--WIO’s critical
concerns and broad suggestions on Draft National Water Policy 2012
While the Draft Water Policy,
2012 accords basic livelihood and ecosystem needs first priority, its
prescription for turning water into an ‘economic good’ after these needs are
met makes it an easy tool to exploit water for profit. No lessons appear to have
been learnt. Further, without a proper account of current needs, use and
exploitation integrated with population increases, growing demand, and stresses
arising out of climate change, it’s almost impossible to monitor such a vague
and unclear ‘prioritisation’.
That the country still doesn’t
have an updated database on the state of its water resources is clear from the
draft policy which fails to come up with any concrete data on most issues it
deals with. The existing policy expressed concern about adequate and accurate
data; the proposed draft repeats this concern. All plans and policies related
to water use and management are destined to fail in the absence of data,
transparency and accessibility. It’s perhaps because of this inadequacy of data
and assessment that the policy fails to quantify that ‘minimum’ of basic need
beyond which it suggests water be treated as an ‘economic good’.
Maintaining ecological flow, a
major concern across the globe, has not been accorded due seriousness in the
draft policy. Like the 2002 policy, the draft proposes to set aside a portion
of river flow to meet ecological needs. Considering the extent of degradation
of India’s
rivers and the pace of industrialisation and urbanisation, with scant control
over the use and abuse of rivers by these sectors, ensuring the minimum
ecological flow of rivers will be difficult. Indeed here water as a survival
need and as an economic good contradict one another.
The draft policy puts the onus of
local-level awareness, maintenance etc on local communities but fails to
recognise that most river basins are polluted and stressed by industry and
urban settlement. While the latter need water for survival and basic
livelihoods, the former has historically been an abuser. Further, whilst basic
users cannot pay for the use in ‘cash’, commercial and luxury users can use
‘cash payment’ to justify their abuse of the resource.
None of these problems have been
addressed by the 2002 policy; the current draft does nothing further than
advocating age-old and unviable transfer of water from open to closed basins
and the formulation of regulatory authorities.
The National Water Policy, 2002 also treated water as an economic good
and talked about regulations and systematic planning, cost recovery, etc.
However, we lost more water than we had in this one decade, water conflicts
grew, and the bias towards corporations and the rich deepened.
Broad set of recommendations
What we should do, according to
veteran water expert Ramaswamy Iyer, is to try and reverse our thinking. “The
ecology cannot be asked to accommodate development needs. Our visions of
development must spring from an understanding of ecological limits,” he
asserts.
Himanshu Thakkar of the South
Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People finds a way out in the South African
Water Act: “When the South African Water Act was passed in 1997, based on the
White Paper on South African Water and Sanitation Policy, 1994, the policy took
a detailed look at defining water for basic human needs, its quality, quantity,
access, distance etc, as well as various issues related to water and
environment. It was only with this background that South
Africa could take the revolutionary step of
securing water for basic human needs and ecological reserves first. It went
through a rigorous, extensive process of consultations with communities and
other stakeholders (which still continues) to actually calculate the reserve,
implement it and monitor it.”
As against the 2002 policy, the
2012 policy considers climate change a major factor. This is understandable as
debates and discussions around climate change increased substantially after the
formation of the National Climate Change Action Plan, which is also said to
have mandated the need for a new water policy. However, when it comes to
mitigation and adaptation, the draft discounts the culprits and asks
communities to take action, become sensitised and be resilient. It is now well
established that rural communities -- a majority of the country’s population --
are excellent at adapting to climate change.
It is urban society, large,
centralised and heavy investment development models, and industry that are the
real culprits. The policy should therefore make it mandatory for these sectors
also to be climate sensitive and use water more rationally. This can be done
through water rationing for these segments. Putting a price on water and
leaving its management in the hands of the private sector will only increase
the access of richer sections to this resource. India’s
National Water Policy must recognise this reality.
Guiding principles
The National Water Policy should
be based on the following guiding principles:
Water is a finite natural
resource over which all human beings and other species have equal rights.
Centralised authoritarian structures
of water governance and regulation should be done away with.
Water for life and livelihoods
(communities/people who are directly dependent on water for their livelihood,
for example, fisherfolk) should be provided free of cost as part of the state’s
responsibility under the principle of ‘rights’ of these communities over the
resource.
Industry and corporate houses
that use water as a ‘commercial good’ for production and profit must not be
considered ‘decision-making’ stakeholders and hence must never be allowed to
sit on any decision-making bodies related to water management and governance.
Water allocation should be based
on the carrying capacity of the ecology, considering present and future use,
demand, recharging and threat perspectives, where ‘future’ should not be
limited to a few decades only.
If there has to be any bias
towards a section in water allocation then it should be towards the poor,
farmers, fisher-folk and other sections of society whose lives and livelihood
are directly related to water and, of course, towards other life forms on
earth.
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