Thursday, March 13, 2014

Approac to a New National water Policy (NWP)




1.         Response for reforms in national water policy (NWP) 2002.

(a)          Intermittent, unreliable, unsafe and in equitable water supply in urban area.

(b)          Rivers turned into sewers or poison and acquires contaminated.

(c)          Major and medium irrigation systems in dismay rendering poor and undesirable service and characterized by inequities of various kinds

(d)          Alarming depletion of acqufiers in many parts of the country.

(e)          The environmental /ecological impacts f bug water resource products poor EIAs, people displacement of failure to resettle and rehabilitation them.

2.         Reversals of Past Approach.     

(a)   Reversing the usual approach of projecting a future demand and bringing about a supply side response to meet that demand.  We must start front the fact that the availability of fresh water in nature is finite and learn to manage our water needs with availability.  This will mean stringent restraint on the growth of demands for water which is difficult but the effort is inescapable. 

(b)  A second reversal will have to be on the supply side.  Primacy will have to shift from resource development (WRD) projects with big dam and reservoirs and canal system to small decentralized, local, community led, water harvesting and watershed development programmes, with the big projects being regarded as project of the last resorts, and the exploitations of the ground water will have to be severely restrained in the interest of resource conservation as well as equity. 

(c)  A third reversal will have to be in relation to rivers, from massive intervention in flows and maximal abstraction of water to letting the rivers flow and keeping interventions to the minimum.

(d)  A fourthly reversal will have to be in the relatives roles of the state and the community from sovereign powers of the state to the state as trustee holding natural resources in possible trust for the community.

3.         Multiple Perspective.

            Fundamental  Rights perspective.
            Social Justice/ equity perspective.

            Women perspective (burden on women to fetch water).
            Community perspective (Balance between state and community)
  State perspective (legislation and policy formation)
            Emerging perspective
  Water quality perspectives.
  Citizen /water user perspective.
  Economic perspective.
  Business perspective.
  Environmental /ecological perspective.

4.         The ecological and social justice perspective will have to be overreaching prospective and all other perspective subordinated to them.

5.         Dharma Perspective.

          (a)       The poor, deprived, disadvantaged or disempowered
 (b)       Other human sharing the resource in our state or other states our country   or other country our generation or future generation.
          (c)        Other species or forms of life.
          (d)       Rivers, lakes, acqufiers, forest, and nature in general planet earth itself.

6.         In place of integrated water resources management (INRM), Responsible,Harmonious, just and wise use of water (RHJWUW)  is recommended.

           

No comments:

Post a Comment