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Water: Economic good
or right to life?
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The
Draft Water Policy 2012 makes all the right noises about keeping livelihood and ecosystem needs as the first priority,
but contradicts this by insisting that water must be seen as an ‘economic
good’, says Ranjan K Panda
A
farmer in Uttarakhand, who I recently met on my way from Ranikhet to Paksa,
poses a challenge to the Draft National Water Policy, 2012 even though he
does not know anything about it or the fact that the draft is up for comment
on the Union government’s Ministry of Water Resources website. The draft
policy, in line with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank formula of
water management, reiterates the need to consider water as an ‘economic good’
and says there is still lack of awareness among the people of this nation
about effective use of the resource.
Did
this farmer treat water as an economic good, or as an essential he couldn’t
afford not to have?
The
economy is linked to profit. If that is so, this subsistence farmer should
profit from the water he is entitled to by way of government provisioning or
through his own effort. Ironically though, he is a lossmaker in the business
of collecting a lifesaving resource that is supposedly guaranteed to him by
the nation as a ‘right to life’.
When
cash or paying capacity is the only deciding factor in gaining access to a
resource like water, the poor will certainly enjoy no rights and will be
further excluded.
It
was January 31, 2012, a day after polling for the state assembly ended.
Everywhere, people were talking politics. My ‘happy’ villager was boasting
how the MLA candidate of ‘his’ party, an ex-professor from Delhi University
who owned factories near Delhi, had negotiated votes from his village at Rs
1,000 each. The ‘other’ party had offered Rs 500. Buying votes is easy these
days!
Fetching
water is not so simple. In these hilly parts water is scarce despite
thousands of springs and streams feeding the gadheras (rivulets)
and rivers. The worst stretch is from mid-February till about June, when they
have to climb 2 km down a steep slope to fetch water from the gadhera. Water
for the village comes from a spring on the upper slopes of the hills; they
pay Rs 35 a month for two hours of water supply. The taps run dry March
onwards, until the monsoon.
The
village’s drinking water supply project involved people’s contribution at
about 20% in the form of labour. From what I could gather, for a project that
cost around Rs 8 lakh, 40 families contributed around Rs 160,000 through
their labour. That’s roughly Rs 4,000 per family. Each family has to pay an
additional Rs 420 per year to get water for their domestic needs, that too
only for eight months.
The
farmer told me he had 50 nali of land (about 1 hectare). All of it is
rain-fed, enough to produce wheat, rice and millets for his family of seven.
In good years, when he has some produce to sell, he gets a cash income of
around Rs 2,000-3,000. Over the last 15 years, he has had only three such
‘good’ years. Cash for medical attention, education, clothing etc is met by earning
a daily wage working on someone else’s field, plantation, or on roads and
other projects including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
Calculated
over 15 years, the water tax that the farmer paid per year was 70% of his
income!
Can
we discount the role of the state in providing adequate and good quality
water to people? Or should we hand the job over to private suppliers who will
distribute the natural resource to whoever they want, and profit from it?
Whose resource is it and who profits from it? The draft policy does not
answer any of these questions.
In
its February 2 verdict against the corrupt allocation of 2G spectrum, the
Supreme Court stated: “Natural resources are vested with the government as a
matter of trust in the name of the people of India… It is the solemn duty of
the state to protect the national interest, and natural resources must always
be used in the interests of the country and not private interests.”
But
those who use water for profit and luxury are being favoured in this country
over those who use water for survival. In Orissa in November 2011, Water
Initiatives Odisha (WIO), a civil society network, revealed that the water
bureaucracy in the state was turning a blind eye to illegal exploitation of
groundwater by Vedanta Alumina Ltd’s Jharsuguda plant. Despite the government
having stated that the company was drawing groundwater without permission and
that it had not paid taxes and fines for water it was drawing from the
Hirakud reservoir and Bheden river for over five years, the executive
engineer of the main dam division recommended a waiver of taxes to the water
resources department, stating that the company was a regular taxpayer and
that instructions for not collecting tax from the company had been received
‘telephonically’ from an additional secretary with the department. This was
happening in connivance with the water bureaucracy until the matter was
exposed and opposition political parties rocked the assembly in a recently
concluded session. This, in a state whose effective irrigation coverage is a
mere 20% and which is struggling to provide the promised 35% irrigation to
all blocks. Indeed, it has been alleged that various corporate houses and
commercial establishments owe water taxes to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore, only
from water they have taken from the Hirakud reservoir. The money has been
outstanding for decades!
The
Hirakud dam, one of independent India’s first examples of colonisation of
water resources, is now the focus of a vibrant movement by farmers against
the diversion of water from irrigation to industry. While thousands of people
displaced by the dam more than half-a-century ago are still to be compensated
for the loss of their land (most have settled around the reservoir), they
have been fighting an endless battle to get assured irrigation. A rise in the
number of farmer suicides around the Hirakud reservoir in recent years is
just the latest shameful manifestation of the water resource management
practices being promoted in this country with the focus on large, centralised
reservoirs.
The
Rs 3,000 crore that corporations owe the state in the form of water tax and
fines would fund at least 600 minor irrigation projects, saving 12,000 farm
families from drought and related drudgery.
The
draft policy in its current form, propagating privatisation of water
resources, will only strengthen those forms of water governance in which the
poor subsidise the rich even as the rich continue their water theft. All this
in the name of ‘effective management’!
The
draft mentions that access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation
must be regarded as a right to life, essential to the full enjoyment of life
and all other human rights. But, in a highly inequitable society where the
rich and corporations have all the power to decide, and with no clear-cut
‘right to water’ guaranteed by the rule of law and backed by a solid
people-oriented democratic institutional mechanism, it will only serve to
increase the prevailing water inequality.
Water democracy, not water bureaucracy
The
draft water policy promotes a Water Regulatory Authority. This is another
form of centralisation of power with the democratically elected government
playing a lesser role. The same bureaucratic structures that have led to the
scarcity we see today, and which force us to regulate our water use, will
become more powerful. What people need is greater community control over
water resources. Panchayats, assemblies and parliament should all play a
vibrant role in managing water resources. Leaving it solely to a
bureaucrat-controlled regulatory authority will only fuel more conflict.
Finally,
the culture of public consultations that has arisen in India whilst deciding
on important policy matters that have a bearing on the life and livelihoods
of people and other life forms must be reviewed. Governments, both at the
centre and the states, are now comfortable seeking public opinion on policies
via the Internet. Only a few people and organisations get a chance to
participate in such virtual consultations.
2002 to 2012: Change for the worse?
The
National Water Policy, 2002 also treated water as an economic good and talked
about regulations and systematic planning, cost recovery, etc. However, we
lost more water than we had in this one decade, water conflicts grew, and the
bias towards corporations and the rich deepened.
While
the Draft Water Policy, 2012 accords basic livelihood and ecosystem needs
first priority, its prescription for turning water into an ‘economic good’
after these needs are met makes it an easy tool to exploit water for profit.
No lessons appear to have been learnt. Further, without a proper account of
current needs, use and exploitation integrated with population increases,
growing demand, and stresses arising out of climate change, it’s almost
impossible to monitor such a vague and unclear ‘prioritisation’.
That
the country still doesn’t have an updated database on the state of its water
resources is clear from the draft policy which fails to come up with any
concrete data on most issues it deals with. The existing policy expressed
concern about adequate and accurate data; the proposed draft repeats this
concern. All plans and policies related to water use and management are
destined to fail in the absence of data, transparency and accessibility. It’s
perhaps because of this inadequacy of data and assessment that the policy
fails to quantify that ‘minimum’ of basic need beyond which it suggests water
be treated as an ‘economic good’.
Maintaining
ecological flow, a major concern across the globe, has not been accorded due
seriousness in the draft policy. Like the 2002 policy, the draft proposes to
set aside a portion of river flow to meet ecological needs. Considering the
extent of degradation of India’s rivers and the pace of industrialisation and
urbanisation, with scant control over the use and abuse of rivers by these
sectors, ensuring the minimum ecological flow of rivers will be difficult.
Indeed here water as a survival need and as an economic good contradict one another.
The draft policy puts the onus of local-level awareness, maintenance etc on
local communities but fails to recognise that most river basins are polluted
and stressed by industry and urban settlement. While the latter need water
for survival and basic livelihoods, the former has historically been an
abuser. Further, whilst basic users cannot pay for the use in ‘cash’,
commercial and luxury users can use ‘cash payment’ to justify their abuse of
the resource.
None
of these problems have been addressed by the 2002 policy; the current draft
does nothing further than advocating age-old and unviable transfer of water
from open to closed basins and the formulation of regulatory authorities.
What
we should do, according to veteran water expert Ramaswamy Iyer, is to try and
reverse our thinking. “The ecology cannot be asked to accommodate development
needs. Our visions of development must spring from an understanding of
ecological limits,” he asserts. Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asian Network
on Dams, Rivers and People finds a way out in the South African Water Act:
“When the South African Water Act was passed in 1997, based on the White
Paper on South African Water and Sanitation Policy, 1994, the policy took a detailed
look at defining water for basic human needs, its quality, quantity, access,
distance etc, as well as various issues related to water and environment. It
was only with this background that South Africa could take the revolutionary
step of securing water for basic human needs and ecological reserves first.
It went through a rigorous, extensive process of consultations with
communities and other stakeholders (which still continues) to actually
calculate the reserve, implement it and monitor it.”
As
against the 2002 policy, the 2012 policy considers climate change a major
factor. This is understandable as debates and discussions around climate
change increased substantially after the formation of the National Climate
Change Action Plan, which is also said to have mandated the need for a new
water policy. However, when it comes to mitigation and adaptation, the draft
discounts the culprits and asks communities to take action, become sensitised
and be resilient. It is now well established that rural communities -- a
majority of the country’s population -- are excellent at adapting to climate
change.
It
is urban society, large, centralised and heavy investment development models,
and industry that are the real culprits. The policy should therefore make it
mandatory for these sectors also to be climate sensitive and use water more
rationally. This can be done through water rationing for these segments.
Putting a price on water and leaving its management in the hands of the
private sector will only increase the access of richer sections to this
resource. India’s National Water Policy must recognise this reality.
Guiding principles
The
National Water Policy should be based on the following guiding principles:
(Ranjan Panda, Convenor, Water Initiatives Odisha, is a
leading water researcher and activist. He is also a senior freelance
journalist)
Infochange News & Features, February 2012
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