Our ideas & institutions dealing with water management have become out-dated.
We are probably peddling towards disastrous wrongly perceieved solutions, that calls for an immediate course correction.
What is the background?
Flooding across various regions in India has become an annual phenomenon.
Alternately, farmers in other regions committing suicide due to lack of rains have also become common.
Notably, lakes catching fire, water contamination & plummeting ground-water tables are indicative of the seriousness of the crisis that we face.
What are our systemic flaws?
Outdated Ideas - Ideas have been slow to evolve in India.
Whether it is management of floods or droughts, the government planning engineers haven’t thought outside conventional norms.
The legal and constitutional mandates too are archaic and in most cases lack clarity & relevance to the 21st century.
The legal framework is yet to recognized the concepts of “Integrated Water Resource Management, Environment flows, Conjunctive use, Basin management, Water footprint and Virtual water trade”.
Multitude of Organisations - About 23 organisations deal with water resources at the union government level alone.
Similar counterparts exist at State, district and village levels with overlapping jurisdictions.
Paradoxically, these organisations rarely co-ordinate or integrate between themselves to solve a water problem.
Expertise - Also, most engineers in water organisations in India don’t have the requisit qualifications regarding water resources.
Even the Central Water Engineering Services, the only dedicated water service cadre of union isn’t composed of technocrats in water resources but civil servants and civil engineers.
How can the future be best approached?
The 21st century faces daunting challenges that were unknown earlier.
Population explosion and changes in consumption patterns have raised the demand for water.
Climate change, silting & aging dams and the deteriorating quality of freshwater are serious issues that needs focus.
This calls for relevant structurtal & policy changes along with the development of expertise that is capable of thinking out of the box.
