Working Papers

India, as a whole, is reasonably well endowed with fresh water resources but there are significant spatial and temporal variations in the availability of water and the concomitant problems of local scarcity and surpluses. Rapidly growing population, increasing levels of income and the consequent changes in life styles, urbanisation, industrialisation, and commercialisation of agriculture in conjunction with the lack of judicious management of water resources have all aggravated the problems of scarcity and degradation of water resources in the country. This paper aims at examining the current status of water resources use and management in India, identifying critical issues in managing Indiaa??s water resources, and exploring alternatives for resolving them. The issues identified include the lack of an appropriate policy supported by a legislation for regulating the access to, control over, and use of water, lack of well defined property rights in water, lack of requisite data base for judicious planning and management, fragmented approach to water resources management, lack of involvement of water users in decision making, and lack of professionalism in management of water resources and water-related organisations. The strategy proposed for resolving these issues includes the promulgation of a new national water policy backed up by an enabling act of Parliament specifying well-defined property rights in both surface water and groundwater, bringing all the inter-state rivers under the jurisdiction of the Central Government, creating an autonomous Water Development and Management Board in each of the States of Indian Union and one at the national level, adoption of an integrated watershed-based approach to water resources planning and management, and organising water users into some kind of formal association and vesting the usufruct rights in them.