The water
establishment in the country is increasingly accepting the fact that the river
basin has to be the logical and rational unit for planning of water resources
development. With this realisation, river basin planning - under different
names - is emerging as an important part of the water bureaucracy’s vocabulary,
even though action on the ground is still far from being a norm.
In a
laudable step in the direction to bridge this gap, the Government of India has
brought out a Draft River Basin Management Bill 2012 (Bill hereafter). In March
2012, it constituted a committee headed by Justice (Retd.) Doabia, with the
terms of reference that required them to “identify main ingredients of a
comprehensive river valley development plan which need to be brought under a
legal framework”, suggest appropriate structure for an inter-state river valley
development act and a legal framework to facilitate this, particularly to
ensure that the states implement the fundamental features of the river basin
planning framework without deviations.
While the
initiative to enshrine the basic principles of river basin management in a
legal framework and make it a mandatory approach in water resource planning is
welcome, the actual Bill falls far short of what this should entail. Moreover,
in the way that the Bill has been drawn up, there is a risk that it will end up
further centralising decision-making in the sector.
To
understand why this is so, one needs to look at the two central elements in the
architecture of the Bill. First of all, it requires that all interstate river
basins follow the river basin planning approach. It requires a Basin Master
Plan to be prepared for the development, management and regulation of all such
basins (applicable to the basins as specified in the Schedule I, a list which
the Union government can add to or modify, but which unfortunately consists of
only inter-state basins). Equally important, it lays down the elements that
such a basin plan must consist of. This is a very significant feature, for it
makes the inclusion of such features legally binding.
The
principles are mentioned at three places. First, Chapter III outlines the
Principles; then Sec 16 (2) of the Bill specifies some elements that a basin
plan should have, and finally Schedule II details these elements. The elements
include critical ones such as a comprehensive review of the impact of
anthropogenic interventions on the status of surface water and groundwater,
estimation of pollution, the identification of protected areas, social and
cultural flow needs and duration, and environmental needs.
The second
part of the Bill’s architecture lays down the structure through which the basin
plans are to be drawn up and implemented. The Bill calls for formation of River
Basin Authorities (RBA), one for each interstate basin. These authorities would
comprise two tiers. One, the Governing council, will have Chief Ministers and
water resource ministers of all the basin states, along with some others as
members. The Executive Board will be constituted with secretary level officials
and other members.
The Executive
Boards will prepare the Basin Master Plans. The Governing Council will approve
these plans and ensure their implementation by the states; it will also act as
a dispute resolving body in case of any issues. Further, directions of the
Council will be binding on all states involved. Development of the river basin
will have to be done as per the Master Plan.
There are
serious problems, however, with both planks of the Bill as described above.
First of
all, RBAs represent a very top-down approach to basin planning. One of the
central principles of river basin planning is that planning and implementation
of development of the basin must start with the smallest watershed and then
build upwards towards the sub-basin and basin.
Parallel to
the principle of development from bottom upwards is the principle of
subsidiarity, that says decisions should be made at the smallest or lowest
level possible. The RBAs as structured in the Bill not only reserve the
sequence, but there is, in fact, a complete absence of any other tiers. Thus,
it is not only a top-heavy structure, but one in which the bottom levels are
simply non-existent.
Moreover,
the Union government plays a very big role in these RBAs. The CEO of the
Executive Board, who will also be the member secretary of the Governing
Council, is to be nominated by the central government. Moreover, Section 29 of
the Bill gives the central government unfettered power to issue directions to
state governments “as it may consider necessary” for effective implementation of
the Act.
All these
provisions will make the process top down and centralised, whereas the need is
for exactly the reverse - make the existing centralised processes more
decentralised. For this, RBAs need to be a part of a nested series of planning
and decision-making institutions starting from the lowest watersheds, based on
the principles of subsidiarity.
There are
also many concerns over what the bill envisages as the principles and elements
constituting river basin planning. Possibly, the most serious problem is that
the Bill sees only governments as players in the preparation and implementation
of the basin plans. In Chapter III that lays out the Principles governing any
river basin management process, the first principle is ‘Participation,’ which
states that the “basin states shall have the right to participate...”. The
communities of the basin are at best to be ‘consulted’. This is the very
antithesis of what a river basin planning process requires. Here, basin
communities play the central role -- in planning, in developing various options
for basin development, in working out environmental flows, and most
importantly, in the decision-making processes.
Another
issue is that intrinsically, the Bill is biased towards a project-approach;
that is, basin development is still seen as river development, which means
essentially large dams, hydropower projects and diversions. Developments in
other parts of the basin - such as watershed development, soil-water
conservation, water harvesting, starting from the smallest watershed, which
form the core of the river basin approach, are not given any place. The most
important reason why the Bill has turned out this way seems to be the
continuing dominance of the bureaucratic approach to river development, where
basin development means only river development and river development
essentially means large projects.
However, the
presence of some important elements such as environmental flows, the inclusion
of food security, livelihoods, equitable and sustainable development as the key
objectives of managing water, and indeed the very intent to enshrine river
basin planning as the legally mandatory approach, gives hope that there will at
least be readiness to address these serious problems with the Bill to make it a
really meaningful instrument facilitating genuine river basin planning. For
that, however, there is a need to drastically re-write the Bill, based on wide
and extensive consultations.
Indeed, the
Chairperson of the committee, Justice Doabia has recommended the very same. The
current approach of the Water Resource Ministry that merely prescribes placing
the Bill on its website (that too, only in English) and inviting comments
within a month falls far short of what is actually needed. The Ministry should
translate the document into key regional languages and carry-out wide
consultations before finalising the Bill. In its failure to do so, not only
will the opportunity to move towards a modern, equitable and sustainable
approach to river basin management be lost, but we could end up putting in
place an Act that will actually prove to be harmful and set back the sector by
decades.
Shripad
Dharmadhikary
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