Water conflicts in India

Million Revolts in
the Making
Water conflicts in India have now percolated to every level. They
are aggravated by the relative paucity of frameworks, policies and
mechanisms to govern use of water resources. This collection of
articles, part of a larger compendium, is an attempt to offer analyses
of different aspects of water conflicts that plague India today.
These conflicts, scale and nature, range over contending uses for
water, issues of ensuring equity and allocation, water quality,
problems of sand mining, dams and the displacement they bring in
their wake, trans-border conflicts, problems associated with
privatisation as well as the various micro-level conflicts currently
raging across the country. Effective conflict resolution calls for a
consensual, multi-stakeholder effort from the grassroots upwards.
BIKSHAM GUJJA, K J JOY,
SUHAS PARANJAPE, VINOD GOUD,
SHRUTI VISPUTE
What a marvellous sight it is to watch your
secular regimes wagging their tail!
You will draw water upstream
And we downstream
Bravo! Bravo! How you teach
chaturvarnya even to the water in your
sanctified style!
Namdeo Dhasal, Golpitha, 1972
translated from Marathi by Dilip Chitre1

I
Water Conflicts: The Context

ivers should link, not divide us

said the Indian prime minister
Manmohan Singh while inaugurating the conference of state irrigation
ministers on December 1, 2005.2 He expressed concern over interstate disputes
and urged state governments to show
understanding and consideration, statesmanship and an appreciation of the
other point of view. Ponnala Laxmaiah,
irrigation minister of Andhra Pradesh,
returned from the meeting only to be hauled
over the coals the next day by Janardhan
Reddy, his party senior, over the so-called
Pothireddy Padu diversion planned to divert
water to chief minister Y S Rajashekar
Reddys native district.3 MLAs from his
own party in the Telangana region have
declared that they will oppose this water

570

diversion to the end. Water conflicts, not

water, seem to be percolating faster to
grassroot levels!
Water conflicts in India now reach every
level; divide every segment of our society
political parties, states, regions and subregions within states, districts, castes and
groups and individual farmers. Water conflicts within and between many developing
countries are also taking a serious turn.
Fortunately, the water wars, a chance
remark by the UN secretary general that
later became a media phrase, forecast by so
many, have not yet materialised. War has
taken place, but over oil, not water. Though
water wars may not have taken place, water
is radically altering and affecting political
boundaries all over the world, between as
well as within countries. In India, water
conflicts are likely to worsen before they
begin to be resolved. Till then they pose a
significant threat to economic growth, social
stability, security and health of the ecosystem
and; the victims are likely to be the poorest
of the poor as well as the very sources of
water rivers, wetlands and aquifers.
Conflicts might sound bad or negative,
but they are logical developments in the
absence of proper democratic, legal and
administrative mechanisms to handle
issues at the root of water conflicts. Part
of the problem stems from the specific
nature of water like (i) water is divisible
and amenable to sharing; (ii) it is a common
pool resource; moreover, one unit of water

used by one is a unit denied to others;

(iii) it has multiple uses and users and
involves resultant trade-offs; (iv) excludability is an inherent problem and very
often exclusion costs involved are very
high; (v) it involves the issue of graded
scales and boundaries and need for evolving a corresponding understanding
around them. (For example where does
the local end and exogenous begin and
what are the relationshipsbetween them?);
and (v) the way water is planned, used and
managed causes externalities both positive and negative, and many of them are
unidirectional and asymmetric.
These characteristics have a bearing on
water-related institutions4 and have the
potential both, to trigger contention and
conflict thus becoming an instrument of
polarisation and exclusion, but also to
become an instrument of equitable and
sustainable prosperity for all those who
depend directly or indirectly on water for
their livelihoods.
There is also the issue of the relative
paucity of frameworks, policies and mechanisms to deal with water resources. There
is a relatively greater visibility as well
as a greater body of experience in evolving policies, frameworks, legal set-ups
and administrative mechanisms dealing
with immobile natural resources, however contested the space may be. For
example, many reformists as well as
revolutionary movements are rooted in
issues related to land. Several political and
legal interventions addressing the issue
of equity and societal justice have
been attempted. Most countries have
gone through land reforms of one type or
another. Issues related to forests have also
generated a body of comprehensive literature on forest resources and rights. Though
conflicts over them have not necessarily
been effectively or adequately resolved,
they have received much more serious
attention, have been studied in their own
right and practical as well as theoretical
means of dealing with them have been
sought. In contrast, water conflicts have not
received the same kind of attention. The
18 case studies presented here are part of
a larger project, Compendium on Water
Conflicts in India which is a modest attempt to capture different types of conflicts
in terms of scale and nature of conflict
with illustrative cases premised on the
belief that understanding and documenting

Economic and Political Weekly February 18, 2006

Figure: Location Map of the 18 Case Studies Water Conflicts in India

Andaman and Nicobar

Case Studies: (1) Keoladeo Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan. (2) Vadali village, Surendranagar, Gujarat.
(3) Bogibeel Bridge over the Brahmaputra River, Assam. (4) Lower Bhavani Project on the
Bhavani River, Tamil Nadu. (5) Palkhed LBC, Upper Godavari Project, Maharashtra. (6) Kolleru
Wildlife Sanctuary, Andhra Pradesh. (7) Kannauj-Kanpur stretch of the Ganga River, Uttar
Pradesh. (8) Khari River, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. (9) Papagani River, Karnataka and Andhra
Pradesh. (10) Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada, Gujarat. (11) Haribad Minor Irrigation
Project, Madhya Pradesh. (12) Polavaram Project on the Godavari River, Andhra Pradesh.
(13) Shapin River, Jharkhand. (14) Lava ka Baas, Alwar, Rajasthan. (15) Gravity Dam, Paschim
Midnapur, West Bengal. (16) The Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal. (17) Balighar Hydroelectric Project,
Doda, Jammu and Kashmir. (18) Sheonath River, Durg, Chhattisgarh.

them in all their complexity would contribute to informed public debate and
facilitate their resolution.

II
Background and Process
This introductory article and the 18 case
studies (see the figure for the listing of the
cases and their locations) that follow have
their roots in a process initiated by the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) project, Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment.5
Discussions in civil society forums led
to an awareness of the need to look at water
conflicts and some information on a small
number of relatively better known water
conflicts in the south was collected and
a summary of the cases was published as
a small booklet.6 During a meeting in

Bangalore organised to discuss this booklet,

participants described many more varied
conflicts and it was felt that there is a need
for paying more attention to water conflicts in India.7 It soon became clear that
information on water conflicts was scattered, unorganised and many conflicts were
documented inadequately or not at all.
It was decided that one of the first steps
should be to bring out a compendium on
water conflicts in India. A small group was
formed to discuss the action plan and a core
group as well as a steering group were set
up to carry out and guide the activity.
Since the process was initiated by a
group that had strengths in peninsular
India, it was decided to concentrate mainly
on peninsular India at this stage, and
include only a few representative cases
from the rest of India. The case studies are

Economic and Political Weekly February 18, 2006

not full-fledged research papers but a

summarised account of the conflict, the
issues involved and their current status. In
most cases, the authors have taken care to
capture the differing perceptions of the
conflicting parties. Each case study was
sent for review and the reviewers comments were treated as issues to be addressed and so long as they were adequately addressed, there was no attempt
to modify the case study to bring it in line
with reviewers opinions. The inputs from
the Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts
in India a two-day meeting held on
March 21-22, 2005 with a participation
of nearly 120 people drawn from politics,
judiciary, activism, farming community,
academia and media have helped improve the compendium. We feel the process of preparing the compendium has been
as important as the product itself.
The compendium and the cases presented
here are not, and cannot be, a comprehensive account of water conflicts in India.
It is more an attempt to illustrate the wide
diversity of water conflicts in India. Some
cases like the over 30-year old Cauvery
dispute have not been included; firstly,
because they are very well known and
secondly, they would probably require
separate volumes to do them justice. In
spite of all limitations, it was felt that
bringing out the compendium is an important first step, mainly because it gives us
a glimpse into the million revolts that
are brewing around water. We hope that
it begins a process of serious reflection on
water conflicts within an evolving comprehensive framework.

III
Case Studies and Themes
After being reviewed by the experts, a
total of 63 case studies were selected for
the compendium. Many of these cases have
been or are being fought in court. Even
more involve agitations and grassroot
action. Organising these studies for publication involved adopting a principle for
grouping and presenting the case studies
though some cases could fit into more than
one theme. Since water conflicts are often a
multi-faceted microcosm of wider conflicts
and it is difficult to identify any one aspect
as the dominant one, it was impossible to
make the themes mutuallyexclusive. After
much discussion, it was decided to organise
the cases into the eight broad themes described briefly in following sections. In the
compendium, invited thematic review
pieces8 introduce the theme and to some
extent the case studies covered under it.

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Contending Water Uses

Water, as noted earlier, is a common
pool resource and hence when the same
unit is demanded for different kinds of
uses, there is a contestation and a potential
conflict. The 10 case studies included under
this broad theme deal with conflicts related to contention between different kinds
of uses. These range from a conflict over
water for wetlands vs agriculture use to that
over building a bridge and its impact on
an island ecosystem.
Three salient points emerge from the case
studies: (i) structures built to improve the
ecosystem may have unintended effects
that actually harm people and ecosystems;
(ii) improving water resources through
rainwater harvesting at micro level might
improve water availability but could
sharpen conflicts if equity is not addressed;
and (iii) in the conflict between rural and
urban uses, it is rural needs that are steadily
losing out.

Equity, Access and Allocation

This broad theme focuses mainly on
equity issues between different users but
within the same kind of use, unlike the first
theme that deals with different contending
uses. The cases cover a wide variety of
equity and access issues.

Conflicts Around Water Quality

Issues related to water quality, or pollution, are fast emerging in various parts
of India. Earlier these issues were treated
as inevitable consequences of growth and
industrial development and therefore
largely ignored. However, growing scale,
increased awareness and active civil society engagement have brought water quality
conflicts increasingly to the forefront. The
main issue here is how and in what form do
users return water to the ecosystem. Polluted
water returned by users causes problems to
downstream users, and decreased freshwater availability causes economic loss,
social distress and ill health. Sadly, deterioration in quality becomes apparent only
after adverse impact looms large
enough, and in the last instance, ecosystems become the major losers.
A dozen cases, drawn from different part
of the country, have been studied under
this theme. Perhaps we need a three-pronged
approach. First, a legal framework based
on rapidly enforced criminal and civil
penalties. Strict but non-implementable
legal frameworks appear good only on
paper. Second, environmental mediation,

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a pragmatic direction to settle issues quickly

and amicably. Third, encouraging voluntary compliance. The latter is a long way
from becoming effective in India, since consumers/users in particular are still focused
mainly on price than on quality, safety, etc.
To these we should add another concern,
the ecosystem. Ecosystems have no voice,
no votes, and some important ecosystem
issues have never entered the agenda for
water conflicts. For example, concepts of
ecological flows, minimum ecosystem
requirements and preservation of ecosystem
services are not even being explored. Yet,
our long-term futures will finally be decided by whether we tackle these issues,
before we poison the wellsprings of life
on this planet.

Sand Mining
The four cases under this theme bring
out the complex nature of the conflicts
around indiscriminate sand excavation from
riverbeds. Apart from the ecological impact like impact on stream flows and sandy
acquifers, deepening of riverbeds, subsurface intrusion of saline seawater in coastal
areas and erosion of the banks to name a
few, it also impacts on the livelihoods of
the local people causing decreased availability of water for both domestic and
irrigation purposes as the wells near the
banks go dry. Sand is also a building
material and local people also depend on
it for house construction. In many states
it is one of the major sources of revenue for
the gram panchayats. It provides seasonal
employment to the local labourers. The
contractor-bureaucrat-politician nexus
further complicates the situation and the
conflicts very often take the form of conflict between this nexus and the local people.

Micro-Level Disputes
Ten case studies have been included in
the compendium under this theme that
comprises conflicts on a truly micro-scale
within a village, a community or around
a small tank. The thousands of such microlevel conflicts that exist in India are varied,
and contrary to expectation, often complex
to understand, and involve a very wide
range of issues. No compendium can ever
aspire to do justice to them. This sample
is only illustrative of a few such cases.
The cases show that local level water
conflicts are increasing and spilling over
into many other issues and though there
are instances of successful resolution of
conflicts, what stands out is the absence
of mechanisms to mediate, to provide

platforms for dialogue and contestation

between rights and stakeholders.

Dams and Displacement

Conflicts over dams and displacement
have been relatively well publicised and
better documented. There is lot of material
already available in many instances and there
are nine case studies in the compendium.

Transboundary Water Conflict

Conflicts between countries are generally classed as transboundary conflicts.
However, in India, constituent states themselves are often very large and since water
is a state subject, enjoy considerable autonomy in this respect. For this reason, both
interstate and inter-country disputes have
been included together in this theme.

Privatisation
Privatisation of water is an important new
arena of conflict not only in India but also in
many other countries in Asia, Latin America
and Africa. The three cases included in the
compendium under this theme bring out
clearly what is in store if there is no vigilance
exercised on the kind and extent of privatisation, or in respect of whether or not
privatisation of rights and entitlements takes
place under the garb of privatising services.
The current debate about water privatisation is highly polarised between two
well-entrenched positions of for and against
and there seems to be very little attempt to
explore the middle ground of seeing water
as both a social and economic good. This
has implications for issues like ownership,
rights and allocations, pricing and cost
recovery and regulatory framework.

IV
Way Ahead: Salient Points
Water conflicts are symptoms of larger
issues in water resources management. The
compendium, a mainly pre-analytical
effort, does not aim at a detailed analysis
of water conflicts, their root causes and the
ways ahead. However, implicit in these
million revolts is a demand for change;
first, in the ways we think about water and
second, in the ways we manage it. And
many isolated insights can already be
gleaned from the material. In this concluding section we briefly enumerate some
of these insights.
First of all, we need to get out of the
thinking that sees water flowing out to the
sea as water going waste. This thinking,

Economic and Political Weekly February 18, 2006

still prevalent in the country, led to a water

management strategy centred on dams.
It is also important to have a historical
perspective and not demonise dams
and earlier dam builders. There is not much
point blaming dams and dam builders of
yesterday from todays vantage point; it
would be something like finding fault with
the telephone department for not introducing cell phones in 1940s! While questioning the wisdom of selling the same technology approach that is valued in that era,
we need to look ahead.
The lesson is that water is a resource
embedded within ecosystems; we cannot
treat it as a freely manipulable resource. For
example, too many of our mega projects,
whether big dams, or diversions or interlinking schemes treat rivers as freely manipulable resources and do harm to the longterm viability and sustainability of the
resource itself. Our wetlands and rivers are
already in bad shape. It is time we took them
into account on their own, and not simply
as a resource to be mined. Otherwise we will
end up spending more in managing conflicts
than what we get from our projects!
We need to change our thinking in respect
of the role of large systems and dams. We
need to see local water resources as the
mainstay of our water system and need to
see large-scale irrigation as a stabilising
and productivity enhancing supplement
feeding into it. For this we need to deliver
water in a dispersed manner to local systems, rather than in concentrated pockets,
creating ecosystem islands dependent fully
on exogenous water that can only be maintained at great economic and social cost.
Then there is the vexed question of who
pays how much for water. We need to
realise that so far it is the urban poor, the
rural areas and the ecosystems who have
paid a much higher cost, directly as well
as indirectly for water than what the rich
and the middle classes in the country enjoy,
especially from public sources. More than
anything, we have here a case of reverse
subsidy. We need to see to it that full costs
are recovered from the rich and the middle
classes. They have the capacity to pay, as
the super profits to bottled water manufacturers show. Without this it will not
be possible for cities to maintain adequate
quality for the water they return water to
downstream ecosystems and communities.
Two of the most important issues that
have emerged are those relating to rehabilitation and pollution. In respect of rehabilitation with self respect though some
progress has been made in states like Maharashtra, there is an urgent need for a policy
and enactment at the national level for the

rehabilitation of all project affected. In

respect of pollution, as already discussed
above, we need to move to a mix of civil and
criminal penalties and introduce environmental mediation as an active method of
addressing pollution issues.
What is also evident is the total ineffectivity
of the so-called river basin organisations
to do anything about water conflicts. What
is sorely needed is a system of graded institutions that start from the micro-level, may
be a village, and proceed upwards to a basin
level board or authority. Water is a highly
dispersed and local resource even while it
is an interconnected resource. Centralised
basin level authorities alone will never be
able to take care of the complex problems
that arise at all levels. It is also important
that these micro-level institutions do not
automatically follow the boundaries of a
presumed community, since it is clear from
many cases that intra-community divisions
enter decisively into water conflicts.

Polarised Positions
The case studies clearly bring out that
struggles and viewpoints around water
issues in India are highly polarised. The
richness and diversity of bio-physical,
social, economic as well as political aspects within India create a tendency of
fragmentation and polarisation rather than
a synthesis, leading to long-drawn out wars
of attrition in which the losers are invariably the vulnerable and weaker sections.
It is important in this respect to look at
multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) or
similar processes that bring stakeholders
together. The case studies also show that
MSPs have resulted in better outcomes
than polarised wars of attrition.9
However, there are a few aspects that
need urgent attention if MSPs are to become meaningful and stable instruments
of water governance. MSPs will firstly
need to take into account and give
proper attention to the heterogeneity of
stakeholders, existing prior rights and
context of MSP formation. But more
importantly, they will also have to be
informed by an innovative approach to
water sector reform that will allow accommodation of different stakeholder interests, will need to be supported by access
to reliable data, information and decision
support systems and be based on an
acceptable normative framework.
Such a framework, Rogers and Hall10
point out, needs to be an inclusive
framework (institutional and administrative) within which strangers or people with
different interests can practically discuss

Economic and Political Weekly February 18, 2006

and agree to cooperate and coordinate their

actions. This is all the more important in
the water sector where opinions are sharply
divided on crucial issues: for example, is
water a social good and part of the human
rights framework or an economic good
like any other. There is a similarly sharp
difference of opinion about source creation,
about large vs small systems, equitable access
and entitlements. The framework adopted
will therefore be of critical importance.
The framework needs to be capable of
creating space for a dialogue if an MSP
is to be initiated. For example, a framework that inherently sees large and small
as mutually exclusive and opposed alternatives leaves little scope for dialogue
between the dam affected and the drought
affected: large dam votaries would tend to
either invoke the greater common good to
ignore the suffering and displacement of
already marginalised communities like the
adivasis while opponents would invoke that
very suffering to ignore the possibility
reliable water supply to severely drought
affected areas. However, if the framework
is based on the need to integrate the small
and the large, several possibilities emerge
destructive centralised submergence
behind the dam could be reduced by storing
as much as possible of the water flows in the
small systems in the command/service area
instead of storing them behind the dam11
and open up space for a joint exploration
by the two important stakeholders, the
would-be project affected and the beneficiaries. The conventional framework governing water resource planning, source
development, norms of access and service
delivery, etc, in the water sector is also
responsible for many types of conflicts
amongst the direct stakeholders and a highly
polarised discourse on water. The challenge is to evolve a consensual framework
that will be inclusive enough even as it
takes into account crucial concerns like
equity and sustainability.
The beginning is likely to be modest.
Recently Wang Shucheng, Chinas minister of water resources said in his key note
speech to the international congress by
constructing a water saving society, China
will upgrade its resources use efficiency,
improve its eco-environment, enhance
its capability for sustainable development and push the entire society towards
a civil development path that features
better production development, affluent
life for the people and a sound ecology
...Our objective is to prevent aggregate
agricultural water consumption from
further increasing and ensure that water
for grain security will be satisfied through

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agricultural water saving and enhancement

of water use efficiency.12 We may not
necessarily adopt this Chinese formulation, but it is an example of the kind of
focus and precision that is needed.
In conclusion, we go back to Manmohan Singhs advice to the state governments to show understanding and consideration, statesmanship and appreciation
for other points of view. These are
applicable to all the actors in the water
sector central government, state governments, courts, media, civil society, industry and farmers. Unless we come together
and evolve a consensual framework in
India, go beyond the polarised discourse,
rivers will continue to divide us, emotionally and politically, leading to a
million revolts, the efforts at physical
interlinking notwithstanding. EPW
Email: b.gujja@wwfint.org

Notes
[Authors are editors of the forthcoming book Water
Conflicts: A Compendium of Indian Experience
(working title) to be published by Routledge in
March-April 2006. This article is based on the 70
odd case studies and thematic review papers that
are part of this book. Of these, 18 case studies are
included in this special collection. Needless to say,

574

the opinions expressed in this introductory

article are of the authors alone and not necessarily
endorsed by the organisations they may represent
and the contributors of the case studies and thematic reviews.]
1 Reproduced from Infochange Agenda issue on
The Politics of Water, Issue 3, October 2005.
2 Headline story of The Hindu, December 2, 2005.
3 Andhra Pradesh state assembly was stalled
for several days on this issue. Opposition and
the electoral partner TRS joined the protest
demanding that this government order (GO)
diverting water from Krishna be withdrawn.
4 In fact, there is a considerable amount of
literature available on some of these, especially
about common pool resources, their defining
characteristics and the fit between these
characteristics and the institutions to manage
them. Lele Sharachchandra (2004), Beyond
State-Community and Bogus jointness:
Crafting Institutional Solutions for Resource
Management in Max Spoor (ed), Globalisation,
Poverty and Conflict: A Critical Development
Reader, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht and Boston, pp 283-303, summarises
some of these discussions and debates.
5 Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment
was set up by 10 international organisations.
More information on the project is available
on www.iwmi.org/dialogue. The present effort
of preparing a Compendium on Water Conflicts
has been funded by WWF.
6 R Doraiswamy and Biksham Gujja (2004),
Understanding Water Conflicts: Case Studies
from South India, Dialogue on Water, Food and
Environment, WWF-International, ICRISAT,
Patancheru, AP and Pragathi, Bangalore.

7 The meeting in Bangalore and the subsequent

interactions led to the formation of the
Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts
in India. The Forum presently consists of
Centre for World Solidarity (CWS), Hyderabad;
Chalakudi River Samrakshana Samithi, Trichur;
IWMI-Tata Water Policy Programme, Anand;
Pragathi, Bangalore, Society for Promoting
Participative Ecosystem Management
(SOPPECOM), Pune; VIKSAT, Ahmedabad;
WWF International, Hyderabad and World
Water Institute (WWI), Pune and also a few
independent researchers. Apart from preparing
this compendium, the Forum also organised
media campaign in five states and also organised
a two-day conference on water conflicts on
March 21-22, 2005.
8 Thematic Review Authors Include Ramaswamy
Iyer, Sunita Narain, Paul Appasamy, K V Raju,
P B Sahasranaman, Bharat Patankar, Anant
Phadke, Biksham Gujja, Suhas Paranjape and
K J Joy.
9 The cases of Palar and Noyal Basins in Tamil
Nadu, the case of Khari River in Gujarat and cases
like the Uchangi Dam and Tembu lift irrigation
scheme in Maharashtra all point to this.
10 Rogers, Peter and Alan W Hall, 2003, Effective
Water Governance, Global Water Partnership
Technical Committee (TEC), TEC Background
Papers, No 7.
11 For details see the Case Study Alternative
Restructuring of the Sardar Sarovar Project:
Breaking the Deadlock by Suhas Paranjape and
K J Joy and their book Sustainable Technology:
Making the Sardar Sarovar Project Viable, Centre
for Environment Education, Ahmedabad, 1995.
12 Speech of Wang Shucheng at the Opening
Ceremony of the 19th ICID congress on
September 15, 2005.

Economic and Political Weekly February 18, 2006