Plan panel moots radical overhaul in water sector

The Planning Commission is working on radically overhauling India’s water sector during the upcoming 12th five year plan period with an emphasis on understanding the resource base and enhancing water management in agriculture and industry.

In particular, the country’s highest planning body wants to create a pricing mechanism for water in the agriculture sector, which absorbs about 80 per cent of India’s total water requirement, with the intention of making farmers pay for the operation and maintenance of delivery systems.

“It is not enough to create more and more installed capacity. We have to improve water-use efficiency, which is among the lowest in the world and we have to make a multiplier increase in that. That involves new management techniques, involving the stakeholders, forming water user associations and making sure that people are paying for the water that they use. Because if you don’t pay for the irrigation water, you actually endanger the right to drinking water,” Planning Commission member Mihir Shah said.

Admitting that the “irrigation bureaucracy has failed in its attempts to deliver water” with its top-down approach, the plan panel is now mooting the establishment of ‘water user associations’ to create a participatory and transparent pricing mechanism, where local stakeholder will help determine the cost of the resource.

“It will be localised pricing in that there will be water user associations, and they are given charge of a certain part of the command. They are responsible for the operation and maintenance of the system, and their capacities are built. They pay for the water that they get, and that fund becomes the maintenance fund. So you get the recoveries that you want and you maintain the system better,” Shah said.

Even if water is provided for free, Shah explained that India’s poor are affected by quality and supply issues, apart from difficulty in accessing water sources. “People are prepared to pay but it must be in a way where they have a sense of ownership over the system,” he added.

Shah, who was speaking on the sidelines of the India Business Forum at the Singapore International Water Week, outlined the Commission’s plans to map the country’s ground water resources, which cater to about two-thirds of agricultural and 80 per cent of drinking water requirements.

“In 60 years, we had no idea about our ground water resource. We have now about 25-30 million ground water structures in India and only 60,000 observation wells. We need at least 250,000 wells, at a 1:100 ratio, to know what is happening with our ground water,” he said.

Up to Rs 5,000 crore may be spent in the next few years to map out the country’s aquifers —a layer of underground rock that transmit and store water —using geospatial and on-the-ground investigation to better ascertain the resource allocation and availability, he added.

To further protect water resources, Shah said that the Planning Commission is working on a National Water Framework Law that will “essentially enunciate the principles of the water policy, which is also being formulated” but also “give it a cutting-edge in that it will be legally enforceable.” A new ground water law is also being prepared.

“These (laws) will be a check for what you can do and not do with your water... They will be in place certainly by the end of the 12th plan (by 2017),” he added.

Meanwhile, the plan panel has begun dialogue with industry bodies to formulate a new framework that could include mandatory water recycling targets.

“For industry we are going to say — and I am working with CII and FICCI to create that agreement— that they have to increase the proportion of water that is recycled, and we are going to set targets. The Chinese have a 12th plan target of 30 per cent reduction of the water footprint in industry. You cannot keep mining water like this because it is not being charged at price. You have to move towards a regime where industry is recycling more and more,” said Shah.