The 2019 Mihir Shah-led Committee, constituted to draft the National Water Policy, submitted their report almost four years ago. The draft Policy document seems to have been gathering dust in the closets ever since.

The policy kept under wraps is not good news, as that results in the nation being deprived of a more updated and state-of-the-art thinking that is the need of the hour. A shift towards new thinking becomes imperative given the future challenges, India’s vision of Viksit Bharat, and the associated India Water Vision 2047.

For the last few years, India has been witnessing a quiet war between contrasting paradigms of water governance. This war is between the colonial engineering paradigm rooted in the structural interventions over water bodies to augment supply and a more comprehensive and holistic water governance paradigm that is socially and ecologically informed.

This holistic paradigm, known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), should not be interpreted as the one delineated by the Global Water Partnership, but as a set of guidelines drawing the broad contours of the new governance paradigm, and based on an integrated transdisciplinary knowledge base that talks of a systems approach to water.

IWRM therefore encompasses the various natural and social sciences including decision sciences, with the popular water-energy-food nexus approach being subsumed.

The movement from traditional supply-augmentation plans to innovative modes of water demand management represents the global trend over the past four decades. EU and the US recognised the detrimental effects of extensive dam construction and structural interventions, which caused irreversible damage to their river basin ecosystem.

Decommissioning dams

The adoption of the Water Framework Directive by the European Union (EU) in 2000 led to the decommissioning of approximately 500 dams in France, Sweden, Finland, Spain, and the UK, in their attempts to restore natural hydrological flow regimes. The US, the major proponent of dams between the 1920s and the 1960s, decommissioned over 1,000 such structures in recent decades, aiming to rejuvenate basin ecosystems.

Alternative approaches to managing water are also implemented worldwide through market developments in Chile and Australia to enable farmers to enhance water productivity and contribute to sustainable water management. In 2019, water derivatives trading commenced in California to mitigate water risks.

Indian water technocracy, however, vehemently opposed this global call for change to this emerging new paradigm. The last decade, however, witnessed specific initiatives to guide the nation toward comprehensive water governance.

In 2016, two Bills were formulated: the Draft National Water Framework Bill 2016 and the Model Bill for the Conservation, Protection, Regulation, and Management of Groundwater 2016.

Another 2016 report titled, ‘A 21st Century Institutional Architecture for India’s Water Reforms’, which recommended the dissolution of the CWC and CGWB to form a National Water Commission, was severely criticised by the hydro-technocracy.

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

New water policy

Problems in India have often arisen due to its over reliance on the colonial engineering paradigm. The inter-State Cauvery conflicts, Bihar’s flooding allegedly caused by the Farakka barrage in West Bengal, unsustainable hydropower on the Himalayas, and the feared ecological fallout from river interlinking projects bear ample testimony of such problems created by structuralist interventions over water systems without thinking about the consequences.

An integrated systems approach to water governance is the need of the hour, as emphasised by a recent paper published by the Observer Research Foundation. These are:

(i) Water should be understood as a dynamic component integral to the eco-hydrological cycle, rather than as a stock of resources to be exploited according to human needs and convenience.

(ii) Water holds intrinsic value across its various uses, including ecological functions, which must be recognised through the valuation of ecosystem services linked to its flow regimes.

(iii) Consequently, water should be viewed as an economic asset within a broader ecological-economic framework, necessitating the establishment of appropriate institutional mechanisms to recognise this value. Social considerations must also ensure that affordability, accessibility and equity are not compromised.

(iv) The river basin should be construed as the fundamental unit of governance.

(v) Increasing water supply is not essential for sustained economic growth or food security. Instead, the focus should shift towards adopting water-saving methods.

(vi) A comprehensive assessment of water development projects is necessary, considering the integrity of the hydrological cycle.

(vii) A transparent and interdisciplinary knowledge base entailing engineering and other natural sciences, along with economics and other social sciences, is crucial.

(viii) Droughts and floods are not extreme events, but integral components of the global eco-hydrological cycle.

(ix) Gender considerations are critical, as emphasised in the Dublin Statement, which recognises that “women play a central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water”.

These points are indicative and mark the broad contours of the state-of-the-art emerging paradigm, but will need to be modified with further knowledge accrual and the needs of the time. The draft needs to be brought to the surface to understand whether these pointers are embraced, and then discussed and debated. We cannot afford to be late, as the biggest future challenge of India lies in ensuring water security for human and environmental security.

The writer is a Director at the Observer Research Foundation