996).

Groundwater Pollution in the Palar River Basin

In many river basins in India, there are competing demands for water across different uses and
users, or between sectors such as agriculture, industry and domestic/municipal uses. This causes
a tremendous stress on the limited available water resource, not only because groundwater is
transported from the rural to urban areas, but also because of the re-release of a comparable
quantity of water as effluents. And further, the ability of the future generations to sustain
themselves on the available natural resource base is seriously disturbed.
The Palar river basin3 in Tamil Nadu state is a case in point. Although tanks and spring chan-
nels have been the two most important traditional—community-based—sources of irrigation,
due to their dilapidated condition and also due to several socio-economic, technological and
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 291

institutional factors, groundwater has emerged as the primary source of irrigation in this basin
(Janakarajan 1993). The net irrigated area by wells in the basin is about 75 per cent (Rajagopal
and Vaidyanathan 1998). The study carried out by the Institute of Water Studies indicates that
in the late 1980s there were about 132,000 irrigation wells in the basin area with a density
of 0.74 to 2.82 wells per hectare. Since then, the number of wells in the basin has increased
significantly. Groundwater utilisation is as high as 92 per cent of all water use in this basin.
In addition to agriculture uses, groundwater has been a major source for drinking and in-
dustrial water. Quality, however, varies a great deal across the basin. The leather industry has
been the most important industrial activity in this basin. At the all-India level, the leather
industry contributes to 7 per cent of the country’s export earnings. The number of tanneries
has multiplied since the banning of the semi-finished leather in the late 1970s. Since then,
the tanning technology has also changed from eco-friendly vegetable tanning to chrome
tanning. Export earnings of the leather industry shot up from a mere Rs 0.32 billion in 1965 to
Rs 100 billion in 2001. This industry provides direct employment to over 2 million people
in the country. Fifty-one per cent of leather exports originate from the southern states and
70 per cent of tanning industries are concentrated in this region. Of the total exports from the
south, Tamil Nadu alone contributes to about 90 per cent, the value of which is Rs 50 billion;
and 75 per cent of the tanning industries of the state are concentrated in the Palar basin,
contributing to over 30 per cent of the country’s total exports.
While these facts about the leather industry may appear quite heartening, the reality is
less so.4 On average, 35 to 45 litres of wastewater is discharged per kilogram of raw skin/hide
processed. The total quantity of water used by the tanneries in the basin works out to a
minimum of 45 to 50 million litres per day. The quantity of effluents discharged from the
tanneries (numbering 847), which are supposed to be connected to one of the eight Common
Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) installed in the Palar basin, works out to 37,458 kld or
37.5 mld. It works out to 1,125 million litres per day or 13.5 million cubic metres per year. The
total weight of the raw hides and skins processed works out to 1.1 million kg per day; for each
100 kg of raw hides and skins processed, solid waste generation works out to 38.5 to 62 kg.
According to a study carried out by Stanley Associates sponsored by the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) and executed by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, pollution loads in
the Palar river are extremely threatening: (all parameters are in kg per day) TSS: 29,938, TDS:
400,302; Chloride: 101,434, Sulphide: 3818; BOD: 23,496; COD: 70,990: Total Chromium:
474; and Cyanide: 22 (ADB 1994). More than 60 per cent of the wells in the affected villages
are defunct due to water contamination; the investments that have gone into these wells are
also lost permanently. Groundwater quality data collected by various government and pri-
vate agencies clearly indicate a very high level of contamination in this basin.

Socio-economic Impact of Pollution

The impact of water pollution caused due to discharge of industrial wastes is quite adverse. It
affects the aesthetics of the region, wild life including birds and fish in the water bodies such
as tanks and ponds, flora (a good number of habitats are destroyed due to water pollution),
292 S. Janakarajan

accumulation of pollution load in the top soil due to colour and toxic effluent discharged on
land, pollution of surface and groundwater bodies, decline in the quantity and quality of water
available for drinking and agriculture, decline in agricultural employment and production
and, above all, deteriorating health conditions of human and animal population due to the
use of contaminated water for drinking and other domestic purposes.

Impact on Area, Crop Pattern and Yield

The Soil Survey and Land Use Organisation working in this region has indicated that the paddy
crop is affected with poor germination, stunted vegetative growth, poor grain formation,
reduced grain weight and more of chaffy grains resulting in very poor yield. The sugarcane crop’s
length of internodes is reduced, the girth becomes very thin and the weight of cane is reduced.
As for the coconut crop, vegetative growth of the trees is good but tender coconut water is saline;
size of the nuts is reduced; falling buttons are common and in large numbers. The groundnut
crop is afflicted by leaf drying and poor root formation coupled with poor pod formation. And,
for all crops, the tolerance level for pest attacks is reported to have reduced significantly.
The detailed sample of a survey of eight villages in the Palar basin by this author gives more
evidence on cropped area, the area irrigated and on yield. Clearly, water yielding characteristics
and area irrigated by wells vary between those villages which are affected by industrial effluent
and those which are not. For instance, area irrigated per well is nil in about one-third of the
sample wells (80 out of 253) in the Palar basin. The difference is quite sharp between affected
and unaffected villages—26 per cent (41 out of 159 sample wells) in the unaffected and 41 per
cent (39 out of 94) in the affected villages. While in the unaffected villages it is primarily due
to over-use and depletion, in the affected villages it is primarily because of pollution. In most
of the area coconut crop is now cultivated (instead of paddy) but with very poor yields. What
is worse is that small operators of land who own wells operate their wells with either poor
water yields or pump bad quality water; whereas, the large farmers manage to sustain better
by digging new wells or deepening the existing wells or both.

Impact on Water Quality

Plenty of evidence on water pollution due to leather tanneries was presented in the Second
International Water Tribunal in 1992. The Tribunal discussed quite elaborately the deteriorating
water quality conditions in the Palar basin. The jurists stated:

As a result of the uncontrolled discharge of wastewater from the tanning industry both
surface and groundwater have been seriously contaminated. The water is no longer suitable
for drinking and has to be brought in from other areas at a price beyond the means of poor.
In addition to the above, these practices, resulting in contamination with salt and chemicals,
have rendered useless large areas of once fertile land (Second International Water Tribunal
1992: 220).

The Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD Board) conducted a study in
1997, collecting random samples of water along the Palar river for a distance of about 60 km.
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 293

When these results were compared with a study conducted in 1968 by the Kings Institute in
Chennai, it clearly indicated that TDS had increased by 79 per cent in the Vaniyambadi zone
(upstream tannery cluster). The study also found that in the downstream the value of TDS
value stood at 142 per cent.
One of the major implications of water pollution in this basin is increasing scarcity of
drinking water. In the past, when water contamination was minimal or unknown, the people
used the local well water for all their domestic and drinking requirements. In the changing
scenario, either they depend upon the public water supply system or are compelled to purchase
water. The worst hit are the poor and marginal farmers and landless agricultural labourers.

Impact on Land and Land Value

The detailed survey of eight villages in this basin indicates that the land value has come down
drastically due to degradation of groundwater and land/soil salinity. Normally, value of land
in this basin depended upon factors such as access to irrigation sources, dependability of water
sources, soil quality, location of land from the head of an irrigation source, and so on. But in
the affected zones of the Palar river basin, where land and water have been subject to severe
pollution, the land value largely depends upon water quality, and its proximity to main road
and industries. The nearer it is to the main road and cluster of industries, the better the value
of the land. This is the type of land which is favoured by industry owners for their industrial
activities. On the other hand, the plots which are located far away from the main road do not
fetch a good price even though quality of water is reasonable. From this, can we conclude that
even though tannery effluent has contributed to severe water pollution, farmers in these villages
are still better off since their lands get a better price? The answer is ‘No’, because such a hike
in the value of land benefits only a small fraction. Further, even those who sold their lands
have gained only in the short run; our interviews confirm that most of those who sold their
plots of land have spent their money, instead of re-investing it in land. In a few exceptional
cases, properties (land) were purchased elsewhere or the farmers were living on bank interest
earnings. Therefore, from the larger perspective of environmental damages that have occurred
in the village and in the region, the gains that appear to have surfaced due to the hike in the
land price is nothing but a delusion.

Gains in Employment and Forced Migration

Due to extensive employment opportunities created in leather-related activities, there has been
a drastic decline in the landless agricultural labour force even in unaffected villages. The survey
indicates that it is the landless Scheduled Caste (SC) population that has gained a reasonable
degree of employment opportunities in the tanneries compared to others (Millie 1998). This
is a clear case of distress-induced non-farm employment because whatever prosperity the so-
ciety has gained is only at the cost of severe environmental degradation, distress in agriculture,
health hazards and total loss of environment and ecology for future generations. Further, it
is distress for a majority and ‘prosperity’ for a few.
Therefore, one of the major impacts of environmental degradation in the region is out-
migration. Incidence of migration due to environmental degradation has been reported from
294 S. Janakarajan

majority of the 51 villages selected for the first round survey, but the number varies according
to intensity of pollution. But in two villages—Gudimallur and Vannivedu—there was a bulk
out-migration of 150 and 125 families respectively. These two villages were badly affected
due to tannery pollution.
The conventional neo-classical approach suggests that the population migration is only a
natural response to interregional imbalances (either due to uneven development of or uneven
endowment of natural resources leading to more economic opportunities). The population
movement is generally from areas where labour is plenty and capital is poor, to a region
where labour is less and capital is plenty. A number of push factors have been identified; the
principal among them is population pressure. Other push factors are political instability, en-
vironmental degradation and lack of economic opportunities. The other approach criticises
the neo-classical paradigm. According to this approach, the macro power structure and macro
structural forces, which lie at the bottom, should be the explanation for population movements
rather than placing too much emphasis on the free choice of individuals (Lonergan 1998: 8). The
government’s insensitivity or lack of motivation, on the one hand, and the irresponsibility of
the polluters (mainly industrialists), on the other, or the nexus between them, causes enor-
mous damage to the environment. This has a direct consequence as the displacement of human
population. This kind of forced movement or displacement of population from their traditional
habitat causes enormous stress, distress and uncertainty in life. Thus, the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) uses the phrase ‘environmental refugees’. If these kinds of
deteriorations of environment are unchecked, they will directly lead to political instability,
abject poverty and economic stagnation.5

C ONFLICTS IN THE U SE OF G ROUNDWATER

AND E MERGING D EADLOCK C ONDITIONS

In the most general sense, conflicts may be defined as ‘irreconcilable interests’ of individuals
or groups, which are expressed in terms of hostile attitudes, or pursuing their own interests
through actions that jeopardise the well-being of other parties. Although conflicts may occur
for a variety of reasons and in diverse situations, in the present context we are concerned with
conflicts that occur in the process of use and sharing of natural resources, in particular, water.
Conflicts over use of water in the developing world are more acute; in fact such conflicts take
new dimensions when seen in relation with other maladies of the developing world such as
poverty, hunger and malnutrition, lack of or inadequate health care, lack of protected drinking-
water supply and high illiteracy, besides demographic pressure. In such a scenario, individual or
group interests get nurtured and get more polarised due to factors such as political instability,
poor governance, lack of effective law enforcement and monitoring mechanisms. This is the
reflection of nothing but systemic failure.
Take the specific case of groundwater use and abuse in the Palar river basin. Conflicts in
this basin take place due to one critical factor, namely, scarcity. And, as stated earlier, scarcity
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 295

in the basin has occurred due to over-use and groundwater pollution. This results in conflicting
interests within rural areas, which are manifested in (i) competitive deepening of wells (conflict
between individual well owners); (ii) sub-division and fragmentation of wells along with land,
resulting in competitive pumping and deepening even within a well (conflicts occurring
between individuals within a well which are jointly owned); (iii) expansion of well irrigation,
resulting in drying up of traditional surface water bodies such as springs and tanks (what
may be called occurrence of conflicts between different natural resource base); and (iv) the
differentiation of farming community into those who have own wells and those who do not
(the consequence of which is the emergence of conflicts between water sellers [well owners]
and water purchasers [non-well owners]). The main reasons for the occurrence of conflicts in
each one of these cases are the rise in the number of claimants to use this limited resource
and incompatibility of interests. In particular, in a scarcity environment, when well owners
exercise their unlimited property rights over land and groundwater, one encounters an outburst
of conflicts.
Commercial transactions in groundwater occur for non-agricultural uses also. The primary
non-agricultural users are urban industrial owners and municipalities (to meet drinking water
needs). The quantity of water that is consumed for industrial processing is discharged as trade
effluent in the open surface, streams, lakes/tanks and rivers, thereby contributing significantly
to the pollution load of surface and groundwater bodies. Therefore, the transportation of
potable groundwater from villages to urban industrial uses not only aggravates the already
depleting groundwater table, but also contributes to permanent damage to groundwater due
to the discharge of industrial effluents.
In many cases, the industrial owners have bought plots of land specifically with a motivation
of installing deep bore wells—beating every other well owner in the vicinity by pitching the
marginal cost of well digging or deepening disproportionately high—with a view to transporting
water (this is the case in which conflicts occur between rural and urban intruding users).
What’s more, sand mining from the riverbed has destroyed the riverbed aquifer and the local
ecology permanently. This has caused even physical conflicts as the local people’s livelihood
has been under severe threat.6 The flow chart in Figure 15.1 summarises the impacts and social
analysis of these conflicts.
Two important questions arise here:

• What do the current water policy and water and environmental laws do?
• Do we have enough laws or do we need more?

The 42nd Amendment of the Indian Constitution passed in 1974 was a landmark. This enabled
a series of water and environmental protection laws, the most important of which is The Water
(Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act. This Act enabled the constitution of the Central
Pollution Control Boards and subsequently a board for each state. While the former func-
tions directly under the control of the Government of India, the latter is under the control
of the respective state governments. Further, a separate ministry was created in the Central
Government structure for environment and forests in 1980 as a specialised agency for planning,
promoting and protecting the environment.
296 S. Janakarajan

Figure 15.1: Flow Chart Water Transportation—Water Sale—from Rural to

Urban Social Analysis of Implications of Water Crises

Rural Area Urban Area

Scarcity due to over-use/depletion Urbanisation and industrial expansion

The process of competitive Effluent discharge leading to

deepening of wells-GW expansion pollution induced scarcity
resulting in prosperity for a few
and deprivation for many
Net Result

Differentiation of farmers/
Emergence of a new class of rich
well owners/water sellers and at Ecological
Industrial prosperity,
growth of vast majority of poor degradation,
rise in urban
farmers pollution of
employment,
development of surface and ground-
urban infrastructure, water bodies,
forex earning declining land
Ecology Socio-Economic Gender quality and
Neglect of Unemployment, Gender decline in
Tanks and migration, rise inequity agricultural yield
other in landlessness, stress on
Traditional rise in poverty women
Irrigation and indebtedness folk to
Institutions; water needs Agricultural stagnation,
Depleting of the high rural urban
GW Table household migration, rise in rural
poverty and indebtedness
health problems caused
due to contamination
of water

Therefore, the institutional mechanism and water laws do exist in the country. The best
example is the strong verdict given by the Supreme Court of India against the tanners of the
Palar basin. The Bombay High Court has delivered a resounding judgement upholding the
powers of the Central Government to issue directions or prosecute anybody who causes damage
to environment. Further, the same judgement also broadened the locus standi of citizens to
approach the courts to prevent environmental degradation of any part of the country (www.
goacom.com). In recent years, the Precautionary Principle (which recommends pollution
prevention rather than pollution clean-up) has become a key phrase in many verdicts of the
courts. The international environmental laws recommend several measures to combat the
danger of pollution: the key measures among them are internalising the economic costs of
pollution and adopting the ‘polluter pays principle’. What is then wrong?
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 297

Dilip Biswas, then Chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, Government of India,
confessed, ‘Enforcement of such legislation is a challenging task because of various reasons
including the inherent flaws in the laws and infirmity of enforcement machinery’ (Biswas
2001: 1). He further adds that though environmental laws and specific empowered authorities
have been set up for pollution prevention and payment towards compensation, the monitoring
and implementation mechanism is undefined. This is quite true in the case of the acute problem
of pollution in the Palar basin: Leather tanneries, in the first instance, have been classified
under the ‘red industries’ category (heavily polluting industry). This warrants, by law, the
installation of treatment plants and treatment of effluent water to the prescribed standards
before letting it out. This was never done, for instance, in the Palar basin until the intervention
of the Supreme Court through public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Vellore Citizens’
Forum in 1991. At present, though many tanneries have treatment plants, the effluent water
is either untreated or under-treated. In other words, the Supreme Court has delivered what is
regarded as an historic verdict, but the state lacks enforcement and monitoring mechanisms,
good governance, and honest and committed bureaucracies. Thus, even judicial activism has
a limited role under the present circumstances. This leads to a real explosive situation (see
Figure 15.2).

• Sporadic protests; uninformed civil society; low media attention; high government
incentives to industry; and high profits—industry, government, farmers and civil society
think that the available space is huge and are therefore never worried.
• Affected people protest; civil society is learning; media attention is picking up, but
the government continues to give incentives to industry. The available space is getting
reduced.

Figure 15.2: Degrees of Conflicts and Sustainable Development

298 S. Janakarajan

• Intensive protests, attracts lots of media attention, affected people are reasonably organ-
ised, civil society is well-informed; government tries their best to protect industry with
subsidies to install effluent treatment plants; judiciary intervenes. The available space
is very little; any reconciliatory measures should begin at least here if not in an earlier
period.
• This is a hopeless situation in which the damage to the economy, society and environ-
ment has reached an alarming proportion. The conditions are catastrophic and there is
absolutely no space for any reconciliation.

Before concluding this section, let me explain conflicts as they occur in different sub-systems
of an economy. Water resources in any given economy may be studied in terms of three sub-
systems: (i) natural sub-system; (ii) user sub-system; and (iii) institutional sub-system.

Natural Sub-system
The total water resources available in a given geographical region constitute natural sub-systems
or what may represent the supply side of water resources. The supply side basically refers to
all surface and groundwater bodies which perform a number of functions with differentiated
values, for a variety of users.

User Sub-system
The user sub-system represents the demand side. The main user agents/sectors who demand
water include user groups/sectors like agriculture, domestic and industries. Besides, future gen-
eration of users and ecosystems also have legitimate claims on the natural sub-system.

Institutional Sub-system
The institutional sub-system represents the government or its implementing and monitoring
agencies, whose primary task is to keep a balance between supply and demand. The main re-
sponsibility of the institutional sub-system is to develop water resource base, regulate its use,
and enforce laws wherever necessary; and, above all, to maintain equilibrium between the first
two sub-systems, namely, the natural sub-system and the user sub-system.
The system will have smooth sailing so long as the supply does not fall short of demand. Even
if demand exceeds supply, if the institutional sub-system operates scrupulously, equilibrium
may be maintained between the natural sub-system and the user sub-system. Under these ideal
circumstances, there is no ground for any conflicts. But this is only a knife-edged equilibrium
where, even a small disturbance is bound to result in conflicts. The kind of a system, which
we encounter in the Palar river basin, is neither known for any state of equilibrium nor is it
marginally disturbed. The institutional sub-system is ineffective and unimaginative when it
comes to restoring equilibrium. Indeed, specific interest groups who exercise control through
enormous economic and political power govern the management of the natural sub-system.
The hierarchy of power is such that urban industrial owners dominate over farmers, rich farm-
ers over poorer ones, and economic expansion over ecology. In this scheme, the water and
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 299

environment managers are turning out to be mere spectators; tanners remain unshaken from
their profiteering spree; social auditors keep raising their voices; but, unfortunately, farmers
and other affected people continue to be at the receiving end. This is the social milieu in which
engaging in multi-stakeholders’ dialogue (MSD) will be more useful.

M ULTI-STAKEHOLDERS ’ D IALOGUE

Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue as a Possible Policy

Intervention for Sustainable Development—The
Experience in the Palar Basin
Multi-stakeholders’ dialogue is an approach that has immense utility precisely in such deadlock
situations. This approach has emerged in response to the apparent deficiency of conventional
socio-economic and institutional tools. In conflicting and (sort of) deadlock situations over the
use and abuse of natural resources, the MSD approach provides an extremely useful framework
and platform:

(i) to find ways for preventing further degradation of natural resources in question and
to work towards sustainable development with a common agenda within a framework
acceptable to all stakeholders; and
(ii) to find ways to turn situations of conflict and distrust into opportunities for mutual aid
and cooperation.

Ideally, stakeholder analysis will prove to be more effective and result oriented if it is car-
ried out before the launching of any project in natural resource management. Nonetheless,
in our present context, as stated earlier, the tool of stakeholder analysis is applied as a step
before initiating MSD. In this case, it helped to identify and gain more understanding of the
stakeholders, their strengths and weaknesses; to differentiate between primary and secondary
stakeholders; to single out primary conflict from secondary conflict; and to strategise conflict-
resolving mechanisms in the right perspective. The flow chart in Figure 15.1 and the diagram
in Figure 15.2 are the results of my long-term research and stakeholder analysis carried out
in the Palar basin.
The social dialogue approach will not yield instant results. It is a process in which all stake-
holders, though initially fighting and debating, settle down after a while. What is, however,
crucial is to sustain the tempo and interest of stakeholders until some tangible outcome emerges.
The dialogue process may yield definite results under conditions where some threshold level
of disaster has already been reached. For instance, social dialogue would be more fruitful in
a river basin, the water of which is heavily used; where industrial and domestic wastes are
dumped resulting in heavy contamination of surface and groundwater; where there is severe
competing demand for water; where ambiguities exist in defining water rights; where water
300 S. Janakarajan

and environmental laws are ineffectively implemented; where official monitoring systems
either never exist or have failed; and where trade-offs between competing water users are ill-
conceived and ill-managed. Most of all, in the particular context of the Palar river basin, even
the interventions made by the highest judicial authority of the country could not make much
of a difference to the severe problem. In other words, ‘when everything fails’, stakeholders come
forward for the reconciliatory process through dialogue; until then all stakeholders compete
with each other in making use of the available space and resource. This is precisely the state of
affairs in which the multi-stakeholders’ dialogue process was initiated in the Palar basin.

Multi-stakeholders’ Meeting—Some Practical Experiences

Probably the most direct policy impact of my research has been through the creation of an
on-going MSD process around critical water issues in Tamil Nadu. This led to the organisation
of the first MSD meeting of the Palar river basin in Chennai on 28 and 29 January 2002.
The meeting was attended by over 120 participants, including tannery owners—the main
polluters—farmers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), bureaucrats, effluent treatment
managers, media persons, lawyers, doctors and academics.
The basic objectives of this meeting are given below:

(i) To take stock of use and abuse of water in the Palar basin in the overall context of urban
and industrial expansion, and in the context of poverty, food security and hunger.
(ii) To assess and examine who are the defaulters of law, their positive and negative con-
tributions to society and economy are.
(iii) To bring together various stakeholders for a fruitful dialogue with a view to hear, debate,
document and make public their voices.
(iv) To find ways for preventing further degradation of water resources in the basin and to
work towards sustainable development with a common agenda within a framework
acceptable to all stakeholders.
(v) To find ways to turn situations of conflict and distrust into opportunities for mutual
aid and cooperation.

To set the stage for dialogue on the first day, a series of panelists were invited to make
presentations on various aspects of water use and abuse with particular reference to the Palar
basin. Altogether, the various stakeholders made 12 presentations. These covered a wide variety
of issues pertaining to use and abuse of water in the Palar basin. The arguments, during the
dialogue sessions, were impassioned and lively. Initially, the discussion was quite intense and
one of the tanners stood up with an outburst: ‘We (tanners) are treated like Afghan refugees;
what sin have we committed except involving ourselves in this dirty business?’ By the afternoon of
the first day, however, the variety of perspectives present was beginning to generate common
points of understanding. While tanners began to acknowledge that the pollution generated
by them has had huge impacts on livelihoods of the people and on the environment, farmers
and other stakeholders recognised that closure of tanneries is not the solution of the problem.
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 301

Mutual concerns were expressed which could be gathered from comments made by one of
the tanners: ‘So far we farmers and tanners were meeting only in the courts; for the first time we are
meeting in a same platform with a view to sharing the concern.’
In the dialogue process, remedial recourses for the problem of effluent discharge and
environmental pollution were debated and discussed extensively. The dialogue centered
around a series of issues, namely:

(i) Legal solutions: Environmental laws—Do we need new laws? Should the group consider
filing public interest litigation cases—would it help the cause?
(ii) Technical Options: Can we use technologically more efficient individualised or cen-
tralised effluent treatment plants (IETPs and CETPs)? Would it be possible to use cleaner
technologies in the tanning process or recycle the treated water? If we argue for more
effective technologies, do we have an efficient monitoring mechanism to ensure they
are actually implemented?
(iii) Governmental Options: Could individuals or groups put pressure on the Loss of Ecology
Authority to take action to reverse existing ecological degradation? If pressure were
exercised, would the Authority really be able to do anything?

Towards the end of the meeting there were signs of relief. At that time it was widely acknow-
ledged that MSD is an on-going process and not a one-off meeting. Therefore, there was a
general agreement to form a Committee from among those who were present so that the
dialogue process could be carried further. The result was the birth of the Multi-stakeholders’
Committee with 24 members represented from different stakeholders. This meeting was given
very wide publicity for two days by both print and visual media.

Formalising the Multi-stakeholders’ Committee

of Water Users of the Palar River Basin
Following the first MSD meeting, individuals participating in the committee have been working
to define their objectives. At least initially, the members agreed that the objectives of this
Committee will be the following:

(i) To make a comprehensive attempt with an inter-disciplinary focus to document water

and environmental issues in the Palar basin. In particular, the Committee will spend
considerable time on water audits.
(ii) To monitor pollution levels in the surface and groundwater at different strategic points
within the basin.
(iii) To measure the quantum of water consumed by different sectors such as agriculture,
industrial and domestic users.
(iv) To measure and monitor the quality of water at various inlet and outlet points from
industries.
302 S. Janakarajan

(v) To measure the actual quantum of water that goes out of the basin for non-agricultural
uses such as for domestic and industrial purposes, amusement parks etc.
(vi) To develop a package for reversing ecological degradation in the basin. As currently
envisioned, this package will involve the following:
(a) revamping of traditional irrigation sources such as tanks and springs as a measure
of providing adequate irrigation water as well as to recharge groundwater;
(b) channeling water into the Palar river in order to increase water flow;
(c) preventing sand mining;
(d) preventing polluted water (both from industries and from domestic sewage) from
entering the river—whether treated or untreated;
(e) removing encroachments in the Palar river;
(f ) suggesting cleaner technology for water treatment; developing a rapport with
various government agencies; and
(g) critically assessing the findings of the Loss of Ecology Authority and their recom-
mendations for ecological restoration.

In order to carry out these responsibilities, it was agreed to appoint/consult experts in various
fields.

Major Outcomes of the Committee’s Deliberations

The Tamil Nadu State Government constituted what is called ‘The Palar Basin Board’ at the
recommendation of the World Bank in 2001. This Board so far has met only once and no
business seems to have been transacted; whereas the Multi-Stakeholders’ Committee has
already met seven times so far, during 2001–03, and has identified and addressed the following
critical policy issues:

(i) The Committee has unanimously agreed that the closure of tanneries is not the solution;
the members have committed themselves to finding solutions not only for pollution
but also for restoring the ecology of the basin.
(ii) Different stakeholders have agreed to share information among themselves so that
more useful and concrete decisions can be made. In particular, tanners, who hitherto
were denying any access to information, have agreed to share all the details pertaining
to tanneries and CETPs, and also have agreed on open access to tanneries and CETPs
with a view to enabling the Committee members to visit their sites at any time. This is
considered one of the best positive outcomes of the Committee in a short span of time.
(iii) It was felt that the prevention of any further pollution in the basin is the first step re-
quired towards ecological restoration.
(iv) The Committee explored a variety of specific potential solutions to some of the most
critical water problems. These include the possibility of (i) handing over effluents to a
private water treatment company and pay according to the services provided by them;
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 303

and (ii) the use of a mobile cold storage system to collect and transport raw hides and
skins from all over the country so that the pickling process (which is the main source
of TDS [salt] accumulation in the effluent) could be avoided.
(v) One of the main objectives of the MSD meeting was to bring together various stakeholders
for a fruitful dialogue with a view to hear, debate, document and make public their voices.
With a view to fulfilling this objective, the entire two days’ proceedings were recorded
and transcribed. Thus, the entire proceedings of the dialogue meeting along with a long
introduction on conditions of river basins in Tamil Nadu have already been published
in Tamil (the vernacular language). The book has 270 pages with photographs. The
Governor of Tamil Nadu released the book on 26 December 2003, which again received
wide publicity in the print and visual media.

Looking into the Future—Leftover Tasks

Despite its considerable successes during the first year, many tasks identified by the Committee
remain underway. These include:

(i) Developing rapport with the Government agencies at all levels with a view to (a) getting
access to official information (database); (b) influencing the policies of the Government;
and (c) executing objectives of the Committee with the endorsement and financial
support of the Government.
(ii) Generating data on all aspects of the basin—both primary and secondary.
(iii) Developing village-level stakeholder units with the objective of (a) spreading awareness
for the restoration ecology in the basin; (b) generating primary data in each village con-
cerning crop details, water use, conditions of surface and groundwater bodies, ground-
water levels, water quality characteristics, documenting water conflicts, documenting
details relating to encroachments, and so on; (c) developing a monitoring mechanism
for preventing further pollution, to regulate water use (both surface and groundwater);
and (d) regulating water markets. The activities of village-level stakeholder units would
need official sanction from the Social Committee only to prevent any unlawful activity
of the stakeholder units.
(iv) And sustaining the MSD process through periodic Stakeholder Committee meetings.

C ONCLUSION

One of the biggest challenges in the current Indian context is to meet the growing water de-
mands of various sectors such as agriculture, industries and urban drinking-water needs, and to
sustain the ecology and environment. There exists a virtual competition between these sectors,
which often results in conflicts. There is a greater need to prevent over-use of water and its
degradation due to pollution. In particular, sectors such as industries and domestic water
304 S. Janakarajan

users (municipalities) are primarily dependent upon water supply from rural areas; but what
is turned out after use is deadly, untreated waste water, which gets dumped in rivers, streams,
ponds and tanks and wastelands. This contributes to severe water contamination—both surface
and sub-surface. The Palar is one such typical, heavily stressed river basin where leather tanneries
have played a significant role in contributing to the environmental degradation in general
and water pollution in particular. Existing policy initiatives have failed to deliver goods; there
were several concerted efforts to express public solidarity; but the political parties in the state,
with one or two exceptions, did not take active interest in the public outrage, nor did they
make it an election issue; even after assuming power the successive elected governments in
the state never made any concrete efforts to resolve the issue. Judicial activism—through the
Supreme Court’s intervention—in response to the public interest litigation case filed against
tanners was helpful in so far as creating awareness and in pronouncing that what tanners have
done to the environmental is an offence. But the remedial measures suggested by the Court
could not travel too far due to fundamental flaws in the law enforcement and monitoring
mechanisms. It was at this juncture the MSD process was initiated in the basin, which appears
rewarding at the moment. In the absence of any other alternative solution to the vexing prob-
lem of pollution in the basin, the MSD process has helped, at least, in bringing together all
stakeholders in the basin for a negotiated settlement; its success very much depends upon the
active support that it deserves from the state and central governments.

Notes
1. Historically, tanks have been regarded as one of the most important common property resources
in India, in the South in particular. Tanks played an extremely important role in contributing to
agricultural growth until the mid-1960s in many parts of India. For details, see Janakarajan (1993)
and Vaidyanathan (2001).
2. Before its publication in 2005, the third census of minor irrigation schemes surveyed during 2000–01
and the Report of the Expert Group on Groundwater Management and Ownership (see Government
of India 2007), the status of groundwater resources in India by the Central Ground Water Board was
published in 1995. It was primarily based on data from 1989–90; it contained no information on actual
water level changes (Central Ground Water Board 1995). In most states, groundwater-monitoring data
is insufficient to accurately document water level changes at a local level even if the data were made
readily available (Moench 1994; World Bank 1998). This fact is also acknowledged by the expert group.
3. The Palar, one of the major rivers in Tamil Nadu, covers an area of about 18,300 sq km. Average annual
rainfall ranges from between 800 mm to 1200 mm here. The climate is tropical and highly humid.
Major irrigated crops in this basin are paddy, sugarcane and groundnut, and major unirrigated crops are
coarse cereals besides groundnut in water scarce areas. Tanks have historically been the most important
surface irrigation source in the basin. There are about 700 tanks connected to the river channels with
a combined command area of 61,000 hectares. These are called system tanks. Besides system tanks, a
large number of non-system tanks also exist in this basin. There were also 606 spring channels that
had their origin in the Palar river or its tributaries, which irrigated thousands of hectares along the
villages located on both sides of the river (IWS 2000). In many villages, even now, the spring channels
remain but in a dissipated and silted condition.
 Some Experiences in the Palar River Basin, South India 305

4. Most of the information provided in this section has been collected through a survey carried out
during the years 1997–99 in 51 villages of the Palar basin. This was a part of the research funded by
International Development Research Center, Canada.
5. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the 1993 State of the World’s
Refugees, identified four root causes of refugee flows. These were political instability, economic
tensions, ethnic conflict and environmental degradation (Lonergan 1998: 1). Another study indicates
that environmental refugees have become the single largest class of displaced people in the world (see
Jacobson 1988).
6. See Moreyra Alejandra (2001: 4) in this context who explains in a similar fashion various types of conflicts
that occur in the use of water: ‘Increasing scarcity of water in quantity and quality generate problems
related to the accomplishment of the different functions assigned to the resource. Consequently,
conflicts arise among actors within the same sector (upstream and downstream irrigators), among
different user sectors within the same region (irrigation, drinking water, industry etc.) and among
different administrative units, that share the same watershed (municipalities, states, provinces and
central governments). Conflicts of interest groups can also arise between those who consume water
(consumptive users) and those who don’t consume it but use it (hydro-electric power generation,
tourism etc.), but also with those non-users that defend interests about the type of development they
want for their locality….

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——— (1993). ‘In Search of Tanks’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28(6): A53–61.
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Tamil Nadu, report of a research project sponsored by the Planning Commission. Chennai: Government
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——— (1997b). ‘Consequences of Aquifer Over-Exploitation: Prosperity and Deprivation’, Review of
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E. Caspari and A. Dixit (eds), Rethinking the Mosaic: Investigations into Local Water Management.
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——— (2001). Conflicts, Competition and Contradictions in the Use of Water Resources, unpublished
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——— (2003). ‘Soiled Agriculture and Spoiled Environment: Socio-Economic Impact of Groundwater
Pollution in Tamilnadu’, working paper No.175, Chennai: Madras Institute of Development Studies.
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of Deteriorating Groundwater Irrigation in Tamilnadu’, working paper No.174, Chennai: Madras
Institute of Development Studies.
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 16
The New Institutional Economics
of India’s Water Policy
Tushaar Shah

I NSTITUTIONAL A RRANGEMENTS
AND I NSTITUTIONAL E NVIRONMENT

A recent review of institutional changes in the global water sector in 11 countries by Saleth
and Dinar (2000) treats water law, water policy and water administration as the three pillars of
institutional analysis in national water economies. This focus on law, policy and organisations
as central themes of institutional analysis has been popular with many analysts of water resource
management (Bandaragoda and Firdausi 1992; Merrey 1996; Frederickson and Vissia 1998;
Holmes 2000; Saleth 2004). However, if institutional change is about how societies adapt to
new demands, its study needs to go beyond what government bureaucracies, international
agencies and legal/regulatory systems do; people, businesses, exchange institutions, civil society
institutions, religions and social movements—all must be covered in the ambit of institutional
analysis (Mestre 1997 cited in Merrey 2000: 5; Livingston 1993).
In an effort to build upon existing institutional analyses of the Indian water sector, this
chapter takes a broader view in attempting a preliminary analysis of water institutions in India;
if anything because it helps to access the vast field of New Institutional Economics (NIE) in
analysing ways the Indian society is responding to its changing water situation. I begin right
away by borrowing from North (1990) the notion of institutions as ‘formal rules, informal
constraints (norms of behaviour, conventions and self-imposed codes of conduct) and the
enforcement characteristics of both’, and also ‘if institutions are the rules of the game, organ-
izations are the players’. It is also useful to borrow the important distinction drawn in the NIE
between institutional arrangements and institutional environment. Thus, aspects that Saleth and
Dinar (2000) include in their ‘institutional analysis’ represent institutional environment in
NIE. Institutional arrangements, in contrast, ‘are the structure that humans impose on their
dealings with each other’ (North 1990). In the particular context of the Indian water econ-
omy, then, when I refer to institutional environment, I include various government agencies
at different levels that directly or indirectly deal in water, international agencies, governments’
308 Tushaar Shah

water policy, water related laws, and so on. And in talking about institutions or institutional
arrangements, I refer to things like groundwater markets, tube well co-operatives and Water
User Associations (WUAs), formal or informal.
My overarching hypotheses in this analysis are stated below:

• Water institutions of nations at any given point in time depend critically upon the nature
and characteristics of their water economies; and the nature and characteristics in turn
are characterised in the main by level of formalisation of water economies.1
• Water sectors become more formalised as national economies grow.
• The pace of water sector formalisation in response to economic growth varies across
countries and is determined by a host of factors, which are not fully understood, but
include some, such as the degree of population pressure on land and water resources,
extent of dependence on farming for livelihoods, macro-economic policies and the nature
of the ‘state’ (principally, how hard or soft it is). How much difference these make in
the pace of formalisation of water sectors, it is difficult to say; however, it is clear that
India cannot have Europe’s level of formalisation of its water sector at its present state
of economic evolution (see Figure 16.1).

The level of formalisation of a country’s water sector is best indicated by the low level of
interface between its water institutions and its water institutional environment—or by what

Figure 16.1: Relation between Formalisation of Water Provision and

Economic Growth

Formal/Mediated
service provision Low population pressure on
water and land; highly urban

High population pressure

on water and land; highly
rural

Informal/
Self-provision

Economic Growth
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 309

North (1990) calls the transaction sector2 of the water economy. Informal water economies are
marked by heavy dependence of water users on self-provision (through private wells, streams,
ponds), or informal, personalised exchange institutions, community-managed water sources, or
absent or limited use of price or user charges to recover costs of service provision, or to guide
resource allocation or to clear markets. In contrast, in highly-formalised water economies, as
in Europe and North America, self-provision disappears as a mode of securing water service;
all or most users are served by service providers—private-corporate, municipal or others—who
form the interface between users and the institutional environment. Volumetric supply and
economic pricing are commonly used in highly formal water sectors for cost recovery as well
as resource allocation. Here, water emerges as an industry.
Just how informal India’s water economy is was recently explored by a large nation-wide
National Sample Survey (NSS), the 54th round of this survey (NSSO 1999a, report 452: 46) car-
ried out in June–July 1998. It interviewed a total of 78,990 rural households in 5,110 villages
to understand the extent to which they depend upon common property (and government)
land and water resources for their consumptive and productive uses. It showed that only
10 per cent of water infrastructural assets used by survey households were owned and managed
by either a public or community organisation; the rest were mostly privately owned and
managed by households, or owned by government/community (but not managed by either).3
The same survey also showed that over 80 per cent of rural households self-supplied their do-
mestic water needs, and were not connected with any public water supply system. In urban
households (sample = 31,323 households), the situation was the opposite; three-fourths were
connected to a public water supply system. A 2003 survey (NSSO 2003: report 487) showed
that of the 4,646 villages covered, only 8.8 per cent had a public/community water supply
system; the rest depended on wells or open water bodies for domestic water supply to rural
households. The proportion of villages with public water supply systems increased rapidly as
one moved from a poor state like Bihar, where none of the 364 villages covered had a public/
community water supply, to Haryana, where over half the villages had public water supply
systems, and to Goa, where every village had a public water supply system. The 1999 survey of
48,419 cultivators throughout India showed that nearly 65 per cent of them used irrigation for
five major field crops cultivated by them; and, for nearly half of them, the source of irrigation
was informal, fragmented pump irrigation markets (NSSO 1999b: 42) which are totally outside
the ambit of water law, policy and administration. The 2003 survey of 4,646 villages (NSSO
2003: report 487) showed that 76.2 per cent of the villages reported they irrigated some of
the lands; but only 17.3 per cent of the villages had access to a public irrigation system. The
rest depended primarily on wells and tube wells (64.3 per cent), tanks and streams. All these
surveys suggest that rural India’s water economy—both domestic and irrigation use—is highly
informal, based as it predominantly is on self-supply and local, informal water institutions; it
has little connect with public systems through which water law, policy and administration
typically operate.
Contrast this with Louis-Manso’s (2004) account of the highly formalised water economy
of Switzerland. Seventy per cent of its population is urban; the country is facing continuous
reduction in industrial workers and farmers. Probably 15–20 per cent of the Swiss population
310 Tushaar Shah

was linked to public water supply as far back as in the 18th century; today, 98 per cent of the
Swiss population is linked to public water networks and 95 per cent is connected with waste-
water treatment facilities. Switzerland spends 0.5 per cent of its Gross National Product (GNP)
annually in maintaining and improving its water supply infrastructure; and its citizens pay
an average of CHF 1.6 per 1,000 litres of water (CHF = 0.786 US $). The per capita water bill
Swiss pays annually is around CHF 585, which is higher than the per capita total income of
Bangladesh. All its water users are served by a network of municipal, corporate and co-operative
water service providers; it has stringent laws and regulations about water abstraction from any
water body which can be done only through formal concessions. However, these concessions
are held only by formal service providing public agencies; as a result, their enforcement entails
little transaction costs.
Much discussion on the water problems of developing countries like India—and the institu-
tional arrangements needed to solve these—arguably give too much importance to their
water endowments and their characteristics. A good deal of this discussion also suggests that
if countries like India were somehow to transpose water institutions (such as tradable water
rights in Chile, or tradable salinity credits as in the Murray-Darling basin in Australia, or farmer
associations managing irrigation systems as in Turkey or Columbia) or organisations (such as
the Murray Darling River Basin Commission) from industrialised countries, their water sector
would begin to operate as efficiently and productively as in the industrialised countries. As
I presently show, this manner of thinking has had a powerful sway on the design of institutional
interventions as well as on the thinking of multilateral agencies in their work in the developing
world, including India, usually without much success.
I suggest that water institutions that exist in a country or can be externally catalysed depend-
ing on, besides several other factors, the overall economic evolution of that country. I also
surmise that the transformation of an informal into a formal water economy takes place not
through interventions in the water sector but through a set of milestones somewhat like what
I outline in Figure 16.2 Water institutions found in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—such as,
pump irrigation markets—are unlikely to be found in Australia or Spain because they would
serve nobody’s purpose there. Likewise, water institutions that are standard in industrialised
countries—multinationals managing a city’s water supply system—would not begin to work
until Dhaka as a water service market, at least, evolved to Manila’s or Jakarta’s level.4 Therefore,
it is never enough to belabour the point that economic institutions are instrumental in the sense
that, in balance, they must serve the purposes of the players of the game.

T HE P ROCESS OF I NSTITUTIONAL C HANGE

In understanding how societies adapt their institutions to changing demands, Williamson

(1999) suggests the criticality of four levels of social analysis as outlined in Figure 16.3. The
top level is referred to as the social embeddedness level where customs, traditions, mores and
religion are located. Institutions at this level change very slowly because of the spontaneous
Figure 16.2: Transformation of Informal Water Economies in Response to
Overall Economic Growth
312 Tushaar Shah

Figure 16.3: Criticality of Social Analysis

origin of these practices in which deliberative choice of a calculative kind is minimally im-
plicated. At the second level—where the institutional environment of a society is involved—
evolutionary processes play a big role; but opportunities for design present themselves through
formal rules, constitutions, laws and property rights; the challenge here is getting the rules
of the game right. The definition and enforcement of property rights and contract laws are
critical features here. Also critical is the understanding of how things actually work—‘warts
and all’—in some settings, but not in others.
However, it is one thing to get the rules of the game (laws, policies and administrative reforms
in the institutional environment) right; it is quite another to get the play of the game (enforce-
ment of contracts/property rights) right. This leads to the third level of institutional analysis:
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 313

transaction costs of enforcement of contracts and property rights, and the governance
structures through which this is done. Governance—through markets, hybrids, firms and
bureaux—is an effort to craft order, thereby to mitigate conflict and realise mutual gains; and
good governance structures craft order by reshaping incentives, which leads to the fourth level
of social analysis—getting the incentives right.
From the viewpoint of policy analysis for action, it is also useful to recognise that institutional
changes at L1 and L2 levels would be economy-wide, encompassing all aspects of social and
economic life of a country. For the particular purpose of analysing water sector institutions,
therefore, one must regard L1 and L2 as given. This may seem trite but sectoral interventions
aiming to achieve at least L2 level changes5 are not uncommon. Discussions on institutional
changes needed in the water sector often refer to reorienting the bureaucracy or modifying
property rights in water; but it is virtually impossible to enduringly6 transform only the water
bureaucracy while the rest of the bureaucracy stays the same. All things considered, it is prac-
tical to leave L1 as given; L2 as amenable to change at the margins; and L3 and L4 can be
taken as the playing field for institutional reform.
Having set out this background, I want to analyse India’s experience in recent decades in
institutional interventions in the water sector. In NIE, the most interesting aspect of study
of institutional change is about ‘why economies fail to undertake the appropriate activities
if they had a high pay-off ’ (North 1990). India’s water sector is replete with situations where
appropriate activities can potentially generate a high pay-off and yet fail to get undertaken;
in contrast, much institutional reform being carried out will likely not work because it entails
high transaction costs and low pay-off.
In analysing the Indian institutional experience in the water sector, the key propositions
are embodied in Figure 16.4. It suggests that several kinds of institutional reforms tried or sug-
gested in the Indian water sector have tended to have either entailed high transaction costs
(quadrant 2) or low pay-offs (quadrant 4) or both (quadrant 3). In contrast, institutional changes
which have quietly occurred because pay-offs are high and transaction costs low (quadrant 1)
are either ignored or dwarfed, or, at least, not built upon. In the following sections, I briefly
analyse a sample of situations in each of these four quadrants (as given in Figure 16.4) before
drawing some general implications arising from this analysis.

L OW T RANSACTION C OSTS , L OW P AY - OFFS

One area in which demand for change in institutional environment in the water sector is
widely and persistently aired is in creating a legislative and policy framework that facilitates
orderly and effective management of the water economy and sustainable husbanding of the
resource. However, in a predominantly informal water economy such as India’s, the transaction
costs of enforcing a water law effectively are so high that these attempts have had to remain
cosmetic, essentially setting ‘targets without teeth’. Indeed, laws and policies are often written to
minimise transaction costs by progressively removing clauses that bite and are likely to
314 Tushaar Shah

Figure 16.4: Transaction Costs and Productivity Pay-offs of

Institutional Interventions

Bounded service provider; Participatory irrigation

High management
Gujarat's public tube well transfer
Community RO plants
Intelligent management
of farm power supply Fishery co-operatives

Improved main system management

Private RO plants + clean water vouchers 1 2
For the poor.
Decentralized recharge movement Pay offs

Low Transaction costs High

Andhra Pradesh Water and Trees Law Community regulation of

4 3 groundwater overdraft;
GoI Water Policy 2002
Metering farm power supply
Maharashtra Drinking Water Protection Act

Low

be extensively violated, thereby reducing the effective regulatory powers of a law. The late
Anil Shah, an illustrious former bureaucrat from the Government of Gujarat (GOG) fondly
tells the story about Gujarat’s groundwater bill which was passed by the assembly in 1973.
When the Chief Minister was required to sign it into the gazette, he refused to do so because it
required that every irrigation well be registered. His curt response to Shah was: ‘Can you imagine
that as soon as this bill becomes a law, every Talati (Village Level Revenue Official) will have
one more means at his disposal to extract bribes from farmers?’ This is the reason why there
are no takers for the draft Groundwater Bill that the Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR) of
the Government of India (GOI) has been tossing around to states since 1970.
But other chief ministers were less transaction-cost-savvy. So, in 1993, Maharashtra made a
law with a limited ambition of disabling irrigation wells within 500 m of a public water source
during droughts with a view of protecting drinking water wells. Ten years after its enactment, the
International Water Management Institute (IWMI)-Tata Programme studied the enforcement
of this law (Phansalkar and Kher 2003). The law provides for stern action against violation but
gets invoked only when a ‘Gram Panchayat files a written complaint’ (which, at one stroke,
reduces to a fraction the transaction costs as well as the potency of the law). The study found
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 315

numerous cases of violations of the 500 m norm, yet not a single case of legal action resulted
because Gram Panchayats failed to file a written complaint. It concluded that, ‘There is a near
complete absence of social support for the legislation. The rural lay public as well as the office
bearers of Gram Panchayats appear inhibited and reluctant to seem to be ‘revengeful’ towards
those who are doing no worse than trying to earn incomes by using water for raising oranges’
(Phansalkar and Kher 2003). Instead of invoking the law, supply-side solutions in the form of
upgraded drinking water facilities and water tankers during droughts are preferred by people,
Gram Panchayats as well as Zilla Parishads.
The IWMI also did a quick assessment of the Andhra Pradesh Water and Trees Act (Narayan and
Scott 2004), which tried harder to come to grips with rampant groundwater over-exploitation
in Andhra Pradesh by emphasising the registration of wells and drilling agencies and stipulating
punitive measures for non-compliance. Yet, IWMI assessment of the power of this law to
regulate groundwater draft was pessimistic because of high transaction costs and perverse
incentives facing the farmers.
A similar exercise has been the formulation of the official GOI Water Policy of 1987 and
2002. Both these pieces are an excellent example of non-sequitur, tongue-in-cheek enunciations
which are not designed to change anything in any manner.7 As a result, they have low trans-
action costs, but also low or no realised pay-off in terms of improving the working of the
water economy.

L OW P AY - OFFS , H IGH T RANSACTION C OSTS

Other ideas of institutional change that have held a sway in the Indian water sector discussions
have high transaction costs but even if these were to succeed, they would in the present
circumstances lead to little productivity gain. A very good example is the effort to introduce
volumetric pricing of electricity supply to groundwater irrigators. It was the high transaction
costs of metering over 12 million irrigation pump-sets—which involved installing and main-
taining meters, reading them every month, billing based on metered consumption of power,
but, more importantly, of controlling pilferage and tampering with meters with or without
collusion with meter readers and the like,—that obliged State Electricity Boards (SEBs) to
switch to flat tariff during the 1970s. Flat tariff were succeeded in reducing transaction costs
of serving a market where derived demand for electricity was confined to periods of peak
irrigation requirements. It would have worked if the SEBs had been able to ration power sup-
ply to agriculture and gradually raise the flat tariffs to break-even levels. However, neither
happened; farmer lobbies have managed all along to prevent upward revision in flat tariff
while compelling the SEBs to maintain electricity supply to the farm sector. The invidious
nexus between energy and irrigation—which has been responsible for the near-bankruptcy of
the Indian power sector and rampant over-exploitation of groundwater—has been discussed
in Shah et al. (2004).
316 Tushaar Shah

The assessment of SEBs and multilateral donors about ways out of this imbroglio is the
criticality of returning to metering power, even if it means taking on farmer lobbies. Several
chief ministers have tried to bite the bullet in the past few years, but farmers’ opposition has
been so strong, swift and strident that they have been either felled or obliged to retract. Some,
as in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, have done away with farm power tariff altogether.
Recommending metering farm electricity in today’s setting is asking politicians to do hara-kiri.
But even if a politician were to succeed in metering farm power supply, it would likely change
nothing or little because if anything, transaction costs of metered power supply are much
higher today than they were in the 1970s. Most states have at least eight to 10 times more
irrigation tube wells today than they had during the 1970s; and farming livelihoods depend
far more critically on electricity today than 30 years ago. If metering must work in India, one
must learn from the Chinese experiments, which have focused on modifying the incentive
structures (Shah et al. 2004 also see Chapter 13 of this book for details).
In India, a similar experiment is being tried out in Orissa where private companies in charge
of distribution first experimented with Village Vidyut Sanghas (electricity co-operatives) by
forming 5,500 of them but are now veering around to private entrepreneurs as electricity
retailers. Mishra (2004), who carried out an assessment of Orissa reforms for IWMI-Tata pro-
gramme visited a number of these sangha’s during 2003 and noted that ‘none of the Village
Committees were operational…’ These worked as long as the support organisation hired to
catalyse them propped them up with constant visits and organisational work; as soon as the
support organisation was withdrawn, the Village Vidyut Sangha’s became defunct. Mishra
(2004) wrote ‘The situation today is quite similar to that existed earlier before the interventions
were made through the Committee’. The sanghas having failed, power distribution companies
appointed three private entrepreneurs as franchisees on terms similar to those facing China’s
village electricians. These have resulted in sustained and significant improvements in billing
and collection of electricity dues.
The Orissa experiment and the Chinese experience suggest that, in principle, it is possible to
make volumetric pricing and collection of electricity charges work if private entrepreneurs were
appropriately incentivised. However, in Orissa, the electricity use in agriculture is less than 5
per cent. If the same arrangement were to work in Punjab, Haryana or Gujarat or several other
states where electricity use in the farm sector is 30 per cent or more, farmer resistance would
be greater and commensurate with the effectiveness of the volumetric pricing. Moreover, one
thing that private power retailers in Indian villages would have to do without is the authority
of the Village Party Leader that helps China’s village electricians to firmly pass on all costs
to farmers. In the absence of such authority structures, private entrepreneurs would expect
very high margins to assume the role of retailing power on a volumetric basis. This—as well as
farmers’ propensity to frustrate metering—would raise transaction costs of metering very high.
If the ultimate purpose of volumetric pricing is to improve the finances of electricity utilities,
I doubt if this purpose will be achieved.
Shah et al. (2004) have argued that in making an impossibly bad situation better, a more
practical course available to SEBs and state governments is to stay with flat tariffs but rationalise
them through intelligent management of power supply. Farmers’ needs for power are different
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 317

from households’ or industries’; they need plentiful power on 30–40 days of the year when crops
face acute moisture stress. However, in most states, they receive a constant 8–10 hours per day
of poor quality power supply throughout the year. If the SEBs were to invest in understanding
farmers as customers, it should be possible for them to supply 20 hours per day of good quality
power to farmers on 30–40 days of peak irrigation need while maintaining 3–4 hours per day
supply on other days. In order for such an approach to work, the nature and capabilities of
the power utilities have to change; so also the thinking of donors and governments.

H IGH T RANSACTION C OSTS , P OTENTIALLY H IGH P AY - OFFS

Rather than evolving organically from the unfolding situation on the ground—and therefore
being demanded by stake holders—many of the reforms currently being pursued in India, such
as Irrigation Management Transfer, River Basin Management and metering of electricity, are
actually promoted aggressively by researchers as well as funding agencies8, and are sometimes
out of sync with the prevailing Indian context. By far the most frequent are situations where
institutional interventions proposed would yield high productivity pay-offs if successful; but
they rarely succeed because of high transaction costs. In Independent India’s history, the
‘communitarian ideal’—the notion that villagers will instantly come together to take over the
responsibility of participatory, democratic management of virtually anything (land, water,
watersheds, forests, irrigation systems, river basins)—has been behind innumerable abortive
institutional interventions. What has helped fuel this enthusiasm for participatory irrigation
management (PIM) by farmers are occasional examples of such models having worked rea-
sonably well either in the industrialised countries or in India itself but under the tutelage of
an inspired local leader or an industrious non-governmental organisation (NGO). Its having
worked in a few situations in exceptional conditions becomes the basis for designs of major
programmes of institutional interventions, commonly bank-rolled by an international donor.
A classic example is PIM (or its cousin Irrigation Management Transfer [IMT]), which has
been, for the past four decades, the ruling mantra for improving the productivity of irrigation
systems in India. What is extraordinary about this preoccupation with PIM (or IMT) is the sway
it has continued to hold despite virtually no evidence of it having succeeded anywhere
except on an experimental scale.9 WUAs has been tried out on small irrigation systems since
1960. Uttar Pradesh tried Sinchai Samitis (Irrigation Committees) way back in the early 1960s,
on irrigation tanks and reservoirs; following it, Madhya Pradesh too tried it on thousands
of its minor irrigation tanks. Other states have been trying to make Pani Panchayats (Water
Assemblies) work. However, the Sinchai Samitis of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have
disappeared without a trace; and so have Pani Panchayats in Gujarat and elsewhere. Yet, Orissa
recently made a law that transferred all its minor irrigation systems to instantly-created Pani
Panchayats. Gujarat introduced the Joint Irrigation Management Programme as far back as
in 1983 but the 17 Irrigation Co-operatives lost money and became defunct. In 1991, it made
another attempt, this time around with assistance from NGOs; and 144 Irrigation Co-operatives
318 Tushaar Shah

covered 45,000 hectares (ha) of irrigated area (Shukla 2004); however, it is difficult to see
precisely in what way these areas are better off than other commands. Indeed, a core idea of
Command Area Development Agencies (CADAs) in the early 1980s was to involve farmer
organisations in the management of irrigation projects; and one can see no trace of CADA’s
or their Beneficiary Farmers’ Associations (BFAs), including in Kerala where thousands of
these were formed under a ‘big bang’ approach during 1986. An assessment by Joseph (2001)
in the late 1990s suggested that even in this land of strong traditions of local governance,
high education and high levels of people’s participation, BFAs were damp squib.10 A la Kerala,
Andhra Pradesh overnight transferred the management of all its irrigation systems to over
10,000 WUAs created by fiat and a World Bank loan; this ‘big bang’ approach to PIM has
attracted all-round interest; however, now that the World Bank funds retailed to WUAs for
maintenance are over, field observers are beginning to wonder precisely what the WUAs are
doing better ( Jairath 2001).
The central assumption underlying PIM/IMT is that once irrigation management is transferred
from remote bureaucracies to WUAs, financial viability of the systems would improve and so
would the quality and reliability of irrigation; the physical and value productivity of water and
land would increase, and irrigation systems would better achieve their potential for food and
livelihood security for farmers in their command. PIM/IMT programmes have belied many
of these expectations, even in countries like Turkey, Mexico and Philippines where they are
known to have succeeded. As a result, early expectations from PIM/IMT have been increasingly
moderated, and IMT is now considered successful even if it just ‘saves the government money,
improves cost effectiveness of operation and maintenance [O&M] while improving, or at least
not weakening, the productivity of irrigated agriculture’ (Vermillion 1996: 153). The drift of
the IMT discussion, in recent times, has been more towards getting irrigation off the back
of the governments than towards improving the lot of the farmers and the poor, the original
goal to which much public irrigation investment was directed over the past 50 years.
Some over-arching patterns emerge from a reading of the international experience. IMT has
tended to be smooth, relatively effortless and successful where the irrigation system is central
to a dynamic, high-performing agriculture; where average farm size is large enough for a typical
or a significant proportion of the command area farmers to operate like agri-businessmen;
where farm producers are linked with global input and output markets; and where the costs
of self-managed irrigation are an insignificant part of the gross value of product of farming.
These are the conditions—all of which either enhance the pay-off or reduce transaction costs or
both—obtained in Mexico, USA and New Zealand from where emerge the resounding success
stories one hears about IMT (Shah et al. 2002).11 In South Africa, the commercial farming sector,
which satisfies all these conditions, took naturally to PIM through Water Boards, which are
WUAs par excellence; but the same logic when applied to irrigation systems serving small
holders in former homelands met with resounding failure because these met none of the con-
ditions that the Water Boards satisfied.
Even where all conditions are satisfied, researchers have presented mixed pictures on
PIM/IMT impacts. An exhaustive global review done for IWMI of IMT impacts by Douglas
Vermillion, a pioneer in IMT research, for example, showed that impacts are significant and
unambiguously beneficial in terms of cost recovery in Turkey, Mexico, USA, and New Zealand.
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 319

Fee collection has improved; agency staff strength has declined. The impact of management
transfer on agricultural productivity and farm incomes is far less unequivocal even in these
countries (Vermillion 1996: 153). In Philippines, the Mecca of IMT and PIM, recent studies
show that productivity gains from PIM have not sustained (Panella 1999).
None of the conditions outlined above are obtained in a typical Indian surface irrigation
system. Most farmers in the command have small holdings, sub-divided further into smaller
parcels. A typical major system has hundreds of thousands of small holders, making it well
nigh impossible to bring them all together to negotiate. Over 90 per cent of surface irrigated
area in India is under field-crops yielding Rs 15–18,000 (US$ 325–400) per ha of gross value of
output, compared to US $ 3,000–7,500 per ha in high value farming in industrialised countries.
Irrigation systems are at the heart of the farming economy of command areas. However, the
mushrooming of wells and tube wells, and booming pump irrigation markets in command
areas and in the neighbourhood of irrigation tanks have reduced farmers’ stakes in managing
surface irrigation systems. Head-reach and tail-end farmers almost always have opposing
motivations when it comes to management reform, with the former interested in preserving the
status quo, and the latter interested in change. All these together raise the transaction costs of
implementing management reform through PIM/IMT-type interventions. The prospects become
worse because almost everywhere the agency’s purpose in promoting PIM is to get WUA’s to
assume arduous responsibilities—maintenance, fee collection, and so on. Moreover, farmers
take little time to figure out that PIM often means increased water fee without corresponding
improvement in service quality. These reduce the perceived pay-offs from reform.
All in all, decades invested in the hope that PIM or IMT would spearhead productivity
improvements in public irrigation are decades wasted. PIM has not achieved any significant
success on a meaningful scale anywhere in India. And it will indeed be a great surprise if it does
in the existing institutional environment marked by hopelessly low irrigation fees, extremely
poor collection and poor main system management.
There are similar institutional misadventures in other spheres. In growing regions, where
fluoride contamination of groundwater is endemic, governments and donors have tried setting
up village-based reverse osmosis (RO) type plants or Nalgonda type defluoridation plants to
control the growing menace of dental and skeletal fluorosis. Again, the management model
chosen is communitarian; and these have invariably failed. In Gujarat, out of dozens of such
plants set up during the 1980s and 1990s, not one has operated for more than a few months.
An older experiment with the communitarian model has been with inland fishery co-operatives.
Numerous local water bodies controlled by irrigation departments, Zilla Panchayats, Taluka
Panchayats and Gram Panchayats can potentially sustain a vibrant inland fishing enterprise
and livelihoods system. However, government policy has always been to give away monopoly
lease rights to registered fisher-people’s co-operatives. Thousands of such co-operatives are
registered; but probably a very small fraction—in my surmise, less than 1 or 2 per cent—operate
as dynamic producer co-operatives, like for instance, the dairy co-operatives do in Gujarat.
In South India, which has over 300,000 irrigation tanks, a decades-old concern has been
about the break-down of traditions of maintenance of bund and supply channels, orderly
distribution of water, and protection from encroachment. Several donor supported projects
320 Tushaar Shah

first aimed at ‘engineering rehabilitation’ and restored tank infrastructure to their original—or
even better—condition. However, when rehabilitated tanks again declined and needed an-
other round of rehabilitation, planners found something amiss in their earlier approach.
Therefore, in new tank rehabilitation programmes—such as the new World Bank project in
Karnataka—an institutional component is added to the engineering component. But the insti-
tutional component invariably consists of registering a WUA of command area farmers. Except
where such WUAs have been constantly animated and propped up by support NGOs—as in
the case of the Dhan Foundation in Madurai, Tamil Nadu—it is difficult to find evidence of
productivity improvements in tanks because of WUAs on any significant scale. Besides the
problem of high transaction costs of coordinating, negotiating, rule making and, above all,
of rule enforcement, improving the management of tanks—more in North India than in
South India—face some special problems. One of them is of aligning conflicting interests of
multiple-stakeholders. Command area farmers have a direct conflict of interest with tank-bed
farmers; and well owners in the neighbourhood of tanks are a potential threat to all other
users because they can virtually steal tank water by pumping their wells. Then, there are fish-
ing contractors whose interests also clash with those of irrigators, especially during the dry
season (Shah and Raju 2001). Registering a WUA of command area farmers and hoping that
this ‘institutional intervention’ would increase productivity of tanks is naïve to the extreme.
Improved management of public irrigation systems, tanks, fishery—all represent opportunities
for high pay off but have failed to be realised because the institutional models promoted have
high transaction costs.

L OW ( OR R EDUCED ) T RANSACTION C OSTS , H IGH P AY - OFFS

The core of the New Institutional Economics or NIE paradigm is the notion that productivity
of resources in an economy is determined by technology employed and institutions. And if
institutions affect economic performance by determining transaction and transformation
(production) costs, then the Indian water sector is brimming with institutional changes occurr-
ing on the margins. This is happening all the time and yet is either glossed over or frowned
down upon by the powers that are in the institutional environment. Most such institutions
that I explore in this section are invariably swayambhoo (self-creating); they have come up on
a significant-enough scale to permit generic lessons; these invariably involve entrepreneurial
efforts to reduce transaction costs; they serve an important economic purpose, improve welfare
and have raised productivity; and are commonly faced with adverse or unhelpful institutional
environment. Crucially, these are the instrumentality of the players of the game and sustain as
long as they serve their purpose.
The emergence of tube well technology has been the biggest contributor of growth in
irrigation in post-Independent India and the spontaneous rise of groundwater (or, more
appropriately, pump irrigation service) markets has done much to multiply the productivity
and welfare impact of tube well irrigation. The Indian irrigation establishment is probably
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 321

out of touch with the changing face of its playing field. It still believes that only 38 per cent
of the gross cropped area is irrigated, 55 per cent of it by groundwater wells. But the reality of
Indian irrigation at the dawn of the millennium is that its tail has begun wagging the dog.12
Institutional environment in the Indian water sector has little or no interface with 75 per cent
of Indian irrigation occurring through tube wells and the institution of water markets.
The working of groundwater markets is now extensively studied (see Shah 1993; Saleth 2004;
Janakarajan 2004; Singh and Singh 2003; Mukherji 2004 for a good survey of literature). These
find and analyse myriad ways in which their working differs across space and time. But common
elements of groundwater markets everywhere in the Indian subcontinent are the features I listed
at the start of this section: they are swayambhoo, they operate on so large a scale as to account
for over a quarter of Indian irrigated areas; water sellers everywhere constantly innovate to
reduce transaction costs and create value; finally, they are the instrumentality of buyers and
sellers of pump irrigation service and not of society at large or the institutional environment;
as a result, water markets are unrepentant when their operation produces externalities such as
groundwater depletion or drying up of wetlands. Finally, despite their scale and significance,
the institutional environment has been blind towards the potential of water markets to achieve
policy ends. When they take notice of their existence and role—which is infrequent—water
policy makers are often unable to decide whether they are good or bad.
Much the same is the case with many water institutions. In the previous section, I mentioned
tens of thousands of fishermen’s co-operatives which are lying defunct; however, fishery entre-
preneurs have sprung up everywhere which use paper cooperatives as a front for operating
profitable culture fisheries. Why don’t fisher cooperatives exploit the opportunities that these
contractors are able to? The most important reason is the transaction costs of protecting the
crop. Culture fishery is capital intensive but affords a high yield. In common property villages
or irrigation tanks, with multiple stakeholders, in order to remain viable, fishermen should
be able to effectively defend their rights against poachers, irrigators who may want to pump
tank water below the sill level during dry periods to irrigate crops, or tank-bed cultivators who
want to empty the tank so they can begin sowing. Fisher communities are commonly from
the lowest rung of the village society; they would not only have difficulty in mobilising capital
to buy seedling and manure but also in protecting the crop from poaching from outsiders as
well as from their own members. Reserving fishing contracts for fisher cooperatives is therefore
the best formula for sustained low productivity of in-land fishery economy. Just how high is
the transaction cost of protecting a fish crop was evident when my colleagues and I studied
who precisely the fishing contractors were in two separate studies in central Gujarat and in
Bundelkhand. We found that in both the regions, the key characteristics of people who emerged
as successful fishing contractors was a painstakingly cultivated image of a toughie, or a ruffian
capable of enforcing his rights even if by using violence. In Bundelkhand, ‘Everywhere the
fishing contractors involved stopped farmers from lifting water from the tank once the last
five feet of water was left. They had invested in fish production and now were making sure
they get their money’s worth’ (Shah 2002: 3). In central Gujarat, a fishing contractor had to
kill a poacher and complete a jail term to establish that he meant business when it came to
defending his property right.13 Despite this unsavory aspect, I would not be much off the mark
322 Tushaar Shah

in suggesting that the explosive increase in inland fishery in India during the past 40 years is
the result of two factors: the introduction of new technologies of culture fishery along with
its paraphernalia and gradual emasculation by the fishing contractor of the idealised fisher
cooperatives as monopoly lease holders on water bodies. Had the cooperative ideal been en-
forced vigorously, India’s inland fishery would not have emerged as the growth industry it
has today.
How does a changing policy-institutional environment unleash productive forces in an
economy is best illustrated by the evolution of Gujarat’s inland fishery policy over the past
30 years (Pandya 2004). Following early attempts to intensify inland fisheries during the
1940s, Gujarat Government’s Fisheries Department began supporting village panchayats to
undertake intensive culture fishery in village tanks during early 1960. However, the programme
failed to make headway partly because of popular resistance to fish culture in this traditionally
vegetarian state, and partly because of rampant poaching from local fisher-folk that village
panchayats as managers could not control. In a modified programme, the department took
over the management of tanks from the panchayats to raise fishery on a produce-sharing basis;
but the department was worse than the panchayats in checking poaching. In 1973, a special
notification of the Government of Gujarat (GOG) transferred in-land fishing rights on all water
bodies, including village tanks, to the Fisheries Department, which has now set about forming
fishermen’s co-operatives in a campaign mode. In the Kheda district of Gujarat, for example,
27 such co-ops were formed to undertake intensive culture fishing. However, the co-ops were
none the better when it came to controlling poaching even by their own members; and the
gross revenues could not even meet the bank loans. The members lost heart and the co-ops
became defunct; a story that has been endlessly repeated in various fields in India’s history of
co-operative movement. While all manner of government subsidies were on offer, what made
culture fishery unviable were three factors: (i) a lease offered for only three years, a period con-
sidered too short to recoup the investment made; (ii) only registered co-ops could be given
lease and the process of registration was transaction-costly; and (iii) rampant poaching.
All this while, culture fishery productivity was steadily rising; although the co-ops were not
doing well, culture fishery was, as entrepreneurs began using co-ops as fronts to win leases.
This entailed significant transaction costs; they had to pay off the office bearers of co-ops;
they had to keep the panchayat leaders in good humour so that their lease would be renewed.
Even then, whenever a panchayat’s leadership changed, the new order would terminate the
contract to favour a new contractor. This dampened the contractors’ interest in investing in
high productivity.
In 1976, the government began setting up Fish Farmers’ Development Agencies in each
district to implement a new Intensive Fish Culture Programme. They began making changes
in terms of lease: private entrepreneurs were, in principle, considered for giving away leases
but there was a pecking order of priority. The first priority was for a Below Poverty Line (BPL)
family, then for a local poor fisherman, then for a local co-operative, and if none of these were
available, then for any entrepreneur who bid in an open auction. Earlier, the government paid
a puny rental to the gram panchayats for using them for fish culture; now that entrepreneurs
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 323

were allowed, gram panchayats began setting an off-set price derived as an estimate of the
‘fishing value’ of the tank, which was 20–30 times the rental panchayats received earlier from
the department. Even so, as soon as leases were open to entrepreneurs, many came forward. A
later change in policy gave cooperatives some discount in the ‘upset price’ and other benefits.
In 2003, a series of new changes in the policy framework gave further fillip to productivity
growth: the lease period was extended from three to 10 years, which reduced the contractors’
gullibility to changes in panchayat leadership and also made investment in productivity en-
hancement attractive. The new policy also removed the last vestiges of special treatment to
co-ops, and provided for a public auction of the lease after open advertisement.
During 1971–98, inland fishery output of Gujarat increased six-fold from 14,000 mt in 1971
to over 80,000 in 1998–99 (Government of Gujarat 2004). Considering that Gujarat hardly had
any culture fishery before 1950, it must be said that the credit for this growth rightly belongs
to the government’s efforts. The government invested in subsidies, organising inputs, bringing
in new technology, extension and training and much else. All these played a role in expanding
the fisheries economy. However, perhaps, the most important impact has been produced by
two factors: (i) the changes made at the margins in the leasing policies of water bodies that
have shaped the transaction costs of setting up and operating a profitable culture fishery busi-
ness; and (ii) the high costs of controlling poaching, which has ensured that besides several
entrepreneurial qualities, successful fishing contractors also have to acquire and deploy muscle
power.
Several less sensational examples can be offered of spontaneous institutions that operate
on a large scale to serve purposes for which water establishments often promote copybook
institutions such as WUAs. I briefly mentioned earlier how hundreds of defunct community
RO or defluoridation plants set up by governments to supply fluoride-free drinking water to
village communities have failed under community management. However, in North Gujarat,
as a demand curve has emerged for fluoride-free drinking water, some 300 plants selling
packed water have mushroomed in the cottage sector; over half of these were set up after 2001,
mostly in mofussil towns to serve permanent customers as well as retail water in polythene
pouches.14 The RO cottage industry of Gujarat was quietly serving a growing demand when the
‘institutional environment’ caught up with it. In 2001, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
made it compulsory for cottage RO plants to get an ISI mark. This entailed that each plant had
to invest Rs 0.3–0.4 million in an in-house laboratory and pay an annual certification fee of
Rs 84,000. This single move put paid to the emerging RO water cottage industry; 200 operators
had to close their businesses because the new announcement doubled their cost of production.
Yet, setting up an in-house laboratory and paying annual certification fee implied no guarantee
of quality assurance because BIS inspectors hardly visit plants, if ever. Many customers Indu
(2001) interviewed wondered if an ISI mark—like AGMARK ghee and honey—can by itself
guarantee quality unless BIS itself puts its act together in the first place.
Likewise, many state governments are struggling, in vain, to cut their losses from operat-
ing mostly World Bank funded public tube well programmes by trying to transfer these to
idealised co-operatives. If the purpose of a co-operative tube well is to enable a group of farmers
to mobilise capital and to install and operate a tube well for mutual benefit of members, such
324 Tushaar Shah

tube well groups have existed for decades in North Gujarat. The difference is that, having been
created to serve the purpose of their members, their ownership structure and operating rules
are designed to minimise the transaction costs of co-operating on a sustained basis (Shah and
Bhattacharya 1993). The Government of Gujarat tried hard to transfer its public tube wells
to idealised cooperatives, but thanks to the very high transaction costs relative to the pay-off
facing potential entrepreneurs, the programme made no headway until 1998 when the terms
of the turn over were rewritten.15 Basically, the requirement that a co-operative be registered
under the Co-operative Act was dropped; the lease period was extended from one to five years;
and changes were introduced, which made it possible for one or a few major stake holders to
assume the role of tube well manager and residual claimant. These minor changes suddenly
gave a fillip to the programme and over a three-year period over half of Gujarat’s public
tube wells, some 3,500 in all, were transferred to farmer groups. An IWMI-Tata study of turned
over public tube wells (Mukherji and Kishore 2003) showed that within a year after the turn over,
the performance of tube wells, in terms of area irrigated, hours of operation, quality of service,
O&M and financial results improved; two years after turn over, it improved dramatically.
In the beginning of this section, I talked about the significance of groundwater markets
in India’s irrigation. However, private provision of water services is also an important part of
India’s urban reality. In an IWMI-Tata study of six cities—Indore, Jaipur, Nagpur, Ahmedabad,
Bangalore and Chennai—Londhe et al. (2004) found that municipal agencies supplied only
51 per cent of the demand calculated at 80 litres per capita per day (lpcd). In Chennai and
Ahmedabad, formal organisations served only 10 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively, of
the ‘normative’ demand, the balance being either self-supplied or served by informal sector
players. The ‘tanker markets’ supply 21, 12 and 10 per cent of the demand in Chennai, Indore
and Jaipur respectively. In Chennai, they have year-round operations and have an association.
In other cities, tanker markets emerge during the summer and quietly disappear as monsoon
arrives. Londhe et al. (2004) have estimated that some 3,000 tankers in the six cities operate a
water trade worth Rs 203 crore per year. Despite being key players in urban water sectors, ‘there
is no record with any government department about its size, scale and modus operandi. There is
absence of any government regulation on groundwater withdrawals (except in Chennai) in
other cities. Authorities do not even acknowledge the existence of such markets’ (ibid). Tanker
markets operate much like any market and serve those who can pay for their services. The
IWMI-Tata study estimated that 51 per cent of consumers in these six cities are from high
income groups, 43 per cent from middle income groups and only 6 per cent from low income
groups. Contrary to widely held belief that the poorest pay the highest for water, the IWMI-
Tata study showed the poorest pay the lowest even when transaction costs and imputed cost
of labour and time in fetching water are factored in (ibid.).
One more case of institutions that ‘planners propose and people dispose’ that I want to
briefly discuss is is the world famous Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) on the Narmada River. SSP
must be one of the world’s most-planned projects. One of SSP’s key planning premises was
that the project would construct lined canals with gated structures going right up to the village
service area (VSA) comprising some 400 ha of command. A WUA would be organised in each
VSA, which pari pasu would construct the sub-minor and field channels to convey water from
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 325

the pucca minor to the fields. SSP water was released for the first time in some 80,000 ha of
the command just below the dam in 2001. SSP had registered WUAs as co-operatives in some
1,100 VSAs on a war footing. When the water was finally released, however, the village level
distribution structure was not ready in a single village; and it will never be, as we learnt in
course of a quick assessment of farmer preparedness to receive Narmada irrigation (Talati and
Shah 2004). The perceived sum of the transaction and transformation cost16 of constructing
village distribution systems seemed to far outweigh the benefits people expected out of SSP.
There was, however, a flurry of activity as SSP water began flowing into minors. According
to our quick estimates, several thousand diesel pumps and several million meters of rubber
pipes were purchased by water entrepreneurs to take water to their own fields and to provide
irrigation services to others. The trend for new investments in diesel pumps and rubber pipes
gathered further momentum in 2002 and 2003; and we found that village communities were
none the worse for having violated the SSP planning assumption. The Government of Gujarat
is, however, bent on constructing ‘proper’ village distribution systems in the SSP command,
never mind if it will take 50 years to complete the canal network.
The swayambhoo institutions I have discussed in this section are all driven by opportunism.
However, large-scale swayambhoo institutions are often driven by more complex motives
including long term, collective self-interest. The decentralised mass movement for rainwater
harvesting and groundwater recharge that the Saurashtra region of Gujarat saw from 1987–98
when it got co-opted by the state government is a good example of such an institutional
development (Shah 2000). Catalysed first by stray experiments of ‘barefoot hydrologists’
to modify open wells to collect monsoon flood waters, it fired the imagination of a people
disillusioned with government programmes. Soon, well-recharge was joined by check dams
and percolation tanks. With all manner of experimentation going on, a kind of subaltern
hydrology of groundwater recharge developed and got energetically disseminated. Religious
leaders of sects like Swadhyaya Pariwar and Swaminarayana Sampradaya helped to ennoble this work
by imbuing it with a larger social purpose. The gathering movement generated enormous
local goodwill and released philanthropic energies on an unprecedented scale, with diamond
merchants—originally from Saurashtra but now settled in Surat and Belgium—offering cash,
cement companies offering cement at discounted prices, and communities offering millions of
days of voluntary labour. In neighbouring Rajasthan, Alwar was also undergoing similar mass
action, but it was far more limited in scale and was orchestrated by Rajendra Singh’s Tarun
Bharat Sangh. Saurashtra’s recharge movement was truly multi-centric, unruly, spontaneous
and wholly internally funded with no support from government, international donors and the
scientific community until 1998, when the government of Gujarat piled on and proceeded to
rid the movement of its quintessentially swayambhoo and voluntary character by announcing
a subsidy programme (Shah 2001; Shah and Desai 2002).
It is difficult to assess the social value of this movement partly because ‘formal hydrology’
and ‘popular hydrology’ have failed to find a meeting ground. Scientists want check dams sited
near recharge zones; villagers want them close to their wells. Scientists recommend recharge
tube wells to counter the silt layer impeding recharge; farmers just direct floodwaters into
their wells after filtering. Scientists worry about upstream-downstream externalities; farmers
326 Tushaar Shah

say everyone lives downstream. Scientists say the hard-rock aquifers have too little storage to
justify the prolific growth in recharge structures; people say a check dam is worthwhile if their
wells provide even 1000 m3 of life-saving irrigation per ha in times of delayed rain. Hydrologists
keep writing the obituary of recharge movement; but the movement has spread from eastern
Rajasthan to Gujarat, thence to Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Protagonists think that
with better planning and larger coverage, decentralised recharge movement can be a major
response to India’s groundwater depletion because it can ensure that water tables in pockets
of intensive use rebound to pre-development levels at the end of the monsoon season every
year they have a good monsoon.
Table 16.1 offers a comparative view of six high-payoff-low-transaction cost institutions
that have emerged in India’s water sector in recent years. If one judges institutions by their
contribution to increasing productivity and welfare, all six can be considered successful. Each
can be found to operate on a significant scale, thus permitting generic lessons. A notable aspect
is that each institution has come up spontaneously and flourished as an instrumentality of
its players, serving a purpose important to them. Each has devised its own methods to reduce
transaction costs and manage incentive structure.
Finally, each is widely viewed in the institutional environment—by government officials,
NGOs, researchers, international experts and even local opinion leaders—as a subaltern
alternative to a mainstream notion of an institution which is considered ideal but has not
worked on a desired scale. As a result, far from recognising the potential of these subaltern in-
stitutions to further larger social goals, the outlook has been to ignore their existence and social
value, or even emasculate them.

A NALYSIS AND D ISCUSSION

Ideas about what kind of institutional change should occur and can sustain come to the insti-
tutional environment from four sources.
The first of these are theories and hypotheses about how things work. For example, implicit
in the thinking of donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), about
metering of farm power, is the neo-classical economic theory of marginal cost pricing and a
slew of hypotheses and notions about the impact subsidies have on the economy.
The second source of ideas is what has worked elsewhere in a similar situation. If groundwater
districts in Texas have been able to rein in groundwater overdraft there, why can similar
institutions not serve the same purpose here? If IMT has met with some success in Mexico,
Colombia, and Turkey, why not in India?
The third, and very important source, is what has worked here. The repertoire here includes
numerous ‘successes’ of varied types and scales produced by exceptional leaders and industrious
NGOs. By virtue of exceptional and highly scarce resources at their command—such as re-
putation, social status, allegiance of people, funds, goodwill, influence in the institutional envir-
onment, manpower—local leaders and NGOs are often able to drastically reduce transaction
 Table 16.1 Characteristics of Swayambhoo Water Institutions
Institutions/ Fishing contractors Reverse Osmosis Tube well Urban tanker Irrigation Decentralised
Particulars using co-operatives plants in North companies of water markets institutions groundwater
as fronts Gujarat’s cottage North Gujarat unfolding in recharge movement
industry and Gujarat’s the Narmada of Saurashtra
Public Tube well command
transfer
programme
Scale of the Tens of thousands Around 300 Some 8–10 Most Indian Several thousand 300,000 wells
institution of small and large plants in Gujarat thousand cities new pumps modified for
tank fishery in companies in installed/year recharge; 50,000
India North Gujarat check dams
Economic Contributed to Add and operate Create irrigation Fill the gap Private Improved greatly
contribution achieving 7–10 water treatment potential where between investment in security of kharif
fold increase in capacity to serve individual demand and water distribution crops, and chance
inland fishery demand for clean farmers would be supply infrastructure; of a rabi crop
productivity water unable to do. expansion of
during 1960–2000 Narmada
irrigation
Raison de etre Can protect fish To profit from To pool capital To profit from To profit by Improve water
better and serving emerging and share risks of supply of water distributing availability in
therefore can demand for tube well failure in cities where Narmada water wells for life-
invest in intensive fluoride-free in creating and public institutions by lifting water saving irrigation
culture fishery water by operating an cannot cope with from canals and when monsoon
which co-ops investing in and irrigation source the economic transporting it makes early
cannot maintaining RO in an over- demand by rubber pipe withdrawal
plant exploited aquifer to user fields
(Table 16.1 continued)
(Table 16.1 continued)

Mode of Swayambhoo Swayambhoo Swayambhoo Swayambhoo Swayambhoo Swayambhoo;

emergence catalysed by religious
organisations.
Strategy of Instilling fear Cultivating Vesting Meet the demand Avoid making of Swadhyaya Parivar
reducing amongst poachers annual customers management roles as it occurs in sub-minors and and Swaminarayan
transaction and into members flexible manner field channels, Sampradaya reduced
transformation with largest share reduce seepage, transaction costs
cost in command area overcome of co-operative
topography action
Incentive Pay-off Pay-off Pay-off Pay-off Pay-off Self-interest was
structure concentration concentration concentration concentration concentration skillfully blended
with missionary
zeal
Outlook of the Negative; but Negative Negative Neutral/negative Negative/neutral Initially skeptical;
‘establishment’ changing in states but then, it
like Gujarat piggybacked
and lessened
its swayambhoo
character
Preferred Registered Community RO Idealised Water Municipal water Idealised Water Narmada project;
alternative in Fishermen’s plants User Associations supply improved User Associations scientific recharge
institutional co-operatives works
environment
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 329

costs of institutional change of a certain kind in a limited setting for a limited period. Out
of hundreds of thousands of irrigation tanks in India that can produce large pay-offs from
improved management, there are but a few hundred in which exceptional local leaders have
established and sustained novel institutions for upkeep, maintenance, management and use of
tanks to improve the welfare of the community. The IWMI-Tata Programme studied some
50 of these during 2002–03 (Sakthivadivel et al. 2004) and found that while the architecture of
institutions (as rules-in-use) varied from case to case, the common aspect of all successful tank
institutions was a leader or a leadership compact, which by virtue of the sway he/it has over
the community is able to drastically reduce the transaction costs of enforcing an institutional
arrangement that would neither work in their absence nor survive them.
Successful NGOs similarly create islands of excellence by reducing transaction costs arti-
ficially and temporarily. The Sukhomajari experiment with watershed institutions in Haryana in
the mid-1980s; Vilas Rao Salunke’s Pani Panchayats in Maharashtra; Aga Khan Rural Support
Programme’s irrigators’ association in Raj Samadhiala; Dhan Foundation’s Tank User
Federations; Development Support Centre’s WUAs in Dharoi command in North Gujarat;
community-managed tube wells that came up in Vaishali and Deoria in Eastern Uttar Pradesh;
Anna Hazare’s Ralegaon Siddhi; Rajendra Singh’s profusion of johads in Thanagazi, Alwar dis-
trict, Rajasthan; Chaitanya’s conversion of irrigation tanks into percolation tanks in Rayalaseema
(Andhra Pradesh)—all of these are examples. That the transaction cost reduction in all these
was artificial is indicated by the absence of spontaneous lateral expansion/replication of
these experiments despite the high pay-offs they are seen to have produced. That it was
temporary is evident in that many of these institutions disappeared/stagnated/declined once
the ‘transaction cost reducer’ was removed from the scene as in Sukhomajri, Salunke’s Pani
Panchayats, and others.
The fourth, and the most important source of ideas about what institutional change should
occur and can sustain are the swayambhoo institutions that have already emerged and are
thriving, as explored earlier. These have found ways of reducing transactions costs in ways
that are more natural and lasting. This is evident in that these institutions multiply on their
own and are able to sustain and grow as long as they serve purposes of the participants in the
transactions. In my understanding, these offer six useful lessons about how to make institutional
change work in the Indian water sector.

• Instrumentality. The first, and the obvious, is that institutional change that multiplies
and sustains is invariably an instrumentality of the exchange participants and not of
the players in the institutional environment. ‘Opportunism with guile’ is the driving
force even when high ideals and social goals are laboriously espoused as raison de etre.
Trite as it may sound, design of incentive structures is amongst the most commonly
ignored aspect in most institutional development programmes. Ideas like community-
based groundwater demand management propose organising co-operatives whose sole
task would be to persuade their members to reduce their farming and incomes. Similarly,
programmes to revive traditional community management of tanks commonly overlook
the performance-based rewards offered to nilakatti and focus primarily on generating
330 Tushaar Shah

voluntary contributions of time and effort for the greater good of the community. For
institutional change to work, it must serve a private purpose important to agents involved;
else, they will withhold participation or even work to defeat it.
• Incentive diffusion or perversion. Institutions fail to emerge to take advantage of high-payoff
situations often because incentives are diffuse or even perverse, but the transaction costs
of implementing change are concentrated in one or a few persons. In the fishermen
co-ops I discussed earlier, members faced perverse incentives; the co-op stocked the
pond but members stole the catch; the secretary had no incentive to make enemies by
stopping poachers. When incentives got concentrated in the contractor as the residual
claimant, he was willing to control poaching and invest in higher productivity. Gujarat’s
public tube wells had no takers until the opportunity arose for incentive concentration.
That only a fraction of the surplus created by management improvement needs to be
concentrated in the manager was shown 40 years ago by Amartya Sen (1966). In trad-
itional tank institutions in South India, only a portion of the surplus output was offered
to the nirakatti, who absorbed the bulk of the transaction cost of orderly distribution
of tank water. This principle is at the heart of irrigation reforms in China. Except where
traditional PIM/IMT is supported by a donor loan, China’s strategy of making canal irri-
gation productive and viable consists of changing the incentive structure facing the ‘ditch
manager’ (Shah et al. 2004). A pre-specified volume of water is released into a reservoir
and is charged for at a certain volumetric rate. The reservoir manager’s remuneration
includes a fixed component and a variable component which increases with the area
irrigated from the same total volume of water. Like the Chinese village electrician
who is able to perform a high transaction-cost role for a fairly modest reward, the ditch
manager too is able to improve water productivity for a modest bonus, if recent studies
are any guide (ibid.).
• High costs of self-enforcement. Experimenting with the Indian equivalents of Chinese vil-
lage electricians and ditch managers would be an interesting study. From the transaction
cost viewpoint, however, there are two key differences between the Chinese and South
Asian villages: first, the Chinese in general, thanks to Confucian ethic, are much more
law-abiding and respectful to state authority compared to South Asians.17 Second, and
more importantly, the Village Committees and the Village Party Leader in a Chinese
village enjoy far greater power and authority in the village society compared to India’s
gram panchayats and Sarpanch. This has great implications for transaction costs. North
(1990) suggests that, ‘...institutional setting depends on the effectiveness of enforcement.
Enforcement is carried out by first party (self-imposed codes of conduct), by second
party (retaliation), and/or by a third party (societal sanctions or coercive enforcement
by state).’
The transaction costs facing an institutional change are determined by ease of enforce-
ment. A Chinese village electrician or ditch manager backed by the Village Committee
and Party leader can enforce the new rules by retaliation as well as by recourse to coercion
through the Party Leader. In India, in contrast, a fishing contractor has recourse only to
retaliation to enforce his property right against a poacher. The high transaction cost of
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 331

second party enforcement of rules is perhaps the prime reason why entrepreneurs fail to
come forward to make a business out of operating a canal or tank irrigation system.
• Structures of incentives and authority. Catalysing effective local institutional arrangements,
management is then a matter of not only designing appropriate incentive structures that
entice an entrepreneur to undertake activities with high pay-off but also of putting into
place authority structures that enforce his right to do so. Here is where a community
organisation has a role in establishing the legitimacy of a service provider, and thereby
reducing his transaction cost of self-enforcement of rules. A self-appointed neerakatti (water
manager) would face greater difficulty in enforcing rules of water distribution than one
that enjoys the legitimacy in the community.
• Institutional environment. The institutional environment has a profound impact on what
kind of institutional arrangements are promoted or discouraged and what welfare and
productivity impacts these produce. Informal pump irrigation markets, the fishing
contractor and decentralised groundwater recharge movement are spontaneous and
seemingly autonomous; but each of these is amenable to strong positive or negative in-
fluence from the institutional environment. Gujarat’s cottage RO industry fell to a single
swoop by the Bureau of Indian Standards and the working of pump irrigation markets
can change overnight if policies related to electricity pricing and supply to the farm
sector were to change. Gujarat’s Public Tube well Transfer programme ploughed along
without success for a decade and then suddenly took off because an actor in the institu-
tional environment changed some key rules of the game; and the culture fishery contractor
faced drastic reduction in his transaction costs of doing business when the leasing policy
for water bodies was changed at the instance of some actor in the institutional environ-
ment. How well do actors in the institutional environment understand extant and
potential institutions, their net welfare and productivity impacts and their backward and
forward linkages determines how much they can influence or manage them.
• Path-dependence. According to North (1990), institutional change is inherently incremen-
tal and path-dependent. It invariably grows out of its context; transposing institutional
models that have worked in other, different contexts and therefore seldom works in
catalysing institutional change. This has particular relevance to popular institutional
notions such as Integrated River Basin Management, which have worked in highly
formalised water economies in recent years. It is doubtful if such models would work in
the same way in the Indian situation simply because by far the bulk of the Indian water
economy is informal and outside the direct ambit of the institutional environment.

C ONCLUSION
In conclusion,

1. Institutional analysis of water sector normally focuses on law, policy and administra-
tion, the three pillars of water institutions; however, these constitute the Institutional
332 Tushaar Shah

environment and the analysis cannot be complete without understanding the institutional
arrangements, which represent the ‘rules in use’.
2. Institutional alternatives available to improve the functioning of a water economy depend
critically on the degree of its formalisation; in informal water economies, the institu-
tional environment has limited sweep over water transactions which are dominated by
institutional arrangements; as water economies formalise, the sweep of the institutional
environment expands to encompass most or all of water transactions.
3. India’s water economy today is at the level of informality that has characterised many
European water economies in the 18th century; as a result, strategies of institutional
reform that would be appropriate for India cannot be what works in highly formalised
water economies such as Europe today.
4. Players in India’s institutional environment must seek opportunities for improved
performance of the water economy by catalysing productivity-enhancing reform in
institutional arrangements.
5. India’s experience in doing this has been indifferent because reforms pursued have
either low pay-offs or high transaction costs or both.
6. On the other hand, we have overlooked and failed to learn from large-scale spontaneous
institutional changes, which have enhanced welfare and productivity and reduced
transaction costs.
7. Analysing these suggests that induced institutional reform can succeed provided:

(a) it is instrumental to its participants rather than to the actors in the institutional
environment;
(b) it concentrates incentives in the bearer of the transaction costs;
(c) it provides effective third-party enforcement of rules;
(d) failing which, it uses community consensus to create legitimacy and authority
structure and designs incentive structure to entice entrepreneurs who will undertake
activities with high pay-offs;
(e ) institutional environment has power to stimulate or impede institutional change;
and
(f ) institutional change is inherently incremental and context-dependent; transposing
models of institutional change that have worked in other, markedly different con-
texts, seldom work.

Notes
1. Formal and informal economies are a matter of elaborate study in institutional economics. Fiege (1990)
summarises a variety of notions of informality deployed by different researchers. According to Weeks
(1975) cited in Fiege (1990: footnote 6), ‘The distinction between a formal and informal sector is based
on the organisactional characteristics of exchange relationships and the position of economic acivity
vis-à-vis the state. Basically, the formal sector includes government activity itself and those enterprises
in the private sector which are officially recognized, fostered, nurtured and regulated by the state.
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 333

Operations in the informal sector are characterized by the absence of such benefits.’ According to Portes,
Blitzer and Curtis (1987 cited in Fiege 1990: foot note 6), ‘the informal sector can be defined as the
sum total of income generating activities outside the modern contractual relationships of production’.
According to Portes and Saassen-Koo (1987 cited in Fiege 1990: footnote 6) informal sector activities
are ‘not intrinsically illegal but in which production and exchange escape legal regulation’. To most
researchers, an informal economy is marked by the ‘absence of official regulation’ or ‘official status’.
2. North (1990) defines the transaction sector as ‘that part of transactions that goes through the market
and therefore can be measured’; and according to North, rapid growth in the transaction sector is at
the heart of the transformation of a traditional economy into a modern one.
3. The survey estimated that approximately 36 per cent of all rural households (which include farmers,
farm labourers and households dependent on off-farm livelihoods) used some means of irrigation. Of
these, 13.3 per cent (that is, 37 per cent of irrigators) use their own source (well/tube well), 15.3 per
cent (that is, 42.5 per cent of irrigators) used shared tube wells or purchased water and 12.1 per cent
(36 per cent of irrigators) used government owned tube well, canal or river. Less than 2 per cent
used locally managed irrigation source and 6.6 per cent used more than one source, which is why
the percentages fail to add up to 100. The survey also found that of 78,990 households interviewed,
48 per cent reported no ‘availability of community and government water resources in villages of
their residence’; another 42 per cent reported the presence of community or government source but
‘without local management’. Only 10 per cent of households reported living in villages with access
to community or government water sources ‘with local management’ by community or government
or both (p. 44). Only 23 per cent of all households interviewed reported depending for irrigation on
a source ‘other than self-owned’; 30 per cent using water for livestock rearing reported dependence
on a source ‘other than self-owned’.
4. If recent accounts of the travails facing global water companies like Vivendi and Thames Water who
are forced to wind up even in these increasingly affluent East-Asian cities is any guide, one must
conclude that South Asian cities have a long way to go before they can afford water supply systems
of European or North American quality (see The Economist, 15–21 August 2004).
5. A good example is David Corten’s work during the 1980s on reorienting the irrigation bureaucracy.
6. A charismatic and energetic political or bureaucratic leader does often produce significant attitude
and behaviour change; however, these generally fail to last for long after the leader is removed from
the scene. In this sense, such change is not enduring.
7. The 1987 Water Policy to Saleth (2004: 29) is ‘such a simple non-binding policy statement’.
8. Saleth (2004: 30) asserts, ‘...most of the organizational reforms, including the promotion of basin-
based organizations observed in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, and Uttar Pradesh
were introduced under different World Bank-funded projects’. It is equally clear that Andhra Pradesh’s
irrigation reforms proceeded at a hectic pace because a World Bank loan was able to kindle interest at
all levels in new resources available for maintenance work.
9. And that too only when a mid-sized NGO invests years of effort and resources in organising WUAs
and using means to reduce transaction costs that farmers on their own would normally not possess.
Some of the best known examples of successful PIM/IMT are Ozar on Waghad project in Nashik,
Maharashtra, Dharoi in north Gujarat, Pingot and a few more medium schemes in Bharuch district.
The success of farmer management in all these—and its beneficial impact—is undisputed. In each of
these, however, there was a level of investment of motivation, skill, time, effort and money which
is unlikely to be replicated on a large scale. In catalysing Ozar co-operatives, Bapu Upadhye and
Bharat Kawale and their Samaj Pragati Kendra, and senior researchers of SOPPECOM invested years of
334 Tushaar Shah

effort to make PIM work (Paranjapye and Joy 2003). In Gujarat, between the Aga Khan Rural Support
Programme and Development Support Centre, Anil Shah and Apoorva Oza have invested at least
30 professional staff time to organise say 20–30 thousand flow irrigators into functional WUAs. My
intent is not to undermine this exceptional work but to suggest that no government agency had the
quality and scale of resources needed to implement an institutional intervention that can sustainably
raise the productivity of the 28–30 million ha of flow irrigated area in India over say 15 years.
10. Some random excerpts from Joseph (2001) based on his study of Malampuzha Project: ‘It is the
CADA officials who took the initiative in their formation and not the farmer groups. In most cases,
membership fee of Rs 5 was not paid by the farmers concerned; payment was made on their behalf
by prospective office bearers, or the potential contractors of field channel lining or the large farmers
in the ayacut...86 percent (of the BFAs) were formed in these two years (1986 and 1987)... for making
possible the utilization of funds...Only 57 CC meetings were held by the 8 Canal Committees during
a span of 10 years...43 of them were held without quorum and 35 with zero attendance of non-official
members… The level of knowledge... about CCs…and there structure and functions is very low…’
11. Even in middle-income countries, huge inequalities in land holdings seem to have helped IMT. In
the Andean region of Colombia where IMT has succeeded, according to Ramirez and Vargas (1999),
farmers ‘mostly grow crops oriented to the external markets, mainly banana and oil palm’; and while
66 per cent of the farms have 5 ha or less, 40.3 per cent of the land is owned by 2.8 per cent of large
farmers owning 50 ha or more. In South Africa, numerous Irrigation Boards–Water Users Associations
par excellence—have managed irrigation systems successfully for long; but their members are all large
white commercial farmers operating highly successful citrus and wine orchards. In Turkey, 40 per
cent of the irrigated area was in 5–20 ha holdings with a strong focus on high value commercial crops
for export to Europe. Here in Turkey, it can be argued, IMT succeeded because, as with South African
Irrigation Boards, in many respects, there already was a 40-year old tradition of farmer participation in
the maintenance of the canal system through informal village level organisation. Equally, irrigation fees
under self-management in Turkey was 2 per cent or less of the value of production per ha, 3.5 per cent
or less of total variable cost of cultivation and less than 6 per cent of gross margin (Svendsen and
Nott 1997).
12. A large survey, which covered over 48,000 farming households throughout India during January–June
1998, suggested that over 66 per cent of India’s Gross Cropped Area under five most important field
crops (which accounts for over 90 per cent of the Gross Cropped Area) is irrigated; only a quarter of
irrigated area is served by government canals. Amongst other interesting things it suggests is that
every fourth Indian farming household most likely owns a diesel or electric pump and that area irri-
gated through groundwater markets is as large as the area irrigated by all government canals (NSSO
1999).
13. As North (1990: 2) aptly notes, ‘If the highest rates of return in a society are to piracy, the organizations
will invest in knowledge and skills that will make them better pirates; if the pay offs are...to increase
productivity, they will invest in skills and knowledge to achieve that objective.’
14. An IWMI-Tata study (Indu 2001) surveyed a sample of 14 such plants, which served 4,890 households.
RO water in 10 and 20 litre cans is delivered daily at the customer’s door step; charges are levied on an
annual basis (Rs 1,500 for a 10 litre can daily; Rs 2,500 for a 20 litre can). Plant capacities vary from
500–2000 litres/hour. In addition, most plants also retail RO water in pouches at bus-stands, railway
stations and crossings and market places. Consumers of pouches are typically low income buyers;
retailers are also poor youth working on commission. In sum, this institution serves a demand by
transforming 800–2000 ppm [parts per million] TDS water to 150–300 ppm TDS water and fluoride
 The New Institutional Economics of India’s Water Policy 335

levels reduced to 0.25–0.5 mg/litre. People had no way to ascertain the quality; but 60 customers
surveyed by Indu (2004) asserted that RO water taste was distinct. Many also claimed relief in pain
from skeletal fluorosis after taking to RO water.
15. Registering a cooperative itself meant great hassle and cost in time and money. The policy also required
that 2/3 of the command area farmers submit a written no-objection declaration for the transfer; past
defaulters on water fees must first pay up their dues. In addition, several conditions were specified
the violation of any of which would qualify the government to take back the tube well.
16. Transformation cost would include the cost of labour and material in making a lined sub-minor and
field channels plus the cost of acquiring land. Transaction cost would basically involve persuading
farmers to give up their land for making channels and to give right of way to carry water to down-
stream farmers.
17. See Chapter 13 for details of the historical differences between India and China.

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 17
The Water Resources Policy Process
in India: Centralisation, Polarisation
and New Demands on Governance
Peter P. Mollinga

I NTRODUCTION

When I left India at the end of my Ph.D. fieldwork in November 1992, having studied large-
scale irrigation management for almost two years in the state of Karnataka, I could not see how
‘irrigation reform’ was going to happen and where it would come from. My impression was that
of a sector with major problems in terms of efficiency, benefit distribution and sustainability,
but with none of the main stakeholders showing any sign of interest in a change of the status
quo. The Irrigation Department seemed to be stuck in its hierarchical and technocratic mode
of operation. I had been desperately seeking dissident engineers, but had not found them.
The irrigator community seemed to be solidly dominated by the ‘economically and politically
sound’ as the local phrase went, that is, the larger farmers who appropriate the larger part
of the water. Upsetting the balance of power that continuously reproduced inequity seemed
suicidal for local politicians.
To my great pleasure I was proven wrong a few years later. Maybe I had been wrong and
had misperceived the situation even in 1991–92, or maybe the times were changing due to
the liberalisation policies pursued by the Indian Government; maybe both, or something else.1
In any case we have now had about 10 years of efforts at water sector reform in the broader
context of overall economic and political reform. In the water sector2, the irrigation sub-
sector is, of course, not the only domain where changes have been occurring. The watershed
development programme took off on a large scale and there were other developments like the
intensifying critique of and activism in relation to the environmental and social effects of water
resources ‘development’. Not all, and perhaps only a very limited part, of this dynamic was
directly related to the liberalisation thrust; but nevertheless this has been the broader process
in which the beginnings of water sector transformation are set, and, arguably, by which they
are increasingly influenced.3 Something started moving and some of this got incorporated in
policy documents and policy initiatives. Saleth, in a recent International Water Management
Institute (IWMI) paper (2004), even sees some of these movements, like the adoption of national
340 Peter P. Mollinga

water policies and other government policy initiatives, as very significant and the beginning
of an irreversible process, even when some of it is largely still of symbolic nature at present.
This to me seems to be the optimistic view. I would agree that there are more dynamics in
the water policy domain in the last decade than in the decade preceding that; but still, from
a comparative perspective, the actual reform of the Indian public water resources policy and
practice is still very modest indeed. In terms of the irrigation reform, the Indian practice,
even in ‘frontline’ states like Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, is nowhere near the scale
of transformation that Mexico experienced from the early 1990s, for instance.4 Some would
say the reforms in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have accomplished very little at all.
In terms of public policy the National Water Policy’s advocacy of an ‘integrated approach’ looks
rather non-committal and weak as compared to, say, the European Union’s Water Framework
Directive.5 In the sector most suitable or vulnerable (with the choice of phrase depending on
one’s position) to privatisation, urban water supply, the actual movements toward privatisation
of service provision or assets (by involving either foreign or domestic private sector parties)
have been very limited as compared to some other places in the world6, despite, or maybe
because of, heated debate on the issue. It is probably a good thing that India has ‘missed the
hype’ in this respect as transnational water companies seem to be rethinking their interest in
the urban water supply business in developing countries (Hall et al. 2004).7
However, it is not my objective to rank India on a global scale measuring the depth and
scope of water sector reforms. Such comparison would, in fact, in some respects contradict the
framework presented below. The issue I want to explore is a different one. There is a paradox in
the Indian condition with regard to water sector reform. India has been a functioning political
democracy for more than 50 years and is rightly very proud of it. It has a free press and a rich
intellectual culture, which means that there is a lot of debate and analysis of the predicaments
related to water resources management, as there is to other things. There are a large number
of civil society organisations, active from the local to the global level doing work on water
resources and other forms of natural resources management. This is one side of the paradox.
The other side is that despite this, there is very little movement as regards the redefinition of
the mandates, roles and activities of the government water bureaucracy. This conglomerate of
institutions has, both at the Union and State level, been extremely resistant to change. Very
few of the new demands on the sector have been internalised. I would say that so far the Indian
hydrocracy has been largely successful in ignoring the societal demands for new and different
approaches to water resources management and been able to keep itself to its main professional
orientation: the planning, design and construction of water infrastructure—preferably large-
scale. Also at the level of the formulation of new public policy the changes have been very
limited. Even at the symbolic and discursive level, the faithfulness to the ‘old paradigm’ is
very strong and those who advocate the need for alternative approaches seem to be making
very little headway within the domain of governance and policy. The dominant format seems
issue-based agitation leading to certain (temporary) concessions of governments to demands
of the pressure group. One could even suggest that the interlinking of rivers discussion of the
past two years has put the water policy discourse firmly back into the realm of ‘harnessing
available resources’.
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 341

The Indian water bureaucracy is not alone in this defensiveness. It is a feature of many coun-
tries with large and powerful water bureaucracies responsible for irrigation and/or hydropower
and/or flood control. Egypt and Pakistan are cases in point.8 But in these cases there is perhaps
less of a paradox. These are not nearly as open and democratic societies as India is. At the
same time there are countries that do have dynamic reform processes ongoing. Post-Apartheid
South Africa is an example; Mexico has already been mentioned; Indonesia has been moving
towards substantial reforms in the water sector; as well as several other countries.
This paradox is only a paradox. Instead of a simple linking of the overall nature of the socio-
political regime and the behaviour of a water resources bureaucracy, we need to ask the ques-
tion: what is it about the Indian socio-political context and processes of governance and
administration that explains the particular defensiveness of the water bureaucracy against the
internalising of new social, economic and environmental demands that are put on it? Or, put
differently, why is water sector reform such a hard nut to crack, even when we seem to have
all the good reasons for reform with us on paper and in the public discourse? And, one could
add, with also at hand, almost universal recognition of the importance of water as a source
of livelihood and socio-economic prosperity, and acknowledgement of its proper governance
and management as essential for different types of sustainability and security.
I do not pretend to have a comprehensive answer to this question—this chapter is part of a
search for an answer. One response to the posing of the problem would be to argue that I am
simply too impatient, that 10 or 15 years is a very short period for as large a country as India,
and that I am projecting a non-existing problem. When that argument would hold water so
to speak, I would gladly be convinced and join the ranks of the hopeful who think we are on
the right track, even if the pace of the movement is slow. However, I think such a response is
somewhat escapist. Another response would be to argue that it is not worth worrying about
the government policy and administrative framework and that change will come from steady
expansion of bottom-up, grassroots activity. Again, this is somewhat escapist in my view. For
the moment I would want to maintain that there is an important strategic question to be
answered regarding how to push through some of the core requirements of water sector reform
and through what process a socio-political alignment or coalition could come about to achieve
this. Because, we are a bit stuck, aren’t we?9

M AIN A RGUMENT
This chapter argues that there is a lack of knowledge on the Indian water sector policy (reform)
process and that production of such knowledge would be of strategic value for enhancing
reform in the sector. It also suggests that there are three strategic issues that are of particular
importance.

• Understanding the rationale, resilience and dynamics of the water resources bureaucracy,
particularly the core irrigation/hydropower/flood control part of it. Strategic question: what
are sensible entry points and methods for enhancing internalisation of a more ‘integrated
approach’ to water resources management by government water bureaucracies?
342 Peter P. Mollinga

• Investigating whether and how advocacy and agitation for alternative approaches to
the planning and decision making on water resources do or do not consolidate into
institutional frameworks; particularly at the intermediate level. Strategic question: how
can inclusive forms of water resources governance, management and finance practically
be given shape, particularly at scale-levels above the local/village?
• Understanding whether and how policies/interventions get captured and transformed
at the local level by local interest groups, government officials and other actors. Strategic
question: what are the opportunities for (new) forms of interaction with government
agents and agencies that would enhance the efficiency, equity and sustainability aspects
of water resources policy interventions and the capacity for context specific technical
and institutional innovation?

This argument is developed in the following steps: First, I briefly sketch the state of our
knowledge on the dynamics of the Indian water resources sector—not in substantive terms,
summarising available empirical evidence, but in terms of the type of understanding that we
have at hand. Second, I show that the water sector is facing a new set of challenges that it will
not be able to address effectively through the existing paradigm and institutional framework,
and for which a local, village-focussed approach also falls short. In short, the argument is
that because basins are closing and demand for water by different user groups is increasing,
the allocation of water gains new prominence, while no effective institutions exist for the
negotiation of such claims at the scales at which they occur. Here lies a concrete opportunity
for devising new state-resource user interfaces. As a third step I look at the broader issues in-
volved. What is proposed is not just an exercise in social engineering to fill an institutional
gap. The attempt is to propose pragmatic ways forward given a certain understanding of the
socio-political context of the water sector reform process. In this section I look at the features
of that socio-political context. The next, fourth step is to explicate the analytical framework for
the analysis of policy processes implicit in the earlier presentation. In the concluding section
I summarise the argument and outline a research agenda on water resources governance.

E XISTING A NALYSIS OF THE W ATER S ECTOR

AND W ATER S ECTOR R EFORM

Before suggesting that we need new types of research to assist the water sector reform pro-
cess, it makes sense to look at the type of analysis already available. I classify this in three
categories.

Statements on Desirable Water Policy

The texts under this heading present the contours or details of a new or better policy that
is felt to be needed, or suggest ways by which better implementation of existing policy can
be achieved. A problem analysis of the current situation is often part of the presentation.
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 343

Several types of documents are part of this category. A first one is government commissioned
reports like The Report of the Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water (1992) and numerous
other documents advising sensible things on specific elements of the water sector that would
need to be altered. Another category is policy documents proper, like the National Water
Policy documents or Acts. A more general category of texts are vision documents, mani-
festos/statements of different groups or networks that state desirable principles and features
of (better) water policy. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also produce their own
policy texts.10 Yet another category is the loan and project documents that stipulate what
institutional changes will be implemented as part of a certain set of activities. An example is
the institutional conditionalities of the World Bank supported Water Resources Consolidation
Projects (WRCPs) in different states. Together these documents and their presentation and dis-
cussion in the press, Parliament, committees, workshops and elsewhere could be said to con-
stitute the ‘formal’, that is, government-connected water policy discourse, even when not all
contributions may be primarily aimed at changing government policy.

Empirical Studies on Water Resources Management

India has relatively rich literature on actual water management use and management at
field/user/consumer level, and its impact.11 This literature consists of several sub-sets. One
set is the academic literature published in journals, such as (most prominently) the Economic
and Political Weekly12 in India and a range of international journals. These studies are usually
based on direct field research or secondary data and tend to conclude with a set of policy
recommendations. On several issues there are ongoing debates and exchanges for shorter or
longer periods and such debates are regularly published separately as edited collections. The
angles from which this literature is written are the (agricultural) economics literature looking
at ‘impact’ particularly, and a newer, often New Institutional Economics (NIE)-oriented, litera-
ture on the institutions and incentives that shape water resources management. The second
literature is a sociological, political economy and social anthropology-oriented body of work
that has a focus on the social relations of water resources management, often taking the issue
of unequal social power and its impacts as a core theme.13 Part of this is also academic litera-
ture on social conflicts and mobilisation in relation to water resources management, notably
around dam conflicts/issues and literature starting to report on experiences with Panchayati Raj
Institutions. Together this body of work constitutes the larger part of our database on actual
water management practices in India.

A Critical, Oppositional Discourse

This literature points out the problems and failures of the present water resources policies and
institutions, such as in environmental critiques, gender critiques and privatisation critiques,
and calls for a paradigm change in the sector, often in the context of a broader ‘alternative
development’ perspective. The publications often have an advocacy or even agitational purpose,
344 Peter P. Mollinga

and are thus often very explicitly ‘political’. Many academic researchers and policy actors might
therefore feel that these are not objective and contain insufficient evidence. However, these
might simply have been written for different purposes than academic or policy discussions.
This ‘engaged’ form of writing is also producing a body of serious, studious work that tries to
combine academic rigour, political focus and initiatives for social transformation.14 I would even
be inclined to argue, though it is difficult to substantiate, that the more innovative research
work on water resources policy and management increasingly tends to come from ‘non-
conventional sources’, that is, not from universities and established research institutes.
Like all classifications this classification has its limitations. The presentation under the third
category of the oppositional discourse already suggests there may be clear overlaps. Moreover,
not everything fits in and some research activities would explicitly try to combine the different
foci. An example of the latter is the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program based in Anand, Gujarat.
It explicitly aims at the pursuit of practical policy initiatives in the water sector, with the
help of and based on documented research, from a reasonably explicit standpoint about the
direction of the transformation sought, and in collaboration with a wide variety of social
actors, including NGOs and activists.
How research relates to policy varies. As this chapter advocates doing more research on the
policy process, it is relevant to look at this variation in some detail. In a forthcoming paper
I classify research in connection to irrigation policy in three categories: (i) research for policy,
that is, research on issues relevant to decision makers; (ii) research on the policy process; and
(iii) research in policy (Mollinga, forthcoming). Each has a more reflexive/academic and a
more action-oriented variant.

Research for Policy

This is research analysing certain situations or phenomena and making policy recommendations
about them. The reflexive variant is general academic research as referred to the above under
category ‘(ii)’. The already mentioned IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program is an example of
the more activist variant; pursuing innovative ideas, institutional designs and technologies,
researching them and actively briefing policy makers on this. The engagement with policy
makers usually consists of discussions at workshops and seminars, membership of (government)
committees, personal networking, publication and dissemination of results in policy-friendly
forms, and the like. The more academically minded researchers in this category tend to, im-
plicitly or explicitly, adopt a separation between research and politics, academia and policy.
Researchers provide ideas, or options or scenarios, if need be; decision makers take decisions
and make and implement policies. The more activist/change minded tend to work on implicit
or explicit understandings of the nature of the policy arena and how to act in it. By default or
design this category of research, thus, tends to black-box the policy process.

Research on Policy Processes

This is research that takes the policy process as its research object. Examples are the investigation
of the negotiations between development funding agencies and state governments and how
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 345

these affect policy priorities; at a more micro scale, how political office bearers like Members
of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) influence policy implementation; or how an irrigation
bureaucracy responds to pressure to reform; or how water users capture government policies
and turn them to their own advantage; or how administrative procedures hamper flexible
implementation; or how professional cultures bias implementers’ perspectives. The list of
examples is potentially endless. Again there is more reflexive, academic research possible
(policy studies, institutional analysis), and more activist/advocacy oriented ways of conducting
the research. The latter could be labelled as ‘strategic analysis’: research that informs strategic
decision making by policy actors by providing understanding of the dynamics of policy pro-
cesses and the trade-offs that are part of it. Policy actors are government officials at different
levels, but also NGO staff, political parties, water users and users organisations. It is suggested in
this chapter that there is a scarcity of this type of research in the Indian water sector context.

Research in Policy
In the third way that research relates to policy, the research becomes part of the policy process.
The research activity is part of the policy process and policy actors themselves are involved in
it quite directly (while in the first two ways generally ‘independent researchers’ are dominant
in the implementation of the research). The more conventional mode of this research is
research to get better implementation of a given programme, or research commissioned to
develop a particular policy idea, or project for a policy actor. This may be bound to individual
projects (like in consultancy assignments), or to national policy (re)formulation, like in the
work of committees drafting reports, Acts, or other forms of policy recommendation. The
more interactive forms of this type of research would be those forms of research in which
different stakeholders actively participate and interact. This could be through consultation,
public hearings, public debate, but also through actual designing of and participation in the
execution of the research, like in the concept of action research.15
Reviewing the literature on water resources, it is clear that ‘research for policy’ and the re-
flexive variant of ‘research in policy’ are the dominant forms. The types of research of the first
classification are easily categorised under these headings. What we have only to a very limited
extent is studies on the policy process itself. We do not know very much about what happens
in the water policy domain: how new policies are articulated, how the hydrocracies precisely
work, how policy elites and their networks operate, how lobby and agitation is dealt with by
the government administration, how the negotiations between government and international
donors takes place, and so forth. One could ask—where are the political scientists in the water
sector; who is looking in detail, as a researcher, at the internal dynamics of India’s domestic
hydropolitics? 16, 17
To give just one example, since Robert Wade’s seminal paper on the system of political and
administrative corruption (published in 1982), there has been to my knowledge no additional
substantive work on this topic in the water resources domain. Additionally, even for the less
sensitive or ‘sensational’ topics, there is a scarcity of analysis. I know of no studies, for example,
of the strategic configuration of interest groups or the dynamics of the state level network of
‘senior’ water resources ‘experts’ involved in policy making that might or might not further
346 Peter P. Mollinga

irrigation reform in a state like Karnataka. And even if one would be able to find one or two
relevant studies on such topics, there is no ongoing debate and no collective evolution of
understanding.
To further illustrate this point, it is worthwhile to look at the recent collection of papers
from the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program published in the ‘Review of Agriculture’ of the
Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 39, No. 31, 2004). In these 11 papers there is a lot of very
interesting material on actual water management practices and their impact, and experiments
with new approaches; there are many critical observations on, if not outright condemnations
of, the flaws of government policies and their implementation—there is a clear statement
in the first paper that ‘we are stuck’ as regards water policy reform, with which I very much
agree, as exhibited in the introduction. However, there is not a single analysis of the internal
dynamics of the government organisations involved and strategic analysis of how they might be
enrolled in a more constructive policy transformation process. There are a series of statements
on what a good or better policy should involve and of examples that might be instructive, but
no analysis of how exactly one might get from the present to that better future. If indeed ‘we
are stuck’, more explicit reflection on the process of (policy) transformation might be a useful
addition to the water policy research agenda.18
There is a paradox again here. At the anecdotal level and the level of day-to-day experience
many people do have knowledge of the internal dynamics of policy processes and ideas on
how to get from A to B, including academics. India is a country where substantial numbers of
the academically active are involved in policy processes. Nevertheless, there is little systematic
reflection on this involvement. Or is it because of this? I will repeat the question: where are
the political scientists, public administration scholars and other disciplines looking at the
internal institutional and organisational dynamics of the water sector?
One might ask what would be the use of such analysis of institutional and organisational
dynamics? It is always dangerous to give Wade’s (1982) paper on corruption as an example,
because it suggests one is aiming for exposure, sensation and condemnation. That is, however,
not the case. I believe we need such analysis to understand better the structural dynamics of
the sector, which includes the systemic features of corruption and many other issues, to
engage more effectively with the policy process, to further it, to move beyond oppositional
for/against positions and beyond preaching to the government on what they should do but
probably won’t, and to establish more constructive engagement among the interest groups
concerned.19
The most convincing argument in favour of such research, in my view, is that it tends to
yield unexpected results. Such studies take us from general and grand schemes to the practical-
ities of institutional transformation. Close studies of policy processes tend to yield not only
a more fine-grained understanding allowing for more ‘contextual’ designs of intervention,
but also unimagined ideas for the transformation of policy and practice. Some examples can
illustrate this.
One example from my own research is the study of main system management in the
Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal and the picture this yielded of the management practices of the
Irrigation Department bureaucracy. Given that Wade’s research, referred to above, had been
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 347

done on the other side of the river and partly in the same system, though in a different state,
I had imbibed a certain ‘rent-seeking’ bias in a priori understanding of the irrigation bureau-
cracy. This was confirmed as far as the ‘works’ were concerned, but contradicted for water
management (see Mollinga 2003 for a full account). The Irrigation Department had far less
power in day-to-day water distributions in 1991–92 than in Wade’s description of more than
10 years earlier, in which the Irrigation Department could elicit bribe payments from ‘water’
by rumour mongering and other means. I found that institutional practices had emerged and
been consolidated at all levels of the system amounting to different forms of rotational water
distribution negotiated between the Irrigation Department and different irrigator groups.
These negotiated patterns were a far cry from the officially planned water distribution schedule
and instrumental in the reproduction of unequal distribution, but still a regularised pattern
and no ‘syndrome of anarchy’. Interestingly I found that such negotiation processes also
took place within the Irrigation Department, between different divisions managing different
sections of the main canal. This had produced an informal ‘gauge table’ regulating supply
from division to division. It was informal, in the sense that it diverged considerably from the
official operational plan, but had much more practical value. The point is that the Irrigation
Department officials exhibited much more agency in water management than the ‘rent-
seeking’ perspective allows for. This has also been shown in other cases like the Philippines
(Oorthuizen 2003). The (incentive) structure of the Irrigation Department makes that such
activity happens largely ‘subterranean’, but it does suggest that there are starting points for
reforming main system management that are usually overlooked. It also suggests that there
might be ways to enrol the bureaucracy in reform.
A rich example, though not situated in the water sector, of the unexpected results and new
avenues for reform that grounded research on the actual dynamics of policy processes (an
‘anthropology of the everyday state’) might yield is illustrated by a two-part report on an
investigation of the working of the local state in rural Bihar, Jharkand and West Bengal
(Corbridge et al. 2003a, 2003b). The research investigates the working of the Employment
Assurance Scheme to understand the governance performance of these states, looking at four
main functions of governance: developmental, empowermental, protective and disciplinary.
The research documents the complexity and divergence of state action, the conflicts within
and between different agencies of the state and the challenges posed to these agencies by
civil and political society groups. One finding is that under certain conditions district-level
personnel acted to restrict opportunities for rent-seeking, a counter-intuitive finding in this
context. The way state and civil/political societies interact diversely in different places creates
different opportunities and constraints for it to work as a developmental state enhancing
‘pro-poor governance’. Despite a rather gloomy picture of the state’s ability to refocus in this
direction, the action research approach that the research followed20 came up with a detailed
list of concrete suggestions for change under five rubrics: encouraging political parties to
increase the awareness and empowerment of the poor; changing the negative linkages
between politicians and middlemen; bringing development issues to the top of the agenda;
changing the ‘I win-you lose’ culture; and engaging local intermediaries more constructively
(Corbridge et al. 2003b: 2568). Whatever the exact suggestions, the point in the context of this
348 Peter P. Mollinga

chapter is that close study and engagement with the day-to-day practice of state governance
and policy implementation may suggest concrete courses of action that more generalised
accounts are likely to miss.

N EW I NSTITUTIONAL C HALLENGES TO THE W ATER S ECTOR

When water sector reform is discussed at a sufficiently general or abstract level, there is nothing
new in the present situation. For example, discussions on volumetric supply and pricing of water
can be found in the 19th century documents (Stone 1984). The recommendation to involve
water users in management and to set up user organisations is at least as old as the report of
the first Indian Irrigation Commission (1901–03). Basin level approaches to water management
were tried in the 1950s. Water scarcity and drought seem to be eternal themes.
However, when looked at in more detail there is a trajectory of transformation of issues
and approaches to them. The scarcity of the 19th century was a rather different scarcity than
today’s; the water users involved in local organisations live in a very different society now than
in the early 20th century; the basin approach of the 1950s aimed at different problems than the
present advocates of river basin organisations have in mind.
What is characteristic of water resources management of the early 21st century is the need
for an ‘integrated approach’ as articulated in the present water policy discourse, particularly
through the notion of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The idea of ‘inte-
gration’ has many sources and meanings and some would argue that it has already lost its
sharpness and usefulness before serious implementation of it has even started. Indeed, the
notion seems to be a catch-all, bringing under one semantic roof things like coordination of
sectoral water use and management organisations, forging new linkages between upstream and
downstream water users, interdisciplinary analysis of water resources problems, incorporation
of environment and human development concerns into water resources policy, and quite a
few more. The notion of ‘integration’ also has a problematic history through the historical
experience with ‘integrated rural development’ programmes. Amendment is also ongoing.
It has been convincingly argued that a focus on water only does not make much sense and
that at least there should be ‘land and water’ instead of water only. This logically leads to
notions of integrated natural resources management or even more general ones and analytical
or policy sharpness evaporates accordingly. The Indian water technocrats have insisted on a
notion of IWRDM, where the D stands for ‘development’, in the sense of planning, design
and construction of water infrastructure (see above), and thus probably try to neutralise the
notion’s call for paradigmatic changes in approach.
IWRM is thus a truly ‘loose concept’ and a ‘boundary concept’.21 It signifies different
things for different people and has been appropriated by a variety of actors for a variety of
agendas after its ascendance to discursive prominence through the emerging global water
policy discourse in the second half of the 1990s. Nevertheless, I will maintain that this does
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 349

not make it vacuous or useless, but makes it a concept that creates a space for exchange and
encounter. The empirical underpinning of the idea of ‘integration’ and its material ‘solidity’
is that a real set of issues is emerging in the daily practice of water resources management
that makes it necessary.
These issues are those that show that the dominant ‘supply enhancement’ approach to water
resources management (the water resources ‘development’ agenda referred to above) is nearing
its limits, if it hasn’t already crossed them; as well as that approaches exclusively focussing on
local-level solutions to water resources management problems have fundamental limitations.
Through ongoing population growth, urbanisation and industrialisation, competition over the
quantity and quality of water available for different uses and users is increasing. There are many
dimensions to this issue. When there are availability problems in terms of quantity and quality
it is becoming increasingly difficult to find ‘new sources’ and to tap them without affecting
other users. Basins are closing and water management is becoming more of a zero-sum game
than it was in the past. A second aspect is that slowly the environment has developed a voice
that is heard in the policy domain. Very slowly (far too slow in the eyes of many), the notion of
‘environmental flow’ is coming into the discourse as a sign of the policy legitimacy of ecological
concerns and the livelihoods associated with such concerns.22 The expansion of watershed
development and other water conservation programmes implies a spatial redistribution of
water that, when implemented on a sufficiently large scale, will affect ‘existing rights’. This is
manifesting itself as increasing occurrence of upstream user/downstream user controversies
at catchment or sub-basin levels. Urbanisation is causing additional claims on water in the
surrounding rural areas, creating new forms of competition.
Generally speaking, the development towards closure of basins, the proliferation of stronger
demands from a variety of user groups, the spatial implications of changing water-use practices,
and other factors point to an increasing importance of the issue of allocation of water, that is,
the definition of water rights or entitlements for different users, uses and areas.
Allocation of surface water at macro scale used to be done through allocations at the river
basin level to different irrigation and hydropower projects and for some other uses. This pro-
cedure determines available flow at 75 per cent dependability and allocates water in bulks of
thousand million cubic feet (TMCft) . This is a very static allocation method. The problems with
it are highly visible in the Cauvery case. In below average rainfall years in this basin, the
allocation of water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is increasingly problematic. What is
needed is an allocation mechanism that is able to allocate water under conditions of scarcity
in low rainfall years. This should not work on the basis of a block quantity allocation but
should involve a sharing mechanism that can be used operationally in varying and evolving
circumstances. It is to be hoped that the ongoing tribunal process will deliver such a workable
sharing procedure.23
Put more generally, what is required is a move to a system that provides rules and procedures
for negotiating allocation and distribution of water among interest groups (in terms of quantity,
quality and timing), rather than ‘final’ quantitative allocations. As long as there is uncommitted
350 Peter P. Mollinga

water in a river (and the ecological dimension is ignored) problems can be ‘solved’ through
supply enhancement (additional allocations). In an increasing number of cases this is no
longer possible, and this number of cases is increasing given urbanisation, economic growth
and demographic growth. These problems are poignantly felt around large cities as these have
a large, geographically concentrated demand for water, but they apply generally. Groundwater
exploitation has never had a government controlled macro-level allocation mechanism (or
effective micro-ones for that matter), but over-extraction from aquifers poses the same problem
of allocation and regulation as does over-extraction from rivers. In the drier parts of India, most
groundwater use is in the ‘dark zone’, that is, exhibiting over-extraction or approaching that.
In flood management, the allocation and scale issue manifests itself in a different manner.
The dominant post-Independence approach has been embankments, that is, controlling
floods and confining the water to riverbeds and reservoirs. The alternative ‘living with floods’
approach recognises the limitations of such approaches and looks at the ‘allocation’ of water
over different parts of a floodplain and the related costs and benefits across space and groups
of people. Flood management requires regional planning.
The negotiated allocation of water that is required is not just a water-game. Linked to water
are livelihoods and other interests. The contestation of water is intensifying and new issues
around which this contestation takes place are emerging.24 The empirical assertion of this
chapter is that there is a lack of institutions and organisations at the medium or regional scale
level that can effectively deal with these emerging issues and contestations. They cannot be
addressed at local/village levels only because many of them are about the relationship between
localities/villages. The prescriptive, legalistic and administrative approach of the government
agencies is also very unlikely to be able to address these issues. One reason for this is that the
problems and their solutions are context specific and cannot be addressed with standardised
packages, an approach inherent in the present style of government agencies. Moreover, there
are no single scientific, ‘best solutions’ for a given problem. The ‘optimum’ solution depends
on the weighting of different interests and concerns. One can make rules and procedures for
how this weighting and the related negotiation should taken place and define boundary con-
ditions, but one cannot predict or prescribe the exact outcome of such processes. For such
processes to be effective and to have sustainable outcomes the interaction process needs to
produce some form of shared understanding and compromise. That is, both the content of
the decisions taken and the process of decision making are important.
In some respects, there is nothing new in this insight that medium-scale level institutions
are required. In 1980, Wade and Chambers argued that for large-scale irrigation systems, par-
ticipatory approaches focusing on the local (tertiary/village) level only were likely to be unsuc-
cessful as long as water management at the main system level would not be addressed (Wade
and Chambers 1980). The operational plan for main system management of a canal irrigation
system is an allocation decision. It defines entitlements for different areas (secondary canals
and lower). When these entitlements are not realised, variable and/or uncertain, local level
management becomes very difficult. The structure of this macro-micro dependency relation
is very similar in multiple bore wells tapping a single aquifer, or multiple water conservation
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 351

structures doing local water conservation in a catchment area, even when these different situ-
ations also have their specificities.
What is new is that such issues are proliferating. This is meant as an empirical statement of
fact, rather than as a conceptual argument for complexity and interconnectedness.25 Reality
makes that we have to take ‘integration’ seriously, even if some would prefer to use a different
word.26
Before moving to the broader setting of this problem, I note that this emphasis on medium/
region scale and institutions required at this level by no means necessarily implies support for
the idea of setting up river basin organisations and organised water resources management
following hydrological boundaries. The issues of ‘fit’ (of administrative boundaries for water
management with hydrological ones), of ‘interplay’ (of water management organisation with
other domains of governance and management based on different units) and of ‘scale’ (what
is an appropriate level and how do different levels connect) are complex, and a standardised
approach is unlikely to be appropriate.27

T HE B ROADER C ONTEXT : C ENTRALISATION ,

P OLARISATION AND D EMOCRACY

This is not the place to enter into a general and broad ranging discussion of the nature of
Indian democracy and state governance, but water sector reform—obviously—happens in
this context and is shaped by it.28 The question ‘what is specific about the Indian context and
processes that can explain the tardiness of the water sector reform?’ needs to be answered
in this broader framework.29 The point I want to focus on is the state-village dichotomy in
the practice of thinking about the relations between the state political and administrative
machinery and local communities, derived from Kaviraj’s analysis of the modern Indian state
(Kaviraj 1996, 1997, 2001).
The western form of political democracy that India adopted after Independence was an elite
project implanted on Indian society ‘from the top’ and not a system whose design emerged
out of local struggles.

The ingestion of these ideas and formulation of political practices in their terms also intro-
duced a fatal flaw in the structure of Indian politics. As these concepts and advantages re-
mained more readily apprehended by middle class elites, and largely unexplicated to the
ordinary Indian voter, who was nonetheless given the ceremonial sovereignty of popular
representative government, this meant that a problem of intelligibility of the political
institutions of the state remained at the heart of the Indian democratic system. Democratic
institutions in India did not have a historical preparation through a political discourse
which debated, in the vernaculars and in terms which reached the ordinary Indian citizen,
why the state structures of republican, democratic, secular authority were better than other
352 Peter P. Mollinga

competing forms. They remained, more crucially, unenlightened about the meaning and
implication of the fundamental gesture of constitutional subjectivity, of their having given
that form of government to themselves (Kaviraj 1997: 232–33).

The political and administrative institutions of the state have, as a result of this, in some
respect been treated by people in the same way as the colonial and pre-modern states were. The
post-Independence emancipation process and economic development allowed new groups to
access state resources, using redistributive rhetoric. At a certain point non-elite social groups
entered into politics, including:

a new class of aggressive, politically ambitious and illiberal rich peasants. They wished, by
virtue of their increasing prosperity, not to reform rural society and introduce new measures
of equity, but to retain the traditional structure of irresponsible power of the landed elite and
rightlessness of the poorer peasantry, and replace the old zamindars in the rural hierarchy.
They looked at the concentration of resources in the agencies of the state with approval,
since it was evident that they could exercise control over their disbursement through their
influence over electoral politics (ibid.: 238–39).
Typically, the supporters of policies of reverse discrimination in favour of lower castes are
not concerned about more equitable distribution of educational opportunities or material
necessities. For them, getting a share of bureaucratic control is vital. They do not want to
destroy a system of inequality, but only demand their fair share in the privileges (ibid.: 246).

This reproduces a structure in which the state is exterior to the local social dynamics and
is seen as a whimsical tyrant with which one enters into relations of patronage but never
considers as one’s own, and parts of which one tries to control or influence for one’s own
benefit. This has historical roots in the way the pre-modern and colonial states operated, as
Kaviraj eloquently shows.
A second point is that independent India decided to inherit British colonial administration.
In the politically unstable situation after Independence the new leadership found that a ‘strong
state’ needed to be established, implying:

a major recourse to the structures of army and bureaucracy the colonial administration
had left behind. […] The national state was an inheritor of two distinct and some ways,
incompatible, legacies. It inherited the colonial state’s systems of internal command and
control, its administrative ethos, its laws and rules, and its three predominant characteristics
to the popular mind: its marginality, its exteriority, and its persistent repressiveness against
the lower strata of the people who, at least in constitutional formality, were made the
repository of sovereignty. At the same time, it was the successor to a triumphant national
movement whose principal objective was to contest the culture of that state. […] Was the
national movement a struggle to achieve an untrammelled version of the Western state, a
purer form of Western political modernity than colonialism had permitted, or to reject the
entire model [which was Gandhi’s view]? (ibid.: 233, 234).
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 353

This was decided in favour of the first option, accompanied by a massive expansion of the
bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy, though now manned by Indians, was still the unreconstructed bureaucracy
of a colonial state: irresponsible, unresponsive, insufficiently used even to the rhetoric of
serving the people, being habituated for so many decades to being their lords and masters. It
was also eminently unsuited, in its original form, to performing modern welfare functions.
[…] its lower orders translated these policies into unrecognisably travestic forms. […] Local
administration was inextricable from local power. […] Long-term historical memories and
time tested ways of dealing with power of the political authority took their revenge on the
modern state, bending the straight lines of rationalist liberal politics through a cultural
refraction of administrative meaning. [….] (Kaviraj 1997: 234, 235).

What can be derived from this analysis30 is that India’s bureaucracies tend to be highly
centralised in how their powers are defined and largely working on a ‘command and control’
administrative style; that has, however, become embedded in a political system often described
as competitive populism. This is not just a ‘choice’ for a particular institutional structure, but a
phenomenon that has its roots in pre-modern, colonial and post-colonial history, in which
the pre-modern state-village relation has been reincarnated in new forms, but retaining some
basic characteristics. Kaviraj, for pre-modern states in India, argues that:

power at the level of the village community tended to be exercised through the paradoxical
logic of the caste system. Its specific manner of allocating productive functions and rewards
maintained a system of social repression without making specific individuals the agents
of these relationships of disdain and resentment. The global human world, its essential
principles of ordering, were not subject to individual or collective construction. […]The
political implication of this feature of caste society is important. Under this arrangement,
it is impossible for the state to aspire to become the site of universality and sovereignty;
the state could not claim a Durkheimian majesty by becoming the symbol of society as a
whole, and a preserver of its form and continuity. That was lodged in a self-maintaining
moral; order to which the state was normally subordinated. […] [The state’s] primary func-
tion was to police possible infringements, not to make rules affecting the fundamental
order of social relations. […] The state, or the ruling power did not have any fundamental
legislative authority in the modern sense, precisely because society did not function on
the assumption of basic plasticity of the political and social world. […] The allocation of
resources to various social groups on a permanent or stable basis, was beyond the recognised
domain of authority of the traditional state. […] Empires, however large, powerful, ambitious,
never aspired to overcome the marginality to the daily existence of the villager: and this
was formally sanctified by the typical rent receiving relation between the empire and the
village. […] Thus, the precolonial type of political authority seems strikingly devoid of two
features that social struggles of European modernity imparted to the modern state. It was
354 Peter P. Mollinga

not an authority for appeal against widespread structural injustice, oppressions, iniquities,
irrationalities of social processes. […] To apply the state/civil society distinction to traditional
India therefore would be to invite a serious conceptual misunderstanding (Kaviraj 1997:
227–30).

There is now a civil society in India, and a very active one as mentioned above, so there can-
not be a simple argument of continuity. However, the (central) state-village dichotomy seems
still to be very much part of the Indian polity. The networks of institutions that characterise,
for instance, Western Europe’s social democracy, in addition to the institutions for political
representation and decision making, have emerged only to a limited extent in the Indian
context, not ‘filling in’ the institutional gap between ‘state’ and ‘village’.31
In his discussion of the constitutional arrangements for water resources management, Iyer
(2003) confirms this point. He describes how the Indian Constitution defines governance at
the Union and State levels but not below that, until the Panchayat Raj amendments. These
jump to village/municipality level. He also discusses how the efforts at river basin organisations
and the water disputes tribunals are expressions of a centralistic approach.32
In terms of centralistic state organisations, the water resources bureaucracy is one such cen-
tralistically framed apparatus. Very few people would be surprised by or object to a description
of this set of organisations as being hierarchical in structure and process, as working in a
top-down fashion and as tending towards centralisation of administrative power. A specific
feature of this bureaucracy is that it is mainly populated by one single discipline, that of civil
engineering. The water bureaucracy was a very powerful element of the Nehruvian development
strategy and engineers considered themselves literally as nation builders at that time, with
M. Visvesvaraya as perhaps the most famous example (see Visvesvaraya 1951, Memoirs of My
Working Life). How the irrigation bureaucracy got integrated in the competitive populism of
the 1970s and 1980s has been described in his now seminal paper on the system of political
and administrative corruption (Wade 1982). On the one hand, this has generated collusion be-
tween politicians, bureaucrats and rural elites, with substantial material benefits to all, but on
the other hand, it has generated a lot of dissatisfaction and de-motivation within the irrigation
department and an erosion of professional standards (see Mollinga 2003 for a case study).
The authority of field-level water managers, such as the staff of the irrigation department, has
been challenged and eroded by the aggressive lobby of rich peasants and their representatives,
but the whole approach of the water resources bureaucracy has been challenged most
fundamentally by the social movements around the negative environmental and social effects
of the construction of large dams. This has led to extremely polarised positions, leading to a
Supreme Court case to decide the issue in the case of Narmada/Sardar Sarovar dam. In some
respects this is a replay of the choice between the Nehruvian and Gandhian development trajec-
tories: the first very modernist, large-scale infrastructure oriented, and the second advocating
a local/village based approach to social and economic transformation.33
This confrontation has not led to a constructive outcome. The water resources bureaucracy
has ‘dug in’ and become very defensive. In ideological/discourse terms, the winning of the
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 355

court case regarding Narmada, the World Commission on Dams exercise and the Interlinking
of Rivers scheme seem to have strengthened the technocratic paradigm in recent years. A recent
paper by Goel and Patel (2004) is a telling illustration of the centralisation, construction, supply
enhancement and nationalistic orientation. However, this is likely to be a temporary situation
given that ground level processes are pushing the discourse in another direction.
The social movements seem to have ‘dug in’ equally with a very strong emphasis on the
local/grassroots level of activity as the starting point for social transformation.34 ‘Big is beautiful’
and ‘small is beautiful’ have become a true dichotomy in political practice. The commitment
and emotion invested is enormous, by both polarities. Efforts to define a middle ground for
negotiation and compromise, and innovative new options for water resources planning seem
to fall on deaf ears on both sides.35
It is not my intention to argue out the concrete merits of these cases, but to suggest that it
may be warranted to interpret this deadlock as an instance of an old, persistent opposition or
form in the Indian polity, that of a particular relationship between the state and the village, and,
in a policy sense, as indicating a need for the establishment of new institutions to create a more
constructive interface between ‘state’ and ‘society’. Put somewhat dramatically, such conflicts
offer the possibility (and define the necessity) to conceive in new ways the democratisation of
water resources management in connection with a rethinking and reshaping of the forms and
institutions of political democracy in general. This would involve an assessment of the limita-
tions of panchayati raj institutions also. Though these are very important in some respects, they
will be unable to address certain emerging issues in water resources management, and can,
at best, be an element of the democratisation of water resources governance. They will not be
able to address the regional dimension of water resources management, for which institutions
between the ‘state’ and the ‘village’ are required.36
When this analysis is correct, the paradox I started with is no longer a paradox. It is now
intelligible what some of the structural characteristics and limitations might be of water re-
sources governance as an instance of Indian state governance in general. This is largely an
argument by association: the state-village dichotomy has been a defining characteristic of
Indian governance over time, in forms specific to certain historical epochs, and the water sector
should be seen as an instance of this. Subsequently, it needs to be shown how this dichotomy
exactly operates—what are the mechanisms active in it? It has already been suggested that it is
enshrined in the formal legal set up of water resources governance and management. Similarly,
it has been suggested that it is part of the water bureaucracy’s disposition and organisational
ethos. In a general sense, it has been suggested that the gap is not a void but a space actively
reproduced by different political actors. Also, the community participation discourse and
practice may have contributed to the reproduction of the divide. More difficult to catch is the
idea that this ‘thought structure’ has gone into the very fabric of India’s political democracy
and the caste system as an enabling condition for the relative absence of vertical solidarities
and the thwarting or non-emergence of intermediate institutions. My guess is that the water
sector will provide ample evidence for further development and adjustment of this perspective
when it would be researched from a ‘politics of policy’ perspective.
356 Peter P. Mollinga

A NALYSING THE P OLICY P ROCESS

Following the argument above, I suggest that an important contribution that social science re-
search could make to the democratisation of water resources governance and management is
to analyse and interpret water sector reform more than is done at present as part of the overall
problematic of the Indian state form and nature of political democracy. To make a practical
contribution to water sector reform, I suggest focusing this analysis on the water resources
policy process, as this is where the political contestation of water resources can both be studied
and influenced. In this section I therefore outline an approach to analyse the water resources
policy process. I present it as an answer to the following questions:

• What kind of a process is water resources management?

• What are the different kinds of ‘politics’ associated with water resources management?
• How should we understand policy”
• What are the main themes and approaches in the ‘policy as process’ literature?
• What is the specific context of the Indian policy process, particularly that of the water
sector?

For canal irrigation, I have argued that water control (technical/physical, organisational/
managerial and socio-economic and political control) should be understood as an instance of
politically contested resource use (Mollinga 2003). What this means is that for a comprehensive
understanding of water-related processes, the issue of social power needs to be explicitly
addressed. This does not reduce water resources management to politics, but simply makes it an
inherent part of it. Daily life and the newspapers are full with evidence supporting this con-
tention; academia has not internalised it into its analytical frameworks very widely so far.
The ‘politics of water’ is not a single thing, but can be subdivided into different types, or
rather domains or arenas where it is played out. I distinguish the following four arenas (see
Mollinga 2001).

• The everyday politics of water resource management refers to the contested nature of the
day-to-day use of water resources (see Kerkvliet 1990 for the ‘everyday politics’ concept).
Socio-political analyses at this level looks at the way the local social relations of power
shape and are shaped by water resource use practices. This is a vast terrain, in which there
are many case studies available from across the globe. The central issue in many of these
studies is (in)equity and poverty, what it means, how it occurs and what can be done to
change/achieve it, and who has a say in the decision making over water resources.
Conceptually two-related-focus points are (a) the concept of hydraulic property, and
property rights more generally; and (b) the understanding of collective action. Arguably,
many ‘localised’ case studies fail to link their analysis sufficiently with the broader context
of cultural, political economic dynamics, but this was truer 10 years ago than it is now.
There is a growing linkage of studies of local cases and processes with broader issues like
‘environmental justice’.
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 357

• The politics of policy on water resources is the level of water resources policy formulation
and implementation within nation-states, usually with a central role of the state govern-
ment (for the ‘politics of policy’ concept see Grindle 1977 and her subsequent work;
also see Long and Van der Ploeg 1989). Many countries have overall and sector water
policies, which imply investment programmes for infrastructure creation and maintenance
and the establishment of institutions for the management of the infrastructure and
the resource. In a conventional approach the politics of this are thought to lie only at
the level of policy formulation: politicians working within a parliamentary or other
framework make decisions on policy priorities and programmes based on scientific
advice of natural scientists (mostly hydrologists and technical engineers), after which the
administration implements. In practice, both formulation and implementation of water
resource policies can be highly contested. Different interest groups attempt to influence
both, through official legal-institutional and through other means. Policy is negotiated
and re-negotiated at all levels and often transformed on its way from formulation to
implementation. The nature, intensity and effects of this process differ from case to case.
This political struggle takes place within state apparatuses, but also in the interaction of
state institutions with the groups directly and indirectly affected by the policies.37 This
field of inquiry could also be phrased as the investigation of actual governance practices
regarding water resources, with themes like democratisation, decentralisation, transparency,
privatisation, public good functions and institutional interplay. Theories and empirical
work on policy formulation, stakeholder supported decision making, agenda setting and
implementation of environmental policies, and economic theories on policy implemen-
tation, with a particular focus on provision of services from public bureaucracies, would
be useful approaches.
• Hydropolitics is the level of inter-state politics regarding the allocation, distribution,
control and quality of water resources (see Waterbury 1979; Ohlsson 1995; Turton and
Henwood 2002 for the ‘hydropolitics’ concept).38 The state in hydropolitics is usually
a national state, as in, for example, water resource issues between Egypt and Sudan,
Mexico and the USA, or India, Nepal and Bangladesh. However, it can also refer, in a
federal structure, to inter-state water resources issues within a nation state. An example
is water allocation between upper and lower riparian states within countries like
Germany, India and the USA. A water transfer between basins located in different states
is another instance. In all these cases, more than one political entity controls territory
in a hydrological basin (or basins in case of inter-basin transfer), which, for optimal
use, would require an integrated approach to resource management. The core issue at
this level is how states do or do not reach an agreement on sharing the development
and use of the water resources they jointly depend on.
How conflicts can be avoided and cooperation achieved is the main focus of the
hydropolitics literature. Most of the discussion concerns the substantive and strategic
dimensions of negotiation and mediation. This not only regards water, but as in cases
like the Middle East, also regional (and global) security issues. Possible research foci are:
the role of institutions in settling conflicting issues and actual management of water
358 Peter P. Mollinga

resources; analysis of development paths of trans-boundary river basin organisation, their

relation to national actors, the role of international actors, and the benefits and costs of
cooperation and their distribution.
• The global politics of water resources refers to the emerging set of organisations, agreements,
declarations and the like, already referred to above, that jointly constitute a new sphere
of a global policy discourse on water resources. The Rio and Dublin conferences in 1992
have been highly instrumental in generating this process (which on closer study would
undoubtedly turn out to be the acceleration of an already ongoing process). The IWRM
debate is a case in point: global agenda setting gets translated into national and sub-
national policies through ‘vision documents’ and ‘frameworks for action’. These trans-
lations are not simple ‘operationalisations’ but involve transformation, appropriation
and redirection, the subject matter of the ‘politics of policy’ perspective. Water has also
entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) debates, particularly around the issue
of privatisation. A large global civil society network around water resources issues has
grown up in the past decade. The World Commission on Dams is another example of
the emerging global politics of water. To my knowledge, there is as yet no review of the
emerging global politics of water, or an articulated approach to study this new dis-course
and arena.

This typology already indicates the understanding of policy that is adopted. It is seen as
a process through which different interest groups (consciously and at least partly publicly)
negotiate the modalities of societal governance and consolidate this into institutional and
organisational arrangements, projects, programmes and procedures for, in this case, water
resources management.39 Policy has a functional, that is, purposive and strategic element,
otherwise it would be difficult to call it policy;40 but it is not only functional or instrumental.
It carries wider meanings also, as discussed above.
Mooij and De Vos (2003), in an introduction to a bibliography on policy process literature,
assess the Indian situation as follows:

Within India, the study of policy processes is not very well developed. This is so, despite
the fact that many Indian social scientists are involved in policy relevant research and aim
to contribute, through debate and research, to policy formulation and implementation.
These debates are, however, almost entirely dominated by economists, and insights from
other social sciences have hardly entered into them. There are very few political scientists,
sociologists or anthropologists focusing on public policies. As a result, some aspects of policy
studies are relatively well developed (such as measuring policy effects), but others much
less. The issues and questions, for instance, of why policies are formulated and designed in
particular ways in the first place, and the political shaping of policies ‘on the ground’, do
not receive much attention (ibid.: 5).

They go on to describe four themes that are important in the global literature on policy pro-
cesses. These are: (i) the critique of linear models of the policy process; (ii) actors interact and
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 359

bargain with each other, and thereby produce a particular (albeit temporary) policy outcome;
(iii) policy discourses; and (iv) the role of politicians and political parties in policy processes
(which is of particular importance in the Indian context). Arora (2002) seems to be in agreement
with the assessment of Mooij and de Vos. About the discipline of political science, she states
that ‘[p]olitical scientists have been engrossed in the study of political institutions and pro-
cesses, which resulted in a sheer neglect of the systematic study of public policy’ (ibid.: 46).
She suggests three principles for the study of public policy processes.

• It encompasses more than decision making—policy spaces are more complex than
that (she refers to policy evasion, symbolic policy and the unaccounted/unanticipated
consequences of policy).
• Policy needs to be seen as an ongoing process.
• A political economy perspective is required for holistic analysis that addresses complexity,
including the question, how globalisation affects the autonomy and capacity of national
policy processes.

There are five elements specific to the Indian situation that need to be taken account of in
analyses of Indian policy processes (ibid.: 50, and subsequent discussion): (i) extreme resource
disparities; (ii) uneven representation in governance; (iii) how knowledge power networks
reproduce inequality in the policy process, for instance, by delegitimising local knowledge;
(iv) the context of policy discourse: the nationalist framework of the post-Independence
period and the influence of global discourses more recently; and (v) the institutional relations:
dominance of state institutions post-Independence and the swing to a state failure perspective
with support of market mechanisms.
The accounts of Mooij and de Vos, and of Arora would both probably fall in Grindle’s (1999)
category of ‘comparative institutionalism’, that is, a sociological approach, rather than her sec-
ond category of approaches: those based on economic rational choice frameworks. I summarise
Grindle’s discussion of the differences between these two clusters of frameworks in Table 17.1.
Grindle does the comparison on four points, phrased as questions.
Grindle (1999: 11) also observes that adherents of the two schools ‘have been outspokenly
harsh about the other’:

Those who favor the elegance and parsimony of economic models of political behavior
accuse comparative institutionalists of avoiding rigorous theory and scientific methodology
and of producing primarily descriptive studies. Those who work from within the sociological
tradition retort that economic models produce political banalities and historically inaccurate
analyses that ignore empirical evidence.

Another site of polarisation; or so it seems.

Grindle is of the view that both schools are deficient in important ways. The ‘political
economy of public policy’ perspective has been developed particularly, though not exclusively,
with reference to European and North American policy processes. It carries several biases as a
result; one being the strong assumptions about societal groups actively contesting government
 360
Table 17.1: Rational Choice and Comparative Sociological Approaches to the
Analysis of Policy Processes
Approaches Based on Economic Comparative Sociological Approaches
Particulars Frameworks (rational choice theory) (comparative institutionalism)
Why and how are politicians interested Rational choice explanations of politicians Strong emphasis on institutions and
in shaping policy change? behaviour in a ‘political market’ with votes collectivities, rather than individual
as the currency and access to public choice (‘statecraft’ as theme)
resources as benefits Larger role of contingency
Peter P. Mollinga

Capture of politicians by interest groups Conflict over policy is the ‘normal stuff’ of
and rent seeking politics; emphasis on social interaction
‘Context’ is a strategic decision-making arena in economic, social and policy arenas in
relation to social power
‘Context’ is a complex environment with
history, shaping perspectives, references
and values
How do political institutions affect the Institutions are strategic arenas for Institutions have histories, which shapes
choices made by politicians? individual choice preferences, orientations, values and
strategies of collective actors
How are new institutions created or Intrigued by the creation of new institutions Criticise apolitical explanations of
transformed? that constrain the power of politicians institutional change; new institutions
The behaviour of reformist politicians: how long- are the result of historically embedded
term interest and short-term interest relate conflicts about the distribution of power
Transaction costs in political life to explain and benefits in society
change
Principal-agent problems; role of institutional
designers
What are the consequences of new rules Consequences generate new strategies for More dynamic approach: institutional
of the game for economic and political achieving first order preferences, towards a change creates new sources of conflict,
interaction? new equilibrium new claims for resources, new spaces for
contestation
Source: Based on Grindle (1999: 3–11).
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 361

policy and thus being involved in policy formulation. Grindle shows that developing countries
may be characterised by state-centred policy processes, while these approaches are society-
centred. In developing and transitional countries, policy may be generated primarily in elite
(government) circles. This is an element of Indian policy making also and contributes to the
state-village dichotomy. Perhaps the paradox phrased at the beginning means that India has
state-centric policy making despite a very active civil society. Also, according to Grindle, the
institutional setting of developing and transitional countries may be very unstable and insti-
tutional and policy evolution a different process as a result.
This seems to apply less to the Indian situation. Another strong assumption is the sovereignty
of the voter in electoral processes, which may not apply elsewhere. Such differences suggest a
general point in terms of an analytical approach: that the study of the process of policy needs
to be contextualised historically and geographically. Grindle also identifies three factors that
are, in her view, under-explained: leadership, the role of ideas and successful policies.41 She con-
cludes her review and assessment with a call for more ‘grounded’ research on actual processes of
institutional transformation while ‘seeking to stretch theoretical models’ (Grindle 1999: 21).
This somewhat lengthy highlighting of themes and approaches in the ‘policy as process’
literature means to illustrate that there is a lot to start from when undertaking such an analysis
in the water resources domain. The next step would be a review of the literature on Indian
water resources policy and management with these frameworks in mind. A research agenda
is outlined for this in the concluding section.

A R ESEARCH A GENDA FOR W ATER

S ECTOR G OVERNANCE R EFORM
A premise I start from is that research on water resources governance should not only generate
‘knowledge for understanding’ but also ‘knowledge for doing’. This is a major reason to promote
research on policy processes in the water resources domain. If it is true that ‘we are stuck’ as
regards water sector reform, it may perhaps pay off to focus more analytical attention on the
institutional processes themselves. Grindle phrases this point as follows.

To be relevant in the real world, political economy theory ought to be useful in at least one
of two ways. It ought to be able to model reality by reflecting dynamics of political inter-
actions in the design and implementation of development policy and in the creation or
transformation of institutions. If it can do this, it can inform the political strategies of those
actively engaged in promoting policy and institutional change. Additionally or alternatively,
theory ought to be able to predict the behavior of political agents in designing, adopting,
and implementing policy change or predicting the political consequences of alternative
policy and institutional choices. This is another way of informing the strategic choices that
policy reformers make (ibid.: 12).

I have tried to show that this does not amount to a simple exercise in social engineering and
institutional design to fill a perceived gap, but requires contextualisation of institutional
362 Peter P. Mollinga

dynamics in broader processes of social transformation, notably the process of democratisation.

Without an understanding of the structure and dynamics of India’s political democracy and
incorporation of such insights into reform strategies, it will, in my opinion, be difficult to get
‘unstuck’.
At the substantive level the thrust of this chapter is that the water sector is facing challenges
that cannot be addressed in the current policy and political framework. Reform is not only
to include a re-orientation of policy priorities and approaches, but also the restructuring of
institutional frameworks away from the state-village dichotomy, which I have argued to be a
central feature of the present predicament. New ‘intermediate’ or ‘meso-level’ institutions are
required that allow a negotiated approach to water resources governance. Their absence is a
constraint for reform, but the need for such institutions is an opportunity for getting ‘unstuck’
and contributes to the ‘deepening’ of Indian democracy. At the level of scientific discourse, a
problem is that dichotomous thinking has also crept in. There is a large intellectual challenge
in trying to overcome this. In this regard it is not enough ‘to be aware’ in the abstract; solid
research is needed to understand it better.
The rationale of focussing on the three issues and questions for the transformation of public
policy and its organisational framework that were listed in section two should now be clearer.
How to enrol the water bureaucracy (more constructively) in a reform process, how negotiated
water resources planning and management can occur through institutions that bring together
the different interest groups involved, and how to make progress with the often so poor im-
plementation of public policy and achieve less skewed benefit distribution, seem to me to
be the three core issues for a trajectory of transformation that does not rely on state-directed
development, or market-directed development, or community directed development only,
but acknowledges the need of institutional and organisational diversity adapted to the issues
and contexts concerned.
Research alone can obviously not achieve institutional transformation, but research can
contribute to the identification of opportunities and methodologies to engage in such exercises
more effectively and/or identify the conditions of (im)possibility for certain initiatives or
approaches for change. For this, the simplified images of ‘the state’, ‘the bureaucracy’, ‘the
environmentalists’, ‘the civil engineers’, ’the NGOs’, ‘the international funding agencies’, and
other black boxes that are so frequently used in the debate on water resources policy need
to be unpacked. Such simplifications may be unavoidable in political struggles, but do not
help in understanding when they are taken to be adequate descriptors not requiring further
reflection.
I suggest the following concrete themes and questions for further research to push our
understanding of the politics of Indian water resources policy.42

I—The Rationale, Resilience and Dynamics of the Water Resources Bureaucracy

(a) What are the cultural characteristics of irrigation/water resources departments? How to
understand the demise of field-level technical innovation capacity in the water resources
administration?
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 363

(b) How do rent-seeking and the professional bias towards construction shape the behaviour
of water resources bureaucracies?
(c) What would be implications of different forms of ‘privatisation’ of water resources
bureaucracies?
(d) Which professional challenges would an ‘integrated perspective’ offer to water resources
bureaucracies?

II—Whether and How Inclusive Water Resources Governance is/can be

Consolidated into Institutional Frameworks, Particularly at the
Intermediate/Meso Level

(a) What can be learnt from examples of multi-stakeholder/participatory planning initiatives

in the water resources sector?
(b) Why did the Narmada/Sardar Sarovar conflict not generate more constructive interaction
between state and civil society?
(c) What can be learnt from experiments with intermediate/meso-scale units of water re-
sources management like basin-level organisations?
(d) What kind of state-water users/civil society policy interfaces have emerged in government
water sector programmes, like watershed development, rural and urban drinking water
supply and sanitation programmes and participatory irrigation management pro-
grammes, and how have these translated in policy transformation/evolution? (What
kinds of processes of social and institutional learning are taking place in the water sector
and how do these affect new policy initiatives?)
(e) What role have political office bearers played in the enhancement or obstruction of
water sector reform?
(f ) How are the international water policy discourse and policy priorities being incorporated
into national, state and local level policies and programmes, and what is the meaning
of this?

III—Whether and How Policies/Interventions get Captured and Transformed at

the Local Level by Local Interest Groups, Government Officials and Other Actors

(a) What can be learnt from case studies of successful outscaling and upscaling of ‘grass-
roots’ initiatives (like for instance in watershed development)? How does bottom-up
institutional and technical innovation take place in such instances?
(b) What are the dynamics of bureaucrat-local elite networks in implementation of water
resources policies and programmes?
(c) What is the importance of social and political mobilisation in countervailing policy
capture by local elites?
(d ) What are the multiple agendas and meanings of water policy intervention?
364 Peter P. Mollinga

Notes
1. The year 1992 was also one in which the Report of the Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water was
published. The committee is usually referred to as the Vaidyanathan Committee, after its chairman.
Many active in the sector consider this as a comprehensive and authoritative statement on the ills
of the irrigation sector and their possible remedies. Whether or not, and how, this triggered the new
initiatives in the case of Karnataka is not clear.
2. ‘Water sector’ is very loosely used here to indicate the collection of organisations involved in water
resources ‘development’, governance, management and finance. The core of this network of organ-
isations from a public policy perspective are the organisations involved in water resources ‘develop-
ment’ as conventionally understood: the planning, design and construction of water infrastructure. As
regards government organisations no coherence is implied—one of the issues actually is organisational
and policy fragmentation.
3. In times when change is easily attributed to globalisation it may be important to explicitly make the
point that ideas for water sector policy reform originate from well before the early 1990s, also within
the government. The latter is clear from the 1987 National Water Policy for instance.
4. On Mexican irrigation reform see Kloezen (2002) and Rap (2004); its possible relevance for India is
discussed in Shah, Scott and Buechler (2004).
5. For critiques of India’s most recent National Water Policy see Iyer (2003), Fouzdar (2003),
Bandyopadhyay (2006). Shah, Scott and Buechler (2004) identify the lack of an operational component
as the main weakness of the National Water Policy, as does Iyer (2003).
6. And also, domestically, less far reaching as compared to the electricity sector.
7. This report is available at http://www.psiru.org/reports/2004-12-W-Asia.doc and gives a recent assess-
ment of privatisation of urban water supply in the Asia-Pacific region. In summary it states that ‘The
[multinational] companies are struggling with existing contracts, have policies to withdraw, and
show no enthusiasm for expansion except in China’ (p. 3).
8. For some analysis of this see contributions in Mollinga and Bolding (2004).
9. Interestingly, Anthony Bottrall, Programme Officer at the Ford Foundation New Delhi around 1990
in charge of water resources/irrigation, wrote the following about irrigation reform in 1992. ‘[T]here
could be a possibility of [an irrigation reform] agenda being incorporated into–and thereby reinforcing–
broader-based movements for democratic reform’ (Bottrall 1992: 245). ‘Those currently opposed to
the status quo, or with good reasons to oppose it, include finance ministries (concerned about ID’s
never-ending demands on public funds); politicians and their constituents in regions disadvantaged
by present patterns of water development (either through direct damage, as in waterlogged areas, or
through long neglect, as in tank areas); environmental action groups; local issue-based groups (such
as opponents of state water policies in Maharashtra); and non-agricultural water users, including
urban domestic and industrial users, who suffer from the absence of efficient methods of inter-sectoral
water allocation’ (ibid.: 244). This coalition has not materialised so far.
10. See for example vision statements, outlines of strategies, evaluation documents, annual reports and
publications on the websites of NGOs like WaterAid, WOTR in Maharashtra, Dhan Foundation in
Tamil Nadu, and many others.
11. ‘Relative’ is included in this formulation because it very much depends on what one takes as com-
parison or standard. Given India’s population size it could be argued that there is not very much re-
search, while some areas (both in the geographic and thematic senses) are definitely under-researched.
Nevertheless, there is a large body of literature from which conceptual and policy ideas can be
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 365

derived. The richness of Indian scholarship and scholarship on India is illustrated by its importance
in development studies as a whole. This importance is also visible in water resources research.
12. Other Indian journals that regularly publish on water resources issues on topics relevant to the theme
of this paper (that is, on governance and policy) are the Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics and
the Indian Journal of Public Administration. A regional journal that contains many good papers on
Indian water resources issues is Water Nepal.
13. In her review of the economics literature on irrigation published in 1990, Krishna Bharadwaj states
that literature lacks a ‘social relations’ focus (Bharadwaj 1990). With the rise of New Institutional
Economics (NIE) this is probably less true now than it was in the 1980s, but explicit discussion of
the relations of social power is still rare in economics oriented papers.
14. Examples are some of the publications of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) like the well-
known Dying Wisdom collection on indigenous water resources technologies and institutions. Another
is the Rethinking the Mosaic publication by a collaboration group of Indian and Nepalese scholars
(Moench et al. 1999), and yet another D. K. Mishra’s publications on floods in Bihar (see Mishra
2002).
15. In India ‘action research’ is generally loosely used for any research in the context of implementation,
but it can also have a more political and interactive meaning in relation to emancipatory projects (for
a discussion of the concept see for instance Noffke 1994 and the editorial of the recently established
journal Action Research (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood and Maguire 2003).
16. Ramaswamy Iyer has done a great service to water policy studies with his 2003 book Water: Issues,
Perspectives, Concerns, in which he describes, among other things, the history of certain administrative
and policy processes in the water sector. It can very well be used as a basis for further enquiry into
the dynamics of the India water resources policy process.
17. Hydropolitics at the level of the South Asia region is reasonably well researched (see a.o. publications
by Nepali scholars like Dixit and Gyawali, also see Crow (1995) and Iyer (2003)). These publications
give interpretations of the motives and strategies of the different national government. In the pol-
itics of water the study of hydropolitics is in general one of the better-researched levels. This may
be because it is a very public phenomenon, involving parliamentary debates, discussions in the
national press, formal meetings between delegations of different kinds, and the like. As it is about
the relationships between nations it is also an acceptable topic for political scientists.
18. The authors of these papers may well take a different view. This may have to do with the different
ways in which ‘process’ is understood in different approaches to policy analysis. See the discussion
of Grindle (1999) below for some elaboration.
19. It may also be noted at this point that such research is well established in some parts of the world
and actively mobilised by corporations and governments to do ‘change management’.
20. The report also has interesting things to say on the methodology of action research, which are not
entered here.
21. For the notion of ‘loose concept’ and their potential relevance for interdisciplinary research, see
Löwy (1992). On the idea of boundary objects see Star and Griesemer (1989).
22. Still, the notion of ‘not letting go a drop of water waste to the sea’, which signifies an absolute neglect
of environmental concerns, seems to be the more generally held idea.
23. And, I will add, what is needed is not some ‘formula’ that can be mindlessly applied whenever the
need arises, but an ‘algorithm’, a procedure for decision making that allows flexible responses to
ever-changing conditions within a given (agreed) framework. For one thing, this would require a
public information and database, and sound river basin level hydrological modelling.
366 Peter P. Mollinga

24. I use the word contestation as a general term to refer to a variety of processes through which the
allocation and distribution of water takes place. Contestation is meant to convey the inherently
political character of water resources allocation and distribution. Through which institutions and
organisations contestation is and should be taking place is the core question of a ‘governance’
perspective on water resources management?
25. The empirical evidence for this statement can be found by looking at the type of problems that are
being reported from the field: the problematics of the Water Disputes Tribunals, the new issues in
watershed development, the increased sectoral competition over water, the continuing problem of
improving large-scale irrigation system management, the unsolved problem of the regulation of
groundwater over-extraction, and the like.
26. I hope it is superfluous to remark that this does not mean that all the ‘old’ issues have ceased to
be relevant. They, obviously, continue to be relevant but there is a new agenda to be added that,
so it is suggested, opens new perspectives and opportunities for democratising water resources
management.
27. For an illuminating discussion of these issues in the European context and in the context of a federal
state (Germany), see Moss (2003).
28. I do not think, but this is speculative reasoning, that the vice versa applies very strongly. The overall
dynamics of political democracy and transformation is state governance and administration since the
1990s seems to be driven much more by broader economic and social reform than by water sector
reform. This indicates the declining importance of the water resources bureaucracy in the overall
polity as compared to, say, the first two-three decades after independence.
29. Sheer reference to general categories like the ‘top-down’, hierarchical and prescriptive characteristics of
the state machinery do not suffice as they are unable to account for different dynamics of bureaucracies
with similar characteristics in different contexts.
30. Given only a few short quotations makes this sound like a rather crude statement on the nature of
Indian democracy and the state. This does not do justice to Kaviraj’s rich and nuanced discussion,
to which I refer for context and detail. The point I want to convey is that we need to mobilise such
broader understanding of the state and democracy to make sense of water sector reform processes.
31. This sounds rather evolutionary, but needs not to be understood so. Kaviraj also argues that the form
of political democracy that India has embarked upon is there to stay having entrenched itself in the
way it has. Practically speaking there are a few other options than improving its functioning and
expanding it. This can, of course, not be done by the simple copying of other trajectories, if only
because these have their own serious difficulties.
32. There have been efforts in some states to establish intermediate level governance/planning institutions,
for example at the district level. These generally seem to have been thwarted by a series of factors,
including the unattractiveness of such intermediate structures to MLAs because they are seen to be
competing power centres. There are several examples, also in the water sector, of how MLA member-
ship of such bodies ‘neutralises’ their governance capacity. The Water Users Associations in Andhra
Pradesh may be going this way also. The state-village dichotomy and the institutional gap is thus
actively reproduced in some ways, and thus is not a gap in the sense of empty space.
33. Both sides may feel such a statement is far too simple and crude. However, my point is not about the
details of the respective substantive concerns and arguments, which need to be taken very seriously
indeed, bur about the, for lack of a better phrase, ‘underlying pattern’ acted out in such conflicts.
34. I discuss this issue in more detail in a paper called ‘Sleeping with the enemy’, published in Water
Nepal (Mollinga 2005).
 The Water Resources Policy Process in India 367

35. Exemplary is the alternative proposal published by Paranjpye and Joy (1995), which could have been
a very good basis for a negotiated compromise, but did not catch the imagination of either of the
parties and didn’t make it to the policy agenda. This again suggests that the dichotomy or gap is not
just an oversight or a void, but is actively reproduced through the current dynamics of the system.
36. The danger of this formulation is that the problem is reduced to one of geographical scales or levels.
More is the matter, however. There is definitely a ‘unit of governance’ issue in a geographical sense,
but this unit actually has many boundaries, including political, economic, socio-cultural, and others.
A more proper image would be that of the ‘problemshed’ as the unit of analysis and intervention
(rather than the simple geographical notion of ‘watershed’). For an application of this insight see
the USBR Decision Process Guide http://www.usbr.gov/pmts/guide/probshed.html
37. See Mollinga and Bolding (2004) for a series of papers on the politics of irrigation reform.
38. This concept is evolving to areas outside the domain of inter-state water politics. Turton and Henwood
propose to widen it to a ‘growing discipline in its own right’ (p. 245) focusing on ‘the study of the
authoritative allocation of values in society with respect to water’ (p. 239)—basically, therefore, water
governance or water and politics broadly understood.
39. My focus is on public policy/state policy here.
40. There are cases where policies are introduced without any expectation of implementation of stated
objectives, but to serve other purposes.
41. Grindle makes no reference to the literature on policy discourses and policy narratives, which in
my view have a lot to say on the power of ideas in policy processes. She does make the observation
that ‘ideas may be important means through which international actors become players in domestic
policy debates’ (Grindle 1999: 17). This seems to be very applicable to the water resources domain
and is perhaps what the global politics of water is largely about.
42. My argument should not be misunderstood as an implicit disqualification of other types of research
on water resources reform processes. The only suggestion made is to complement existing research
and perhaps re-orient some of that towards the strategic questions outlined in this chapter.

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 About the Editor and Contributors

E DITOR

Vishwa Ballabh is Professor of Economics and Coordinator for the Centre of Rural Management
at the School of Business and Human Resources, Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI),
Jamshedpur. Prior to joining XLRI, he was Reserve Bank of India Chair Professor at the Institute
of Rural Management, Anand.
Professor Ballabh graduated in Agriculture from Pant Nagar and holds a Ph.D. in Agricul-
tural Economics from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He has been a
post-doctoral fellow at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics
(ICRISAT) and was a visiting scholar at Indiana University, USA, and a visiting scientist at the
International Rice Research Institute, Philippines. He has over 20 years of teaching and research
experience. His research interests include institutions and natural resource management and
agricultural development. He is a member of several national and international professional
societies in agricultural and natural resource economics. He was vice president of the Indian
Society of Agricultural Economics in 1996–97. He has participated in several national and
international conferences and has been consultant to several national and international devel-
opment organisations such as the Ford Foundation, Royal Netherlands Embassy, UNICEF and
International Water Management Institute.
He has published widely and edited/co-edited books: Farm Forestry in South
Asia, Co-operative Management of Natural Resources and Institutional Alternatives and
Governance of Agriculture. He is presently co-editing a book (with Jasveen Jairath) —
Droughts and Integrated Water Resources Management in South Asia: Issues, Alternatives and Futures.
He has also co-authored a monograph titled Organising for Rural Development.
372 Governance of Water

C ONTRIBUTORS

Kameshwar Choudhary is currently Professor of Sociology at the School of Rural Manage-

ment, KIIT, Deemed University, Bhubaneshwar. Prior to this he was Professor in the Department
of Sociology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has also taught at the Department of
Sociology, Institute of Social Sciences, Agra, and the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. He
has contributed several papers to a number of reputed journals on socio-political, educational
and development issues. He has also worked in the area of natural resource management. He
has held an associate-ship of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He was also visit-
ing fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His publications include: Intellectual
and Society and Globalisation, Governance Reforms and Development in India.

Ashok Gulati is currently International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Director in
Asia based in IFPRI’s New Delhi Office. He has served as Director of the Markets, Trade and
Institutions Division of IFPRI in Washington D.C., from January 2001 to February 2006. Before
joining IFPRI, Dr Gulati was a NABARD Chair Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth
in Delhi, and a member of the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India. His
special areas of research include analysis and policy advice on issues related to agricultural
markets and development of value chains; agriculture trade liberalisation and negotiations in
WTO with a focus on the likely implications on developing country interests, etc. Dr Gulati
has published widely in national and international research journals, rendered policy advice
to the Government of India, and interacted closely with the corporate sector involved in agri-
business, the farmer groups, and the civil society organisations. His publications include: WTO
Negotiations on Agriculture and Developing Countries (forthcoming 2008) with Anwarul Hoda;
The Dragon and the Elephant: Rural Development and Agricultural Reform Experiences in China and
India (2007) co-edited with Shenggen Fan; and Agricultural Diversification and Smallholders in
South Asia (2007) co-edited with P.K. Joshi and Ralph Cummings.

Ramaswamy R. Iyer is Honorary Research Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New
Delhi. A former civil servant, he was Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources in the Government
of India from 1985 to 1987. After leaving the Government, he worked as Research professor
in the Centre for Policy Research from 1990 to 1999. He was a member of important review
committees on the Sardar Sarovar and Tehri Projects (1993–97); of the National Commission
on Integrated Water Resources Development Plan of the Government of India (1997–99);
and of a Panel set up by the Government of India to assist it in its work in the context of the
examination by the Neutral Expert of the India-Pakistan differences over the Baglihar Project
under the Indus Waters Treaty (2005–06). He has been a consultant on different occasions to
the World Bank, World Commission on Dams, UNDP, IWMI, and the European Commission,
among others. He has been closely associated with the efforts under the aegis of the Madras
Institute of Development Studies to bring the farmers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka together
 About the Editor and Contributors 373

in a ‘Cauvery Family’ for the promotion of understanding and cooperation. He has written
extensively on water-related issues. He has also published two books—WATER: Perspectives,
Issues and Concerns and Towards Water Wisdom: Limits, Justice, Harmony—written numerous
papers and articles, as well as contributed chapters to several edited books.

Jasveen Jairath is currently Regional Coordinator South Asia CAPNET Programme based
at Hyderabad. She began her career as an electrical engineer. She has a Masters in Political
Economy from the New School for Social Research, New York, and a doctorate in economics
from CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been engaged with water issues
in a prominently political context through research, advocacy and networking. Theoretical
interpretations of intensive field investigations carried out by her in Punjab, Maharashtra and
Andhra Pradesh have focussed on structural inequities in water sector that underlie current water
crises. Through her studies and experimental forays on participatory irrigation management,
droughts and urban water sanitation, she has emphasised the water problematique as one of
monopolistic appropriation as opposed to merely that of low quantum or mis-management
that is typically highlighted in popular discourse on water. She has served as a member of
the board of governors of World Water Council, a prominent member of the Global Water
Partnership from South Asia. Her edited collection of essays of droughts in South Asia is due
for publication in 2008.

S. Janakarajan is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He

obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Madras and completed his post-doctoral
work at Cornell University, USA. He was subsequently Visiting Professor at Oxford University,
UK. His areas of specialisation include water management, irrigation institutions, water con-
flicts, urban and peri-urban issues, drinking water and sanitation, stakeholder analysis and
dialogues. He has written several research papers and has also been a co-editor of various books.

K.J. Joy is Senior Fellow with the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management
(SOPPECOM), Pune. An activist-researcher, Joy has been a Fulbright Scholar at University of
California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Fellow at CISED. His research interests centre on people’s
institutions for natural resource management. He has co-authored a number of books on water,
watershed and energy issues, including Sustainable Technology: Making the Sardar Sarovar Project
Viable; Banking on Biomass: A New Strategy for Sustainable Prosperity Based on Renewable Energy
and Dispersed Industrialisation; Watershed Based Development: A Source Book and the forthcoming
Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making.

Seema Kulkarni is presently Fellow and Co-ordinator of the Women and Water Network
with SOPPECOM, Pune. She holds an MA degree in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai. She has over 10 years of experience of working in drought-prone rural areas
of Maharashtra. Her key area of interest is Gender and Natural Resource Management. She also
works on the question of rural deserted women and their livelihoods. She was associated with
374 Governance of Water

the women’s movement in Sangli district of Maharashtra, working on issues of the peasant
women. She has contributed several articles for various journals and conferences on gender
and rural livelihoods. She has authored and co-authored the following publications: Intensive
Cultivation on Small Plots and Women, Water and Livelihoods.

Sudhakar Mishra is a freelance consultant working for the interests of the handlooms and
handicrafts sector in Orissa. After completing post graduation from IRMA, Sudhakar worked
in the cooperative sector for over 10 years. During this period he travelled extensively in India
and abroad and seen the cooperatives from close quarters. He took active interest in market
integration for the Producers’ Cooperatives products. Later he worked as Research Associate at
IRMA. He was also associated as a consultant to Oxfam’s livelihood augmentation programmes
in Orissa.

Peter P. Mollinga is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development Studies (ZEF) in Bonn,
Germany. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor at the Irrigation and Water Engineering group
at Wageningen Agricultural University, the Netherlands. He is also Convener of SaciWATERs
(South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies), Hyderabad, India.
He has worked on irrigation management and reform, and more generally on the politics of
water. He is presently involved in land and water management related research in Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan and India. His academic interest lies in the integration of natural and social science
perspectives through the interdisciplinary study of water resources.

Vishal Narain is an Associate Professor with the School of Public Policy and Governance at
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. He holds a Ph.D. from Wageningen University,
the Netherlands. His research and teaching interests are in the analysis of public policy and
institutions, governance and management of natural resources, and water policy and irriga-
tion management reform. He has authored a book Institutions, Technology and Water Control;
Water Users’ Associations and Irrigation Management Reform in Two Large-scale Systems in India.
His research has also been published in international refereed journals like Water Policy and
Environment and Urbanisation.

Hemant Kumar Padhiari is a doctoral (Fellow) student at the Institute of Rural Management,
Anand. He has done his Masters in Environmental Engineering and also has a Bachelor degree
in Civil Engineering. He also worked as a project engineer for a few years with a construction
firm. His areas of interest include natural resource management and environmental manage-
ment. His current research work focusses on organisational and management aspects of service
delivery in public irrigation systems.

Sushil Pandey is a Senior Agricultural Economist and Deputy Head of the Social Sciences
Division at the International Rice Research Institute, Philippines. His professional areas of
expertise include agricultural research and development, institutional aspects of natural
resource management and policy analysis. In addition to this broad area, his research has
 About the Editor and Contributors 375

focussed on microeconomic analysis of farmers’ livelihood systems in unfavourable rainfed

rice environments, risk coping mechanisms, constraints to technology adoption, and the
dynamics of land use changes. He has co-authored/edited five books and has published over
50 research papers and book chapters.

Suhas Paranjape is Visiting Fellow at CISED and Senior Fellow with SOPPECOM, Pune. He
is also founding member of the Lok Vidnyan Sanghatana. His interests cover the area of water,
energy and biomass resources. He has co-authored a number of books in these areas: Sustainable
Technology: Making the Sardar Sarovar Project Viable; Banking on Biomass: A New Strategy for Sus-
tainable Prosperity Based on Renewable Energy and Dispersed Industrialisation; Watershed Based
Development: A Source Book; and the forthcoming Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in
the Making.

R. Parthasarathy is currently Director of Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Gota,

Ahmedabad. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Institute of Social and Economic Change,
Bangalore. Professor Parthasarathy was the HUDCO Chair Professor at CEPT University,
Ahmedabad and has been Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, USA and
at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research interests are broadly in
the area of Natural Resources Management and have published extensively on issues relating
to large-scale irrigation systems.

Anjal Prakash is currently Programme Officer with the Policy and Partnership group
of WaterAid India, based at New Delhi. He won the 2000 Ford Foundation scholarship to
Wageningen University, The Netherlands for perusing a Ph.D. in Environmental Science.
Dr Prakash has worked and researched in Gujarat since 1997 on issues of groundwater irrigation
and management while being associated with VIKSAT, Nehru Foundation for Development
in Ahmedabad. He also worked with the Government of Gujarat’s rural drinking water sup-
ply projects by being associated with Water and Sanitation Management Organisation in
Gandhinagar. His research interests include equity and sustainability of water management
in South Asia and social inclusion in water supply and sanitation projects.

K.V. Raju is Professor and Head, Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources,
Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He has also been Visiting Professor at the
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, and Visiting Research Fellow in the International Food
Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C., USA. He had also worked in the International Water
Management Institute, Agro-Climatic Regional Planning Unit of the Planning Commission,
and Institute for Rural Management, Anand. Dr Raju has published widely in national and
international research journals.

Esha Shah is Research Fellow with the Institute of Development Studies, University of
Sussex. She was formerly a Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment
and Development (CISED), Bangalore. She has authored a book Social Designs: Tank Irrigation
376 Governance of Water

Technology and Agrarian Transformation in Karnataka. Esha is an environmental engineer turned

social scientist whose main research interest involves anthropology and history of science and
technology. Her recent research activities include the politics of the knowledge generation,
risk and uncertainty of new and emerging technologies in developing societies, and history
of the Green Revolution.

Tushaar Shah is currently Principal Scientist at the Colombo-based International Water Man-
agement Institute (IWMI) in their India office. He has also served as former Director of IRMA.
Trained as an economist and management specialist, his research interest lies in institutions
and policies for groundwater management, a subject on which he has published extensively. In
a research career spanning 25 years, he has worked extensively on water policy and institutions
with a strong focus on the governance of groundwater economies of nations. He has published
five books and over 50 research papers. Dr Shah also advises the Planning Commission of the
Government of India on the issues of water policy and water governance. He was honoured
with the Outstanding Scientist award of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR) in 2002.

Manoj T. Thomas is currently Assistant Professor in Strategic Management Area at XLRI

School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur. A civil engineer from NIT Raipur,
he did his post graduation in rural management from the Institute of Rural Management,
Anand. In his doctoral work at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, he worked on the
dynamics of fee collection in large irrigation projects. He has been working in the areas of rural
management and management of natural resources for more than a decade and has a varied
experience in field level implementation and managing research consulting projects.
 Index

absolute droughts, 50 Beneficiary Farmers’ Associations (BFAs), 318

agrarian sector, 207, 212 bhaichaara-based organisation, Haryana, 169
agrarian structure, 168 Bihar, lack of public water supply system, 309
agricultural growth, Bordos, 256
Bihar, 213 Borewells,
east India, 212 and pump sets, 198t, 200–01t, 203t
Gujarat, 219–227 cost-effective technology for, 202
West Bengal, 212 density of, 196
agricultural practices, 149, 150 British colonial administration, 352
agriculture subsidy, 104 building of civil society, 137
agriculture, bureaucracies, centralisation of India’s, 353
during Green Revolution, 224–27
capitalist development in, 221 Calamity Relief Fund (CRF), 51
impact on water quality, 3 CALFED Bay-Delta Program, 273–274
agriculture/industry water conflicts, 22 canal irrigation, 106, 120, 159, 163, 350, 356
agro-ecology of Gujarat, 216, 217t canal irrigation financing in India, 91
Almatti project, 21 canal irrigation systems, 104, 115, 170
Andhra Pradesh State Irrigation Development canal management/maintenance, 103, 106
Corporation, 92 canal water for irrigation, 20
Andhra Pradesh Water and Trees Act, 315 canal water pricing, 89, 96, 103–04
Andhra Pradesh, capital mobilisation by private sector, 91
groundwater over-exploitation, 315 cash-crop production, 224
reform programme, 165 Cauvery water dispute, 4, 21, 28, 349
WUAs, 93 Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal award, 4
area irrigated by source, 223t, 225t Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) of India,
area under principle crops, 223t 226, 249, 304n
Asonpur village, 196, 206, 207, 209 Central Groundwater Authority, 20, 249
Atchakat, 139, 149, 151 centre and states, relations between, 185
landholding pattern in, 142, 143 CETPs. See Common Effluent Treatment Plants
schematic map of, 141f Chikotra Valley issue, 276
China,
basins, closure of, 349 collectives, 240
bavi irrigation, 149–150 electricity supply industry, 245
bavi water, transportation of, 152f irrigation reforms, 330
378 Governance of Water

local government and party organisation, 243 culture fishery, 322

socio-economic and institutional preconditions, cumulative refinance, 204
251
taxes on farmers, 243 dam review process, 274, 275
village governance institutions, 243 DDP. See Desert Development Programme
village groundwater economy, 244 Decentralisation, 119, 162, 168, 169
water bureaucracy, 250, 252 decentralised recharge movement, 326
water management, 248, 249, 250 decentralised water management, 52
Chinese Water Law, 245 deep tube well (DTW), 240
civil society, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 21, 31–32, 38, 50, deliberative democracy model, and Jürgen
100, 137–39, 156–57, 159, 189, 190, 191, 195, Habermas, 139, 271
229, 270, 277, 279, 280, 297, 298, 306, 340 demand forms, 112
CNA. See National Water Commission demand management initiatives, 251
collaborative policy making, 270–73 demographic trends in India, 43
collective action, 145–48 Desert Development Programme (DDP), 52
Command Area Development Agencies (CADAs), desirable water policy, 342
318 developed states, rivalry amongst, 186
commission agents, 206t development policy, 139, 156
Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water, Report development processes, 6
of, 90, 343, 364n Development Sociology group, 161
Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs), 291 disasters and poverty, 40
common pool resource (CPR), 272, 284n, 287 dispute resolution mechanism, 189–190
communitarian model, 319 distribution of households, 129t
community formation, 138 DPAP. See Drought Prone Areas Programme
community-based associations, 137, 139 drinking water
community-level drinking water committee, 73 sector, 68
comparative institutionalism, 359 shortage of, 4
competitive populism, 353 drought declaration, process of, 50, 54
conflict management techniques, 190 Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP), 52
conflicts and sustainable development, degrees drought proofing, 50, 54
of, 297f drought relief measures, 51
conflicts, 294, 295 drought-induced impacts, 55
consensus and conflict theories, 139 drought-proneness, 44
Constitution of India, 168, 295 droughts, 22, 26, 36–42, 44, 45, 49, 50–51, 53,
control relations, 165 54–56
corporate governance, 18 droughts discourse, 37, 48
cost recovery objectives, 106 DTW. See deep tube well
COTAS (Acquifer Management Councils) 257–260 Dublin conference, 1992, 269, 358
County Water Bureau, 249
CPR. See common pool resource ecological adversities, 48
‘crafting institutions’, 161, 162 economic growth and urbanisation, 253
Credit-Subsidy Programme, 199, 202 economic individualism, 221
CRF. See Calamity Relief Fund economic reforms, 161
crop output, 224 electrical power,
cropping pattern, change in, 224 supply, 51
crops rotation, 151, 153 consumption of, 315
cultivation risk, 149 electricity-irrigation nexus, 245
 Index 379

electrification of villages, 223 global water sector, 307

employment and forced migration, 293 governance, 6, 11, 18, 36, 55, 278, 280, 313
Employment Assurance Scheme, 347 accountability in, 168
Englebright dam, 274 alternate system of, 57
Environment Protection Rules for Development crisis of, 189
and Protection of Ground Water, draft, 226 definition by Constitution, 354
environmental police force, 256 design and operation of, 53
environmental pollution, 301 in development discourse, 269
‘equitable appropriation’ doctrine, 184 in water sector, 164
equity, institutional mechanism of, 37
approach, 69 limitations of, 39
in water entitlements, 71–72 modernist paradigm of governance, 271
in voice, 72–73 operational features of, 54
Eradi (Ravi-Beas) Tribunal, 181, 183 performance of states, 347
ethnography, role of, 139, 140 problems with, 272
exchange participants, 329 structure of, 101
perspectives on, 100
FAIA. See Financially Autonomous Irrigation Government of India Water Policy, 315
Agency government role, 118
Fariani village, 196, 209 governmental agencies, 20
farm income stagnation, 188 Green Revolution, 187, 219
farm power supply, metering of, 316 groundwater, 65
farmers’ organisations, 161
access, 290
farming community, 188, 207, 295
bills, 250
Federal Electricity Commission (FEC), 256
buyers, 210t, 211t
Federal Water Law, Mexico, 254
concessions, 256
feminist water advocates, 66, 70, 74
demand management, 329
financial autonomy, 117
depletion, 238, 239
Financially Autonomous Irrigation Agency (FAIA),
development, 3, 195–97t, 199, 202, 206, 212,
92
213
Fish Farmers’ Development Agencies, 322
ecology and canal network, 229
fisher communities, 321
economy, 239, 262
fishery cooperatives, 319, 321
exploitation, 30, 230
floods, 26
institutions and policies, 238
food, 43
Free Boring Scheme, 199 law and policy, 250
mining, 218
Ganges Treaty, 28 output response, 128
gender equity, 67–70 overdraft, 289
gender inclusive governance, 61 ownership rights, 196, 239, 288
gender-just agenda for natural resources, 61, 62 pollution, 289, 295
gender participation in drinking water sector, 68 recharge, 325
General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS), resources, access to, 199, 226
9, 270 utilisation, 291, 294
gestation lags, 81 withdrawals, regulations on, 324
Global Water Partnership (GWP) Framework for commercial transactions of, 295
Action, 269 use and abuse of, 289–94
380 Governance of Water

groundwater governance, 64, 195–214, 237 IMT. See irrigation management transfer
in Gujarat, 215–36 incentive concentration, 330
in South Asia, China and Mexico, 237–66 incentive diffusion or perversion, 330
in South Asia, China and Mexico, 261t incentives and authority, structures of, 331
ecological framework for, 232 incentives structure, 117
political economy of, 215–36 Independent Regulatory Commission for Canal
groundwater irrigation, 196, 237, 238 Irrigation (IRCCI), 96
costs of, 245 India,
Gujarat, 220–227 bureaucracy, 353
in India, 289 demographic trends in, 43
groundwater markets, 207–12, 215, 320, 321 diversity of contexts, 277
Groundwater Model Bill, 225 electricity pricing policies, 245
Guanajuato, 256, 258 inland fishery, 322
Guanajuato COTAS (Technical Councils for Water institutional experience in water sector, 313
Management), 258, 259 political democracy, 351
Guanajuato Water Resources Council, 258 water economy, 309
Gujarat Agriculture Commission, 125 water sector reforms, 340
Gujarat, agricultural growth, 231 Indian Easement Acts, 1882, 221
Gujarat Irrigation Department, 125 Indian Irrigation Commission, 148
Gujarat Water Resources Development Corporation Indian irrigation reforms, 90
(GWRDC), 92, 224 Indian policy processes, 359
Gujarat, Indian rivers, interlinking of, 270
agricultural growth, 219–27 Indian water resources policy, 362
agro-ecology of, 216, 217t Indian water sector, 11, 12, 315, 329, 341
decline in groundwater level, 215 IndianPIM, 161, 163
inland fishery, 322, 323 Indus Waters Treaty, 28, 179
Joint Irrigation Management Programme, 317 informal credit market, 202
natural resources distribution, 230 inland fishery, 322, 323
Public Tubewell Transfer programme, 331 Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), 12
rainfall, 216 Institute of Water Studies, 291
water scarcity, 215, 218 institutional arrangements for groundwater irri-
WUAs in, 166 gation, 241–42t
institutional changes, 310, 313, 331
Habermasian notion of communicative rationality, institutional credit support, 204
139 institutional environment, 331
Haryana, institutional experience in water sector, 313
bhaichaara-based organisation, 169 institutional finance, 212, 225
WUAs in, 165, 166 institutional interventions, 314f
Hatberia village, 196 institutional reforms, 93, 94
Helsinki Rules, 28, 184 institutional transformation, 362
hollow state, 102 institutions, 307
hydropolitics, 357 Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM),
10, 38, 70, 270, 348
IDNDR. See International Decade for Natural Intensive Fish Culture Programme, 322
Disaster Reduction International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduc-
IFRC. See International Federation of Red Cross tion (IDNDR), 38
 Index 381

International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC), 39 IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program, 314, 344
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction IWRM. See Integrated Water Resources Man-
(ISDR), 38 agement
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), IWRM debate, 358
237, 277
inter-state politics, 357 Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, 68
inter-state river-water disputes, 4, 12, 21, 174–92, Joint Irrigation Management Programme, Gujarat,
283 317
Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956, 183, 184 jowar tithi, 150
IRCCI. See Independent Regulatory Commission
for Canal Irrigation Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Limited (KNNL), 92
IRMA. See Institute of Rural Management, Anand Karnataka Tank Irrigation Project, 141, 142
IRMA Silver Jubilee Symposium, 12 Karnataka,
irrigated agriculture, 3, 222 budgetary allocation for water projects, 91
irrigation agencies, 91, 96 irrigation reforms, 140, 339
irrigation bureaucracy, 118 WUAs in, 165
irrigation cess, 100, 105 KBJNL. See Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited
Irrigation Commission, 125, 221 Khemaupur village, 209
irrigation costs, 81 KNNL. See Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Limited
Irrigation Department, Gujarat, 125 Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KFW), 66
Irrigation Finance Corporation, 91 Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited (KBJNL), 91
irrigation infrastructure, 148 Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal, 21, 183
irrigation management transfer (IMT), 124, 160, Kutch branch canal (KBC), 228
163, 317
irrigation management, 95, 159 land revenue system, 222
irrigation needs, 106, 153 land types, 149
irrigation organisation, China, 240 large canal irrigation systems, 100, 103
irrigation potential, 219 Law of the Nation’s Waters, 254
irrigation projects, ‘least worst scenario’, 70
farmers’ participation in, 161 leather industry, 291, 297
farmer involvement in, 87 local resource management, 253
Gujarat, 223
irrigation reforms, 164, 330 Machhahi village, 196, 209
irrigation sector, 4, 79 Mahabubnagar, 55
irrigation services, 105 Maharashtra Rajya Dharangrasth va Prakalpagrasth
irrigation sources, 126 Shetkari Parishad, 276
irrigation subsidies, 79–84, 87, 90, 96, 97 Maharashtra,
irrigation systems, 87, 112 law on irrigation wells, 314
irrigation timings, 154 WUAs in, 165, 166
irrigation use, 125 Mahi Right Bank Canal (MRBC), 107
irrigation water sources, 149 major projects for storage/diversion of river waters,
irrigation, 81, 84, 85, 224 30
ISDR. See International Strategy for Disaster major projects, 22, 25
Reduction ‘management by objectives’ (MBO), 119
IWMI. See International Water Management market forces, 55
Institute market interactions for a public organisation, 102f
382 Governance of Water

market, 55, 101 National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF), 51

MBO. See ‘management by objectives’ National Commission for Integrated Water Re-
mean values of land area, Thalota, 129t sources Development Plan (NCIWRDP), 23, 24
medium projects, 22 national groundwater economies structure, 262t
melatto, 149 National Registry of Water Rights, 254, 255
Mexico, National Sample Survey (NSS), 309
agrarian structure, 254 National Water Commission (CNA), 254, 260
groundwater depletion, 253 National Water Law, 31, 250
groundwater economy reforms, 253 National Water Policy (NWP), 10, 125, 253, 270,
land reforms, 254 340, 343
population imbalance, 253 national water-grid, 26
power supply to agricultural users, 256 natural resource data management systems
water availability, 253 (NRDMS), 283
Water Law, 254, 260 natural resource management, 167, 169
WUAs, 164, 255 natural resources, 186
MID. See Minor Irrigation Department NCCF. See National Calamity Contingency Fund
migration due to environmental degradation, 293, NCIWRDP. See National Commission for Integrated
94 Water Resources Development Plan
minimum support prices, 103 needs approach, 68
Minor Irrigation Department (MID), 66 Net State Domestic Product (NSDP), 186
officials’ attitude, 146 Network Reform programme, 246
farmers’ attitude towards, 147 New Institutional Economics (NIE), 307, 320
rule making of, 146 new public management, 119
MRBC. See Mahi Right Bank Canal NRDMS. See natural resource data management
organisational structure of, 107, 108f systems
recovery of irrigation charges, 109t NSS. See National Sample Survey
MSD. See multi-stakeholder dialogue
MSPs. See Multi-Stakeholder Participation/ O&M investments in canals, 125
Platforms Ocampo COTAS, 259
Mukti Sangharsh Movement, 70 organisational plurality, 169
Mullapperiyar agreement, 21 Orissa power reforms, 316
multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD), 299, 300 Ostrom, Elinor, 162
Multi-Stakeholder Participation/Platforms (MSPs), over-extraction from aquifers, 350
10, 269–86
multi-stakeholder processes, 271 Palar Basin Board, 302
Multi-Stakeholders’ Committee, 301, 303 Palar River Basin, 290
groundwater use in, 294
NABARD. See National Bank for Agriculture and MSD meeting, 300
Rural Development pollution in, 297
Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), 227 sample survey, 292, 293
Narmada canal, 228 verdict against tanners of, 296
Narmada river, 227 Panchayati Raj Act, 7
Narmada Valley Development Plan (NVDP), 227 Pani Panchayat, 70
Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal, 183 Parambikulam Aliyar agreement, 21
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Develop- participation and democratisation, 162
ment (NABARD), 205t, 212, 239 Participatory Irrigation Development and Manage-
National Bureau of Soil Survey and Planning, 216 ment (PIDM), 66
 Index 383

Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), 10, 30, pump irrigation markets, 207
93, 115, 159–163, 317 pump sets number, 196
project villages, Gujarat, 127t Punjab and Haryana, disputes between, 179
working group, 93 Punjab settlement, 180
academic constituency, 161 Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, 182
Andhra Pradesh experiment, 116 Punjab, 187, 188
breaking the impasse in, 170
difficulties of, 124 Qin Shi Huangdi, 247
disenchantment with, 165
DSC’s experience in, 116 rainwater harvesting, 25, 26, 325
impasse of scale, 166 Rampur village, 209
implementation in India, 116 Ravi-Beas water dispute, 21, 179–82, 187
Indian Network on (IndianPIM), 161, 163 recovery process, 110, 111, 113, 120
initiation of, 227 recovery system, 114, 119
legal framework for, 139 reform process, 102, 254, 317
social effects of, 167 regulations, 226
PIM/IMT programmes, 318 regulatory management actions, 226
participatory organisations, 73 relations between centre-states/states-states, 185
participatory water governance (PWG), 270 Report of the Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water,
Philippines model, 164 343
PIDM. See Participatory Irrigation Development Report of the World Commission on Dams (WCDs),
and Management 273
PIM. See Participatory Irrigation Management reservoir operations, 94
policy processes, 356, 358–360 resistance, impasse of, 165
political and administrative institutions, 352, 354 resource use efficiency, 103
politics of water, 356 revenue deficits, 85
pollution generation, 288, 291 rights and entitlements, 159
population increase, 42 Rio conference, 358
power supply metering, 316 riparian doctrine, 182
power supply to agricultural users, Mexico, 256 risk management, 38, 40
precipitation, 44 River Boards Act 1956, 21
presas, 256 river development agreements between states, 175
primary pump set markets, 204 river linking project, 11, 26
private-public participation, 118 river-water sharing, 184
privatisation, 28, 162 RO cottage industry, 323
project-affected persons, 22 rotational water distribution, 347
project-level federations, 94 rule making role of the state, 156
project-level users organisations, 94 rural water supply, 19
Provincial Water Bureau, 249 rural/urban water conflicts, 22
public and private organisations, 119
public investment, 86 salinisation problem, 238
public management reform, 101 Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), 51
public policy, political economy of, 359 Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), 216, 227–30, 324, 325
public science, 275 scarce resource use, 67
public sector reform, 101 scarcity and surplus, 42
Public Tubewell Transfer programme, Gujarat, Second International Water Tribunal, 292
327t, 331 self-enforcement, 330
384 Governance of Water

sellers’ monopoly power, 133 tanning technology, 291

SGRY. See Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana Tarun Bharat Sangh, 325
sharecropping, 149 tax and non-tax revenue, 104
Shetmajoor Kashtakari Shetkari Sanghattana (SKSS), Taxation Enquiry Commission, 90, 222
276 Tembu Lift Irrigation Scheme (TLIS), 276
Sinchai Samitis, 317 Tenancy Act, Gujarat, 222
social analysis, criticality of, 312f Thalota, 126, 127t, 128, 129–131, 133, 135n
social benefits, 103 total quality management (TQM), 119
social dialogue approach, 299 Township Water Bureau, 249
social dislocation, 55 Tranol, 133
social movements, 6, 11, 307, 354, 355 transaction costs, 316, 317, 329, 330
social organisations, 169 transparency in transactions, 96
Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem tradeable water rights, 95
Management (SOPPECOM), 70, 163, 172, 276 tube well companies in Thalota, 131t
Soil Survey and Land Use Organisation, 292 tube well water charges, 130
South Asia and North China, 237, 238, 245 tube wells, 224, 225, 240, 320
South Asia energy costs of groundwater, 245 Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal, 346
South Asian water administration, 247, 248f
SSP. See Sardar Sarovar Project Uchchangi Dam issue, 276
stakeholder analysis, 299 UKP. See Upper Krishna Project
state agencies and farmers, 148 UN Convention, 28
State Electricity Boards (SEBs), 245, 315 Unidades de Riego, 257
state institutions, 156 unified governance system, 246–47
State Water Commission of Guanajuato (CEAG), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
258, 264n 269
State Water Management Council, 258 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 9
subsidies, 202, 206, 213, 234n, 298, 322, 323 Upper Krishna Project (UKP), 91
subsidising agriculture, 103 urban water supply, 19
Sukhomajari experiment, 329 ‘use and need management’, 47
summer cropping, 155 user involvement, 94
supply-side augmentation, 30 Uttar Pradesh government support, 212
Supreme Court, environmental decision of, 249
surface water, 3, 4, 15, 25, 43, 63, 71, 73, 86, 134, Vaidyanathan Committee report, 81, 89, 92
216, 349 village committees (VCs), 240
Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL), 180, 181 village community, 353
Swayambhoo water institutions, 327–28t, 325, 329 village governance institutions, China, 243
Switzerland, water economy of, 309–310 village groundwater economies, 239, 244t
SYL. See Sutlej Yamuna Link Village Vidyut Sangha, 316
Visvesvaraya Committee, 221
talati, corruption charges against, 114 volumetric pricing, 105, 106
Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD)
Board, 292 warabandi rotation schedule, 154
tank irrigation, 148–150 Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act,
Tank Irrigation Committee (TIC), 142 295
Tank Irrigation Project, 142 water,
tank water availability, 154 agenda for action, 29
tank construction quality, 147 and environmental protection laws, 295
 Index 385

as a social good, 278 water policy research agenda, 346

as an economic good, 8, 9, 65, 282 water politics, 21, 32
as an ecosystem resource, 272 water pollution, 291, 292
as basic human right, 282 water pricing, 30, 87, 96, 103–105, 125–129, 207
availability, 3, 31, 174 water problems, 64, 310
commodification of, 8 water provision and economic growth, 308f
common pool character of, 71 water quality, 3
compartmentalisation of, 71 water rates, 29, 134
contestation over, 11 water requirements, 47
demand for, 15 water resource distribution, 174
distribution and allocation, 349 water resource management, 250, 356
diversion of, 144 water resources, 4, 8
negotiated allocation, 350 alternative approaches to, 342
wastage of, 86 community management of, 124
water abundance, determination of, 65 global politics of, 358
water access, 9, 43, 63, 72, 287 integration of, 71
Water Affairs Bureau, 248 mismanagement of, 218
water analyses, 49 politics of policy on, 357
water bureau structure, 249 sub-systems of, 298
water bureaucracies, 246, 341 water resources bureaucracy, 341, 354, 362
water charges collection, 90, 96, 107, 108, 110 Water Resources Consolidation (WRC) projects,
water conflicts, 31 94
water control, 356 water resources development (WRD), 48, 49
water crisis, 23, 296f water resources development and management
water disasters, 38 (WRD&M), 39, 47
water disputes, 186, 187 water resources governance, 355, 356, 363
water distribution, 86, 144, 148, 156, 347 water resources management, 189, 340, 343, 348,
water economy, 307, 309, 310, 311f 349, 356
water entitlement for women, 72 water resources policies, 343–45, 356, 357
‘water for life’, 29, 30 water rights, 27, 62, 72, 106, 124, 255
water governance, 5–8, 19, 20, 21, 61, 190, 269–86 water risks, 37–39
water harvesting, 10 water rotation rules, 153, 154
water infrastructure, 340 water scarcity, 41–46, 64, 288
water institutions and policies, 252t, 307 aggravation of, 11
water level decline, 287, 288 de-linking from WRD, 56
water management, 47, 65, 133, 149, 248 determination of, 65
decentralisation of, 66 in Gujarat, 218
deficiencies in, 46 local responses to, 54
localised systems of, 40 patterns of, 37
Water Management and Service Bureaux, 249 pilferage due to, 5
water management regulations, 250 water sector reform, 10, 15, 66, 340, 341, 342, 356,
water management transfer programmes, 95 361, 362
water management use, 343 water sector,
water markets, 5, 27, 29, 195, 196, 209, 221, 225, categories of, 72
288 challenges faced by, 348, 362
water outlets, 154 feminist movement in, 64
water overdraft, 64, 219 formalisation of, 308
386 Governance of Water

planning in, 71 in Gujarat, 126, 166

privatisation of, 117, 118 in Haryana, 165, 166
structural dynamics of, 346 in India, 93
water sellers, 209 in Karnataka, 165
water service, 73, 105, 324 in Maharashtra, 165, 166
water sharing, 156, 157 in Mexico, 164, 255
water sources, 3, 31 literature on, 170
water subsidies, 86 water-induced adversities, 50
water supply, 3, 24, 309 watershed development, 25, 52, 227
water tank outlets, 143 Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), 12, 49
water trading, 208, 255 WCD. See World Commission on Dams
water transport regulation, 288 well irrigation, 5, 221, 223, 289
water use, 4, 24, 30, 63, 85 Western India States Agency, 222
Water Users Association (WUA), 10, 73, 95, 317 ‘willingness-to-pay’, 105
agrarian relationships of, 167 Women, 62, 63, 68, 69, 72
and tube well companies, 128 World Bank Staff Appraisal Report, 141
design characteristics of, 170 World Commission on Dams, 355, 358
development tasks of, 138 World Trade Organization (WTO), 358
establishment of, 159, 164, 166, 167, 168 WRC. See Water Resources Consolidation
financial sustainability of, 94 WRD&M. See water resources development and
in Andhra Pradesh, 93 management