Water: growing understanding, emerging perspectives

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables

Introduction
Mihir Shah and P. S. Vijayshankar

Section I Water Resources Development and Management

Large Dams

Narmada Project: The Case Against and an Alternative Perspective

Baba Amte

Alternative Restructuring of the Sardar Sarovar: Breaking the Deadlock

Suhas Paranjape and K.J. Joy

Institutional Vacuum in Sardar Sarovar Project: Framing ‘Rules-of-the-Game’

Jayesh Talati and Tushaar Shah

Irrigation Privatisation in India: Options, Issues and Experience

R. Maria Saleth

Institutional Reforms in Canal Irrigation System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh

Dinesh K. Marothia

Groundwater



Drawing Down the Buffer: Science and Politics of Groundwater Management in India

Marcus Moench

Ecologically and Socially Embedded Exchange: ‘Gujarat Model’ of Water Markets

Navroz K. Dubash

‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’: Absence of Groundwater in Water Allocation of Narmada Basin

Rahul Ranade

India’s Groundwater Challenge and the Way Forward

P. S. Vijayshankar, Himanshu Kulkarni and Sunderrajan Krishnan

Section II Historical Perspectives

Water and Waste: Nature, Productivity and Colonialism in the Indus Basin

David Gilmartin

Questioning Masculinities in Water

Margreet Zwarteveen

Colonialism, Capitalism and Nature: Debating the Origins of Mahanadi Delta’s Hydraulic Crisis (1803–1928)

Rohan D’Souza

Well Irrigation in Gujarat: Systems of Use, Hierarchies of Control

David Hardiman

Indigenous Irrigation in South Bihar: A Case of Congruence of Boundaries

Niranjan Pant

Section III Social and Political Dimensions

Contexts and Constructions of Water Scarcity

Lyla Mehta

Socio-economic Implications of Depleting Groundwater Resource in Punjab: A Comparative Analysis of Different Irrigation Systems

Anindita Sarkar

Caste, Gender and the Rhetoric of Reform in India’s Drinking Water Sector

Deepa Joshi

‘Million Revolts’ in the Making

Biksham Gujja, K.J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape, Vinod Goud and Shruti Vispute

Cauvery Dispute: A Lament and a Proposal

Ramaswamy R. Iyer

Section IV Economic Concerns

Efficiency of Water Use in Agriculture

A. Vaidyanathan, in collaboration with K. Sivasubramaniyan

Measuring the Marginal Value of Water and Elasticity of Demand for Water in Agriculture

E. Somanathan and R. Ravindranath

‘Get the Price Right’: Water Prices and Irrigation Efficiency

Isha Ray

The Indian Monsoon, GDP and Agriculture

Sulochana Gadgil and Siddhartha Gadgil

Section V

Regional Perspectives

Understanding Agrarian Impasse in Bihar

Avinash Kishore

Co-Management of Electricity and Groundwater: An Assessment of Gujarat’s Jyotirgram Scheme

Tushaar Shah and Shilp Verma

Kick-starting a Second Green Revolution in Bengal

Aditi Mukherji, Tushaar Shah and Partha Sarathi Banerjee

Punjab Water Syndrome: Diagnostics and Prescriptions

Himanshu Kulkarni and Mihir Shah

National Overview



Interlinking of Peninsular Rivers: A Critique

A. Vaidyanathan

Water: Towards a Paradigm Shift in the Twelfth Plan

Mihir Shah

Notes on the Authors

For decades after independence, Indian planning ignored the need for sustainability and equity in water resource development and management. There was just one way forward, that of harnessing the bounty in our rivers and below the ground, and this strategy had almost completely unquestioned acceptance. It was only in the 1990s that serious questions began to be raised on the wisdom of our understanding and approach to rivers. Around the same time, the sustainability of our strategy of groundwater development under the Green Revolution also began to be interrogated.

(http://orientblackswan.com/BookDescription?isbn=978-81-250-6292-9&id=35&t=c)