Centralized Democracy and Zero Sum Welfare Games

Right Choice in Water Management?

AFTER presenting draft policies for national development at the 57th NDC meeting, which in all measures appeared to solemnize appropriation of States' duties and powers by the Center, PM Manmohan Singh has now moved from discourse on fiscal management to a discourse on water management, this too at the national level! At this juncture it is necessary to realize that there is no other public good of more local relevance than water, and any such attempt at managing water so far removed from the river basin, borders on mis-management at best.

As though reacting to the childish demands arising from some ignorant states, the omniscient central govt has proceeded to push its draft national policy on Water Management - purportedly tailored for the entire country. Not to mention that this presentation immediately drew flak from states that realized the Center's infringing in State affairs that this policy would lead to.

Fundamental Hydrological Impact
This draft of National Water Policy floated earlier this year was presented at the NWRC meeting recently, again chaired by Dr Manmohan Singh. It is said that although this policy allows States the right

[2.1] to frame suitable policies, laws and regulations on water; there is a felt need to evolve a broad over-arching national legal framework...

But the policy's very existence remains questionable because of this allowance: If the States were allowed to make their own policies and ways of managing water, why did the Center have to intervene in this pure State item? The motivation for the entire central policy on water management seems to be this felt need for it. How is one expected to know who felt this need to evolve a national legal framework, and what is the basis to believe that this feeling is going to care for the interests of people in all States, like promised? And even if it did, why must the States bequeath this legislative exercise to a remote governing body and make a fundamental mistake in democracy? It is important to realize the invalidity of an over-arching legal framework of general water management principles across basin-levels - which is considered the basic unit in hydrological planning:

(vii) All the elements of the water cycle, i.e., evapo-transpiration, precipitation, runoff, river, lakes, soil moisture, and ground water, sea, etc., are interdependent and the basic hydrological unit is the river basin, which should be considered as the basic hydrological unit for planning.

(pic:thehindubusinessline.com)

Further, in the name of enhancing water availability across the country, regardless of the geographical condition, need and potential to utilize water, this policy goes to the degree of envisioning inter-basin water transfers to achieve equity and social justice:

5.5 Inter-basin transfers are not merely for increasing production but also for meeting basic human need and achieving equity and social justice. 

This highly criticized approach of interlinking of water bodies like rivers is certainly not a good example to set for the whole nation, and certainly not the one to base State funding on. This inter-basin linking could raise dust in the international arena also, and cost India a fortune with little gain.  Inter-basin transfers are known to disturb the delicate hydrological eco-cycle in the concerned river basins and could also render them useless in the long run.

Fiscal Deprivation
First at the NDC, now at the National Water Resources Council (NWRC): this sequence of appropriation of rights and duties raises the question if this was why we needed the GoI and this was why we needed a Prime Minister, then why at all did we elect our State legislatures and what was the need for our Chief Ministers? Such moves of the GoI are reducing our State Executives to mere stenography centers (taking dictation orders all the time) and more importantly, rendering out State Legislatures defunct. Such moves of the GoI are liable to receive public contempt for belittling people's immediate representative circle and appropriating its legislative rights and duties. States frequently seeking the Center's intervention in items best resolved within or between States is not a good sign to reckon with in the years to come.

In affairs like this one related to water management, where

The local communities have to be involved actively (in the management of water resources),

it is surprising that the Center wishes to play an even more active role, so active that it can even deprive the States of the funds they will require to involve actively in water management. Don't the States deserve enough room for legal innovation, practical experimentation and debate among themselves before arriving at their own solutions? As per an official in the Water resources ministry at the Center about this Water policy:

Even though it won’t be mandatory, states will have to toe the policy’s guidelines to get central aid on water-related schemes. 'It will be a guiding document. Moreover, assistance to states under central water schemes will be given only in accordance with the water policy. States will have to align themselves with it.'

So here is a central government that receives most of the taxes paid by people in different States, and then lays various conditions on the States when devolving money back to the States - which is ultimately where the tax moneys will have to be spent. This rather amusing but lossy arrangement of cash transfers between governments, coupled with the rather rude condition for returning money to the States, is not only increasing the latency for cash transfer to the final intended recipient, but also modifying the final intended recipient based on central policies and how well the States adhere to them.

This arrangement has created a deliberate government bias towards non-performing States at the cost of performing ones in the name of social equity. As feared, this leaves a huge burden on performing States and runs the risk of slowly swapping such States under the BIMARU definition. With institutions such as NDC & NWRC, this Center-heavy approach to Indian governance makes welfare appear to be a zero-sum game across different Indian States. Catering to one State's water needs by depriving another State of its deserving water needs is against the spirit of a union of federating States, and against the spirit of inclusive and sustainable growth.

(Also in this thread:
1. The Inclusiveness Story told on The Rapid Indian Railways
2. Moving the BIMARU under a Shining Skin)

Part-2: Disturbed River Basins and Central Tribunals

Shortly after the 2007 Kaveri river tribunal verdict was announced in February, the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) came out with a critic of this verdict, a verdict that was much awaited by all three states - Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Kerala. Writing in this critic of the verdict - "Why the Cauvery Award is Flawed," Mr Himanshu Thakkar exposes the three important measures on which this verdict fails - science, efficiency and equity. Interpreting the verdict award as biased, Mr Thakkar writes thus about the sad situation Karnataka is put into:

The Karnataka state officials have given an indication of feeling aggrieved by the Tribunal Award... we can see that indeed Karnataka is the only state that has got less share in water than its share in the catchment of the Cauvery basin. When we add the fact that Karnataka area of Cauvery basin has less groundwater availability, we see that there is some justification [sic] this feeling.

Riding on common man's ignorance about (and indifference towards) rivers and water situation in general, central tribunal verdicts such as the Kaveri tribunal verdict in Feb 2007 seem to conveniently ignore the fundamental principles of hydrology and man's water need patterns, and devise water sharing formulae that only politically strengthen the central coalition.

Declaring that this verdict fails the test of science, SANDRP exposes how the verdict fails to take note of the ground water levels in riparian states while arriving at a water sharing formula. It further describes how this is harmful to each of the riparian states even though the formula, at its outset, might seem beneficial to the politically stronger state! This comment summarizes the concern these states must have about such unscientific water awards:

The Cauvery Award fails on the test of science as it does not consider groundwater availability in the Cauvery basin area while deciding the distribution of only the surface  water among the claimants. Tamil Nadu, being the lower riparian, has significant availability of groundwater, while Karnataka and Kerala, being the upper riparian, have relatively little of it... To allow unrestricted groundwater use and not to include groundwater in calculating water availability and allocation, is unscientific, to put it rather charitably.

Although one cannot directly attribute such unscientific water awards to the center's interference in solving inter-state river water sharing problems, one can certainly find action of coalition forces, at the center, responsible. Such forces compel the central government to ignore common sense in the field of hydrology and arrive at formulae that only strengthen the central coalition, in turn causing slow but steady degradation of priceless river water basins. The continued scant water awards Karnataka has been receiving as opposed to Tamilnadu, the other big Kaveri riparian, have made most areas of Karnataka in the Kaveri basin so deprived of river water for basic human processes that in many urban settlements ground water resources are being abused beyond healthy measures, steadily emptying the already poor ground water levels of Kaveri basin in Karnataka (p 74).

Hence, centralization - delegation of this responsibility to settle inter-state disputes about a vital local resource called water to the center - is surely not benefiting the states in question, but only paving new political ways to steadily destroy water bodies and create poor lifestyles for citizens in these states. There is an urgent need for democracy to surface in its real form in water matters and install a correct methodology to settle water disputes in future. As Mr Thakkar, in his conclusion, remarks:

Indeed, amicable solution of river water disputes is possible only when there is greater democracy in water resources planning and decision making, something that is totally missing today.,

there is an urgent need to educate ourselves about the need to decentralize such important matters and allow states to engage in useful dialog to eventually arrive at a more comprehensive and less deleterious water sharing formulae. It is high time the states realized they're their own awarders and awardees when it comes to river water sharing.