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-1 : Should the Kaveri flow through New Delhi?

Come summer and the two south-Indian states, Karnataka and Tamilnadu, inevitably start the year's quota of dialog on Kaveri river water sharing and people get soaked in political arguments, water related negotiations and political engineering or the lack of them! This has become a pattern etched in stone, with the two states repeatedly being pushed into the arena by the sheer failure of political machinery on all three sides of the table - the two riparian states and the center.

This year the cry heard in some Karnataka voices is the need for a national (river) water sharing policy stemming from an apparent belief that such a 'national policy' could magically uncoil the tension among riparian states just because a third party, the union government, proclaiming itself to be JUST & EQUAL, when given the funnel, will take in all the water in the rivers and direct them to the riparian states in a fair manner. This is pure fiction, as will be shown in this series.

Regardless of the fairness in this deal between states and the union, these are the things that need to be deeply pondered about:

1. (River) Water sharing between states is a characteristically local problem, limited to the interests of the riparian states and the people within them directly influenced by the river waters. A solution to this had rather not come from outside of the problem domain for those would not really address the problem!
2. The farther removed a government is that is arbitrating river water sharing between states, the little it can do to benefit the riparian states, and the lesser JUST & EQUAL its policies and decisions come across to some of them. 'The reason why this is so often the case is that bureaucrats and technicians base themselves mainly on political considerations external to the region in question: the needs of the local population rarely feature at all' ("Water under threat", p 161). Hence the union govt. which is further removed than the governments of the riparian states is much poorly disposed to do justice to these states. (In fact it is better disposed to favor either of the states over the other!)
3. The adverse impact such remotely-designed policies have on the hydrology of various river basins is considerable and long-lasting. Historical tribunals of such remote origins and their verdicts on river water sharing in India have proven this point amply.

Keen on catching up on this debate? Here're some trivia (along with my interpretation) I thought we'd rather help ourselves with before we dive-in, hoping it'll expose whatever sense exists in this argument (about the consequences of a national river water sharing policy).

1. The preamble to the Indian constitution offers JUSTICE (social, economic and political) and EQUALITY (of status and of opportunity) to the citizens of India.
• Literally interpreting: Among other things. the citizens of this republic are secured social, economic and political JUSTICE. 
• Likewise, the citizens have also been secured their EQUALITY of status and of opportunity in this sovereign democratic republic.
2. Item 56 in the Seventh Schedule of this constitution places regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys under the Union List. 
• This officially strips the riparian states of their otherwise natural political right to regulation and development of the rivers flowing through the respective states. 
• How can political JUSTICE be secured by stripping people of rights to govern and develop themselves?
3. Karnataka and Tamilnadu elect 12 & 18 members respectively to the Rajya Sabha and 28 & 39 members respectively to the Lok Sabha. Hence on every vote in Delhi, there are 17 extra Tamilnadu voices roaring to mute Karnataka voices!
• How can Karnataka's EQUALITY of status ever be secured by such unequal representation at the center?
• How can EQUALITY of opportunity be secured by a denial of states' rights to engage in constructive negotiations, targeted at deriving mutual gains, with neighboring Union members? 
• How can any government, other than the state governments, secure this EQUALITY any better?
4. Article 262 of the same constitution conveniently assumes the center (union govt.) to be the responsible body to arbitrate disputes related to inter-state river water sharing.
• But it has been found on several occasions that the decisions arrived at and tribunals awarded by the center have only provoked the states to plan or execute massive reservoir projects purely driven by hoarding intentions laden with greed & fear. 
• Such greed & fear are syntheses of non-federal siphoning off of responsibilities from the states to the center; a center that is not better disposed than the states themselves to decide on such local matters.
• One instance ("KWDT Report", p 331) of Andhra Pradesh describing river waters flowing into the sea as wastage is a clear indication of how such tribunals have bred greed & fear to dangerous proportions at the state level.
• Not only has this led to hydrological degradation of various river basins, but also led to intra-state conflicts (IWMI Research pub., pp 11-14) unseen till then.
5. Coalition equations at the center lead to biased water sharing tribunal awards announced by the center, thereby further complicating the battle over water jurisdiction.
• With the strength of such a coalition lying in safeguarding interests of its members and ally states, non-ally states, where national parties electorally dominate over little or no local political force, don't get their interests safeguarded equally well. Such non-ally states, usual example being Karnataka, are in a way expected to cooperate and endure pains of severe water deprivation while ally states enjoy unfair water surpluses year over year.
• While ally states, like Tamilnadu, continue to reap water lotteries from such central tribunals, as a compensation, non-ally states, like Karnataka, are lured with political mirages like ministries and other such confectionery. National parties, in turn, insure their electoral dominance in Karnataka this way!
• Hence this biased water distribution, and biased treatment of states in general is mainly attributable to the delegation of those tasks to the center that the states themselves should execute. This non-federal, centralized administrative structure of the union govt. combined with sub-optimal state-focused representation at the center is leading to distress and disharmony in this union of states.