The Hindu Business Line : Beyond water bureaucracy

MUCH to the relief of right-thinking citizens, the Prime Minister's maiden address was a distinct departure from the political rhetoric of the recent past. Listing the ambitious tasks ahead for his Government, Dr Manmohan Singh confessed that the government machinery is not fully geared to tackle the emerging pro-poor development challenges. No wonder, therefore, that he stressed the need for reforming the government and the public institutions to make them perform better. The humility with which the Prime Minister has sought to be critical of his own government is to be admired.

Admitting that the gains of economic development have not percolated down to the poor, Dr Manmohan Singh has brought such issues as water scarcity and agrarian insecurity to the forefront. In a sense, he has clearly acknowledged the failure of a buoyant economy to protect the `right to water' of its citizens. However, his recipe for addressing the problem of water scarcity does not include the much-hyped proposal of interlinking of rivers. Much to the relief of environmentalists, the Prime Minister has stressed the need for adopting innovative, cost-effective and community-based solutions to water management.

But this is not the first time we have heard such words of wisdom. While releasing the National Water Policy 2002, the then Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, too had emphasised community-driven water initiatives. Yet, in the end, he had given in to popular pressure and had accepted the advice of the apex court to interlink the country's rivers. Despite considerable opposition to the proposed project, Mr Vajpayee had constituted a Task Force for the implementation of the mega-project.

While Dr Manmohan Singh may have underplayed the project, and the Ministry of Water Resources may have diluted it by emphasising on a detailed techno-economic feasibility studies of the proposed river links, there are bigger challenges for the present Government, even from within.

Unless the Government takes legal recourse vis-à-vis the proposed project, the apex court will soon demand a progress report on the proposal. And then there is a fully supportive industry, a conforming bureaucracy and an engineers' lobby to contend with! No wonder, Dr Manmohan Singh acknowledges that water is a critical and contentious issue across the country.

But for the timely monsoons, the long-pending Cauvery dispute and the impending tussle between Punjab and Haryana on sharing Sutlej waters may have precipitated into serious inter-State battles. While there might be temporary reprieve from the impending imbroglio over riparian issues, the water scarcity problem will continue to haunt the Government in the years ahead as the fledgling water bureaucracy that has stayed fixed on technical solutions has not really come up with feasible answers.

There is no dearth of engineers who list the virtues of mega-projects; any number of economists will vouch for the benefits of river interlinking, particularly for the poor; and project-savvy bureaucrats will take industry's side in supporting gigantic irrigation projects. Bypassing ecological concerns, engineering solutions alone have made water dearer for a vast majority. Rather than focus on cost-effective and innovative methods, the engineer-bureaucrat nexus is still rooted in technological measures that have neither proved economically viable nor ecologically sustainable.

Dr Manmohan Singh has to confront a water bureaucracy that is rooted in the past, but he would be better advised to take a leaf from the book of previous Congress governments. Jawaharlal Nehru had not allowed the `disease of gigantism' to trouble him for long.

In Jawaharlal: A Biography, S. Gopal records Nehru's subsequent views on the subject, expressed at the meeting of the Central Board of Irrigation in November 1958: "Nehru was now more aware than in the past when, surveying the Bhakra-Nangal dam in 1956, he had whispered to himself, `These are the new temples of India where I worship'. Addressing the meeting, Nehru had remarked, `... (he) doubted very much if the Government would have initiated such a project if it came before them at this time. Such a dam was exceedingly expensive, involved a considerable amount of foreign exchange and took a long time to be completed. All that India had gained from it was electric power and little irrigation'."

Interestingly, K. L. Rao, whose Ganga-Cauvery link plan has been re-packaged into the interlinking of rivers proposal by the previous government, was a minister in Nehru's cabinet.

History repeated itself when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, speaking to State Irrigation Ministers in August 1986, said: "The situation today is that since 1951, 246 big surface irrigation projects have been initiated. Only 66 of these have been completed, 181 are still under construction. Perhaps, we can safely say that almost no benefit has come to the people from these projects. For 16 years, we have poured money into them. The people have got nothing back — no irrigation, no water, no increase in production, no help in their daily life.''

Dr Mamohan Singh, thus, has a rich legacy to fall back on in taking a well-informed decision for the welfare of the poor. While the economist in him may view everything on the growth curve, the Prime Minister in him ought to keep the holistic concerns of the environment in mind without jeopardising the rights of the future generations.

Women's groups, Adivasi organisations and Dalit movements did caution the previous government not to take them for granted. Civil society will continue to hold the government accountable, unless Dr Singh brings in the element of accountability in governance. Needless to say, the belief that, once voted to power, governments have free reign is indeed a thing of the past.

(Formerly with the World Bank, the author is a development writer associated with the Delhi-based Ecological Foundation. He can be reached at sudhirendar@vsnl.net)