EPW paper on water governance

How does the Central Government regulate and manage water in a country where water management is the State Government's prerogative? In this paper in the Economic and Political Weekly, ATREE’s Sharachchandra Lele and Veena Srinivsan raise questions that went unrecognized in the Mihir Shah Committee’s suggestion to establish a National Water Commission: How much scientific rigour does the State have for integrated water management Welcoming the debate on the assumptions underpinning water resource monitoring in India triggered by the Mihir Shah Committee report, the authors suggest that the proposed National Water Commission should focus on providing integrated data and science to help water managers and policymakers, avoiding getting directly involved in planning or regulation.

"..Given this jurisdictional context and core competencies, we believe that it would be legally and practically advisable that any national-level agency created by merging the CWC and CGWB focuses on information provision, analysis, and associated research and training to enable other actors at various scales to carry out integrated surface-ground water management for achieving the goals of equitable and sustainable water use. We believe this mandate is narrow enough to be realistic while challenging enough, as it focuses attention on how to achieve the core objective of the merger—providing a holistic understanding of surface and ground water in the river basins of the country..."

Read the paper at http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/52/water-governance/focusing-essentials.html