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Mapping the Water Disputes in India: Nature, Issues and Emerging Trends

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Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia

Abstract

This chapter traces the genealogy of water disputes primarily focusing upon post-independence India. The complexity of politics around water and the disputes over its allocation as a natural resource have been analysed at many levels. At one level, it deals with actors (local and global, state and non-state, etc.), on the other it maps the issues (groundwater depletion, privatization, inter-sectoral allocation, etc.) as well as laws, policies and institutional framework on water. Further, the chapter critically engages with the nature and emerging trends of disputes over water such as convergence of macro and micro aspects, manifest and latent conflicts, politics of perspectives/world views, dominance of development discourse to name a few. Based on interdisciplinary approach, it uses the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to capture the complexities of laws and policies shaping the disputes over water in India.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Silva, S. N. (2009, May 10). Conflict Resolution: How Lord Buddha’s Way Offers an Answer. The Sunday Times. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/090510/News/sundaytimesnews_29.html. Accessed November 24, 2018.

  2. 2.

    Biswas, P., & Iyer, K. (2018, November 22). East and West: Maharashtra Districts Fight Water Wars. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/east-and-west-maharashtra-districts-fight-water-wars-drought-5458259/. Accessed November 24, 2018.

  3. 3.

    Linton, J. (2010). What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction (p. 1). Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press.

  4. 4.

    Illich, I. (1986). H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. New York: Marion Boyars.

  5. 5.

    Nandy, A. (2003). The Romance of the State: And the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press (OUP).

  6. 6.

    State in the role of planner and designer. For details, please see Shree, R. (2018). Rivers as Commons: Reality or Myth? as guest blog on SANDRP website. https://sandrp.in/2018/03/14/rivsers-as-commons-reality-or-myth/. Accessed March 18, 2018.

  7. 7.

    Joy, K. J., et al. (2008). Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making. New Delhi: Routledge. This book has summarized 63 case studies from all over India by categorizing them into eight categories—(i) Contending Water Uses (ii) Equity, Access and Allocations (iii) Conflicts Around Water Quality (iv) Sand Mining (v) Micro-level Conflicts (vi) Dams and Displacement (vii) Tran boundary Water Conflicts (viii) Privatisation.

  8. 8.

    SOPPECOM is an NGO based in Pune (Maharashtra) and works on issues such as watershed management, participatory development, etc.

  9. 9.

    Critical discourse analysis is a relatively new method in social sciences for doing analytical research. Some of its tenets could be traced in the critical theory of the Frankfurt school in the before the Second World War. CDA gained popularity in 1990s and Van Dijk writes that the CDA is a type of discourse analytical research which primarily aims to study the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. T. A. Van Dijk. (n.d.). Chapter 18: ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, 352–371. http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Critical%20discourse%20analysis.pdf. Accessed June 24, 2013. To Dijk, through such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality.

  10. 10.

    Anupam Mishra (1948–2016) was a noted Gandhian and environmentalist and his writings on water focused on traditional ways of water harvesting is known worldwide. For details see Shree, R. (2018, February). No Pretense, No Armour: Anupam Mishra and His Great Contributions. The New Leam, 4(33). http://thenewleam.com/2018/03/no-pretense-no-armour-anupam-mishra-great-contributions/. One may also see his TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/anupam_mishra_the_ancient_ingenuity_of_water_harvesting?language=en.

  11. 11.

    Philippe Cullet is professor of Law at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London) and written on water and sanitation laws and policies in India.

  12. 12.

    Amita Baviskar is professor of sociology and has immensely worked on politics of water, especially from the vantage point of social movements and cultural politics of water as a natural resource. Her books In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley (OUP, 1995) and (ed.) Waterscapes: The Cultural Politics of a Natural Resource (Permanent Black, 2007).

  13. 13.

    Some of them are Shree, R. (Forthcoming). Politics of Water as Natural Resource: Prospects of Commons Perspective, NMML Occasional Paper; ‘Money Can’t Buy the Elixir of Life’ in The Pioneer (Op-Ed), April 29, 2016. http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/money-cant-buy-elixir-of-life.html. ‘Are We Serious About Our Rivers’ in The Pioneer (Op-Ed), March 30, 2017. http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/are-we-serious-about-our-rivers.html. Rivers as Commons: Reality or Myth? as guest blog on SANDRP website. https://sandrp.in/2018/03/14/rivsers-as-commons-reality-or-myth/.

  14. 14.

    Dutt, K. L., & Wasson, R. J. (Eds.). (2008). Water First: Issues and Challenges for Nations and Communities in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage.

  15. 15.

    Mollinga, P. P., & Gondhalekar, D. (2012). Theorising Structured Diversity: An Approach to Comparative Research on Water Resources Management (ICCWaDS Working Paper No. 1).

  16. 16.

    Conca, K. (2006). Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

  17. 17.

    Under the Modi government at the Centre, the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) has been renamed as Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation as this govt. has taken up the cause of cleaning the River Ganga to a new level through its Namami Gange Yojana.

  18. 18.

    For details, see http://cgwb.gov.in/aboutcgwa.html.

  19. 19.

    Indian Constitution, Schedule 7, List 1, Entry 56.

  20. 20.

    Iyer, R. (2003). Water: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns (p. 101). New Delhi: Sage.

  21. 21.

    This part of the chapter heavily relies on one of the chapters of my unpublished Ph.D. thesis titled ‘Politics of Water as Natural Resource: Study of Two Movements (Plachimada and Tarun Bharat Sangh)’ (2014) at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Some other parts of the chapter also draw partly from the same.

  22. 22.

    Sinha, U. K. (2014). The Strategic Politics of Water in South Asia. In J. Miklian & A. Kolas (Eds.), India’s Human Security: Lost Debates, Forgotten People, Intractable Challenges. New Delhi: Routledge.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., Uttam Kumar Sinha.

  24. 24.

    Mehta, L. (2013). Contexts and Constructions of Water Scarcity. EPW, 38(48). She has focused on the ‘water-scarce’ Kutch and its relationship with the controversial Sardar Sarovar Project.

  25. 25.

    An important study has been done by David Mosse (2003) in the context of South India.

  26. 26.

    Under the Indian Easement Act, 1882, Indian law recognizes the right of a riparian owner i.e. someone who owns the land adjoining a river or water stream to have unpolluted waters. Section 7 of the Act provides that every riparian owner has the right to the continued flow of waters of a natural stream in its natural condition without destruction or unreasonable pollution. There are various court cases in which the rights of the riparian have been reinforced.

    The Easement Act also recognizes the customary rights of the people which are required under two rules: long usage or prescription and local custom. However, these rules were also subject to the government’s right to regulate the collection, retention and distribution of water of rivers and streams flowing in natural channel.

    Pant, R. (2003). From Communities’ Hands to the MNCs’ BOOTs: A Case Study from India on Right to Water. Uttaranchal, India: Ecoserve, also available at 16 Rights and Humanity, UK (Right to Water Project). http://www.righttowater.org.uk/pdfs/india_cs.pdf.

  27. 27.

    Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India AIR 2000 SC 3751; 248(2000) 10 SCC 664.

  28. 28.

    Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar AIR 1991 SC 420. In this case, the person had filed the case under Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to prevent the pollution of the Bokaro river water from the sludge/slurry discharged by the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO). But later on, the court found the petitioner to have made a false allegation due to a personal grudge against the company. However, the recognition of ‘right to pollution free water’ makes this case very important. For details, one may see Ruchi Pant’s article (2003: 14–15).

  29. 29.

    Narain, V. (2009). Water as a Fundamental Right: A Perspective from India. Vermont Law Review, 34, 1–9.

  30. 30.

    Muralidhar, S. (2006). The Right to Water: An Overview of the Indian Legal Regime. In E. Riedel & P. Rothen (Eds.), The Human Right to Water (pp. 65–81). http://www.ielrc.org/content/a0604.pdf. Accessed March 9, 2011. He has mentioned about various cases like M.C. Mehta v. Union of India AIR 1988 SC 1037; M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997) 1 SCC 388; S. Jagannath v. Union of India (1997) 2 SCC 87; A.P. Pollution Control Board v. Prof. M.V. Naydu (1999) 2 SCC 718; A.P. Pollution Control Board (II) v. Prof. M.V. Nayudu (2001) 2 SCC 62.

  31. 31.

    Cullet, P., & Gupta, J. (2009). India: Evolution of Water Law and Policy. In J. W. Dellapenna & J. Gupta (Eds.), The Evolution of the Law and Politics of Water (pp. 159–175). Dordrecht: Springer.

  32. 32.

    D’Souza, R. (2006). Interstate Dispute over Krishna—Law, Science and Imperialism. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

  33. 33.

    D’Souza, R. (2007, April 21–27). Water as Dispute and Conflict (Review of Interstate Dispute over Krishna—Law, Science and Imperialism by Radha D’Souza; Conflict and Collective Action: The Sardar Sarovar Project in India by Ranjit Dwivedi). Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), 42(16), 1431–1432.

  34. 34.

    For details, please read Cullet, P. (Ed.). (2007). Sardar Sarovar Dam Project: Selected Documents. Aldershot: Ashgate.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., Iyer, R. (2003); Iyer, R. (2007). Towards Water Wisdom: Limits, Justice, Harmony. New Delhi: Sage; Guhan, S. (1993). The Cauvery River Dispute: Towards Conciliation. Chennai: Frontline Publications.

  36. 36.

    Anonymous, HT Correspondent. (2018, February 16). From 1924–2018: Twists and Turns in the Cauvery Water Dispute. Hindustan Times. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/from-1924-to-2018-the-twists-and-turns-in-the-cauvery-water-dispute-case/story-d5PuU5mSuUZot2NNlI7ZEJ.html. Accessed November 28, 2018.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., Shah, Mihir (2018).

  38. 38.

    Cullet, P., Bhullar, L., & Koonan, S. (2015). Inter-Sectoral Water Allocation and Conflicts: Perspectives from Rajasthan. EPW, L(34), 61–69.

  39. 39.

    For details, kindly refer to Nayak, A. K. (2010). Big Dams and Protests in India: A Study of Hirakud Dam. EPW, XLV(2), 69–73.

  40. 40.

    Bhatacharjee, J. (2013). Dams and Environmental Movements: The Case for India’s North-East. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publication, 13(11), 1–11.

  41. 41.

    For a brief history of the struggle famous as NBA, see Sangvai, S. (2000). The River and Life: People’s Struggle in the Narmada Valley. Mumbai: Earth Care Books.

  42. 42.

    Paranjape, S., & Joy, K. J. (2006, February 18). Alternative Restructuring of the Sardar Sarovar: Breaking the Deadlock. EPW, 601–602.

  43. 43.

    Mimi, R. (2010, December 10). Anti-dam Protests Get Louder in North-East. https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/anti-dam-protests-get-louder-in-northeast-india-1689. Accessed November 25, 2018.

  44. 44.

    Mihir Shah in an interview titled ‘The Answer to Our Water Crises Lies in the Democratization of Water Resources’, Geography and You, Vol. 18, Issue 2, No. 113 (2018), pp. 22–24.

  45. 45.

    After the division of the state of Madhya Pradesh, that part of Sheonath River fell into Chhattisgarh. For details, see Das, B., & Pangare, G. (2006, February 18). In Chhattisgarh, a River Becomes Private Property. Economic and Political Weekly, 611–612.

  46. 46.

    For details, see Shree, R. Plachimada Against Coke: People’s Struggle for Water (published by SOPPECOM on the website of India Water Portal in 2012). http://www.conflicts.indiawaterportal.org/node/147.

  47. 47.

    Pranjape, M. (2016, October 17). Privatisating India’s Water Is a Bad Idea. https://thewire.in/politics/water-privatisation. Accessed November 25, 2018.

  48. 48.

    Anti coca-cola protests by the local people and also considered as part of new social movements (NSMs).

  49. 49.

    Dwivedi and others (2006: 35).

  50. 50.

    Shiva, V. (2012). Making Peace with the Earth: Beyond Resource, Land and Food Wars (pp. 96–97). New Delhi: Woman Unlimited, An Associate of Kali for Women.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., Shah (2018: 23).

  52. 52.

    Iyer, R. (2011, June 25). National Water Policy: An Alternative Draft for Consideration. EPW, 46(26–27).

  53. 53.

    M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath AIR 2000 SC 1997 34.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., Muralidhar (2006).

  55. 55.

    The Hindu. (2012, May 11). Water, and Justice, for Bhopal.

  56. 56.

    Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., Iyer, R. (2007); Ibid., p. 130.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., Khagram, Sanjeev (2000).

  59. 59.

    Ibid., Khagram (2000: 43).

  60. 60.

    Vatsyayan, K. (2010). Introduction: The Ecology and Myth of Water. In Water: Culture, Politics and Management, India International Centre. New Delhi: Pearson.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., Nandy (2003).

  62. 62.

    Ibid., Sinha, U. K. (2014).

  63. 63.

    Jacob, N. (2018). A Scarcity of Management. Geography and You, Vol. 18, Issue 2, No. 113, pp. 6–7.

  64. 64.

    UNESC. (2002). Substantive Issues Arising in the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (General Comment No. 15). Geneva: United Nations Economic and Social Council. www.unchr.ch. One may also see Shree, R. (2010, December). Water as a Natural Resource: Right Versus Need Debate. Rajagiri Journal of Social Development, 2(1), 1–24.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Ruchi Shree

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  1. Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Amit Ranjan

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Shree, R. (2020). Mapping the Water Disputes in India: Nature, Issues and Emerging Trends. In: Ranjan, A. (eds) Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9614-5_5

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