When it comes to the availability and accessibility of water, the fate of Indians seems unchanged.
For decades, Indians have been forced to live either without water (water scarcity and inaccessibility) or surrounded by it (floods). In recent years, despite significant investment in schemes and projects such as Mission Amrit Sarovar (2022), Ground Water Management and Regulation (2021), Flood Management and Border Areas Programme (2017), Atal Bhujal Yojana (2019), and Jal Shakti Abhiyan (2019 and 2021), the water situation of rural and urban India has not improved. This year, like previous years, cities including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Jaipur have witnessed and experienced ‘taps without water’ and ‘water tanks’ as a water source.
To see water remain as such a major cause of suffering even in 2024 is surprising given the money that been has poured in to various water projects since 2022. For instance, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation has been granted Rs 77,223 crore, representing a 29% increase above the revised projections for 2022-23. In 2023-24, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, to implement the water planning, was granted Rs 97,278 crore. The Department of Water Resources is not behind the race of reinvestment as it has been given Rs 20,055 crore, which is 43% more than the revised expectations from the previous year, as the ministry website confirms.
Despite these huge investments, the present year’s noted and experienced unavailability of water has pointed to a disheartening fact that investment plans have not worked in the desired way. Indian megacities and villages continue to face water issues, forcing people to live under water stress. That is why it would be interesting to see what finance minister Nirmala Sitaram’s budget proposes for effective water governance this week.
Also read: Bengaluru’s Water Crisis — Who’s Suffering and What’s the Solution?
It is not as if the government is oblivious to water governance concerns. At least, the introduction and simultaneous implementation of water planning imply that ‘significant’ consideration is being given to issues like water unavailability and inaccessibility.
However, experiences of water unavailability raise doubts about the intentions and efficiency of the government. A common doubt is why cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai are still as thirsty as they were in previous years. What happened to urban water planning, har ghar nal, and nal mein jal? Also, why are the plans and their implementation consistently failing to accomplish the desired results? Expecting the government to investigate these questions may be futile. This is because successive governments have seldom concentrated on the ‘why’ behind policy failure, as historical experiences confirm.
For instance, the first national water policy drafted in 1987 focused on water priorities; however, to the question of why the previous five-year water planning failed, the policy was conveniently silent. Unfortunately, the pattern was followed in the next two water policies, known as National Water Policies 2002 and National Water Policies 2012, and an investigation of the ‘why’ component of policy failure was compromised. Even in the past two tenures, the government, while proposing ideas for good water governance, has hardly focused on the issues concerning the failure of the planning. Since it is increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the growing population, this is high time to accept that proposing high statistics and expressing the success of plans in figures cannot compensate for the fact that water is unavailable and inaccessible. If a glass is empty, the government has to accept that it is so. Acceptance is the key to the success of ambitious water projects and only a sensitive acceptance of their failure can help India come out from the situation of water unavailability.
To address the adverse water conditions and to minimise the water suffering of people, the government has to realise that monitoring and impact analysis of a water project or water plan is critical for its success, and this cannot be accomplished by bureaucratic agendas or means. The involvement of bureaucracy in the development and execution of water planning is inescapable, and therefore expecting them to be neutral in monitoring processes or impact assessments is unrealistic. Since only monitoring and impact assessment can offer the true state of projects or plans, the government must think objectively and form a team of specialists to do the task. If this is done, the government would be able to determine the degree of satisfaction among beneficiaries and be able to identify and analyse the advantages and risk aspects of its water plans. Honest and effective impact analysis will allow the government to alter plans on time before they are too late to repair.
Let us hope that in the vision of Viksit Bharat, the vision for Viksit water resources will get an effective place. For this to happen, the opposition has to ensure the budget debate is sensitive to water issues.
Dr. Deepti Acharya is working as Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara and author of the Book Water and Public Polices in India, Routledge, New York and London, 2021.