From Water Initiatives Odisha[1]
To,
The Chief Minister
Government of Odisha
Subject: Request
to oppose the Draft National Water Policy 2012 in its current form.
Dear Chief Minister,
As you may be kindly aware the Government of
India has prepared the draft National Water Policy 2012 in January 2012 and
since then two revisions have taken place. The 3rd draft was
approved in June 2012 at a meeting of the National Water Resources Board. The
Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India has taken recourse to the
position that there should be a unified national perspective on water resources
utilisation and management at local, regional, state and national level in
drafting this policy. After various meetings and three drafts no consensus has
yet emerged on various issues and aspects of the Draft Policy among the states. In fact, there has hardly been any
consultation with the people of the country on this Draft so far.
Many state Governments such as Punjab,
Kerala etc, have opposed this draft policy and the Punjab cabinet has rejected
this in a resolution of February-March 2012. Many civil society groups working
on water have also opposed this Draft Policy on several genuine grounds. Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO) has raised
critical issues on this policy already. This
letter is to urge upon your good office to oppose the Draft Policy in its
current form in the forthcoming meeting of National Water Resources Council
meeting to be held on 30th of this month. Based on media reports we believe that the
Govt. of India is planning to finalize this Policy in that meeting.
The National Water Resources Council headed
by the PM and with Chief Ministers of all states as members had deferred taking
up the draft national water policy 2012.
In fact, the new regulation and administration mechanisms that are being
proposed by this Policy can be termed as infringing the State’s rights through
a ‘coercive’ manner. This is related to
the move to take Water from ‘States’ list to ‘Concurrent’ list. If this happens, we apprehend, the
state governments will lose many of their rights in deciding and managing their
water resources. It will not benefit
Odisha in matters such as the Polavaram dam.
We at WIO have raised objections to the
Draft Policy as its premises are built on principles of pricing, tariffs,
commodification and commercialisation of water. Water is a matter of right for the people and
biodiversity. By putting a price tag in
a manner that will exhaust our already shrinking water resource, the policy, we
are sure is meant to allow the private sector to make use of govt funds to
increase their profits through contracts and concession agreements. So, we urge, the Govt. of India must first revise
and withdraw the policy position that water is an economic good rather and
introduce it as an ‘finite ecological resource’ and then prioritize the
allocations in a way that gives the people and ecology the first rights over
the resource. In no circumstances, price and investment should determine the
allocation of water. We should not
forget that we have not created water but we are only using it and the
government is a custodian of the resource for common good. In fact the Policy is also taking
positions where, we apprehend, government will be reduced to few regulatory
functions only and the private parties will take control of service provision
and water management. This cannot be
accepted in a democratic country and hence must be opposed strongly.
Indian government is a signatory to the UN
General Assembly resolution number 64/292 of 28th July 2010 “Human
right to water and sanitation”, approved by 120 countries. This is now legally
binding in international law. The UN affirmed by consensus that the right to
water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of
living, as contained in several international human rights treaties in UN Human
Rights Council decision of September 28, 2011.
The rights enshrined in the Constitution of India in Article - 21 “Right
to Life” includes the right to food and the right to water which are also
upheld by the Supreme Court in several cases and judgements. The current Draft, even though an
improvement from the previous ones, has failed to recognize this in its true
spirits. We urge upon you to oppose this
to give justice to the people and biodiversity of the state.
The Water Regulatory Authorities proposed in
the policy may turn out to be highly autocratic in nature and under the premise
of ‘commodification of water’ they will surely work with a bias towards the
private sector at the cost of the common people, farmers, fisherfolks and
biodiversity. While we suggest for
democratic ways of regulating water use with participation of the common people
and people’s representatives in a bottom-up approach, any participation of
industrialists and corporate houses in decision making authorities of water
resources governance be opposed. They
should not be any decision making role in the proposed Integrated Water
Resources Management programme driven River Basin Organisations as well. They can at best be termed as
‘consumers’ allocation of water to whom can be decided only by democratic
authorities based on principles of ‘water security for present and future’ with
proper cumulative ecological impacts assessment done for all the water
resources of the state.
Finally, we urge upon you to demand
adequate public consultations on the Draft Policy before it is finalized. The Govt. of India should not be in a hurry
to pass this without such consultations with the people.
There are several other issues which we have
raised and for your kind attention, we are attaching (as annexure) some of our
critical concerns on the Draft National Water Policy 2012 urging upon you to
consider these while putting up the state government’s stand in the above said
meeting.
We look forward to your judicious action in
this matter ensuring a secured water future for the people and biodiversity of
the state.
Thanking you
Truly
Ranjan Panda
Convenor, Water Initiatives Odisha
Cell: +91-94370-50103
Email: ranjanpanda@gmail.com
[1] Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO) is a coalition of civil society
organisations, farmers, academia, media and other concerned, which has been
working on water, environment and climate change issues in the state for more
than two decades now.
=========
Annexure to
WIO’s letter to Chief Minister of Odisha
Water Initiatives
Odisha’s
Critical Concerns
and Broad Suggestions on Draft National Water Policy 2012
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 later 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. 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.
Broad set of recommendations
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:
Water is a finite natural resource over which all human
beings and other species have equal rights.
Centralised authoritarian structures of water governance and
regulation should be done away with.
Water for life and livelihoods (communities/people who are
directly dependent on water for their livelihood, for example, fisherfolk)
should be provided free of cost as part of the state’s responsibility under the
principle of ‘rights’ of these communities over the resource.
Industry and corporate houses that use water as a
‘commercial good’ for production and profit must not be considered
‘decision-making’ stakeholders and hence must never be allowed to sit on any
decision-making bodies related to water management and governance.
Water allocation should be based on the carrying capacity of
the ecology, considering present and future use, demand, recharging and threat
perspectives, where ‘future’ should not be limited to a few decades only.
If there has to be any bias towards a section in water
allocation then it should be towards the poor, farmers, fisherfolk and other
sections of society whose lives and livelihood are directly related to water.
And, of course, towards other life forms on earth.
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