The TREADS Initiative at CPR initiated a new series of dialogues to bring the theme of water security into the ongoing policy conversations around the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.
Water security is engaged with vaguely and inadequately, often focused on provision and access. Recent scholarship insists on including the ability to cope with risks – floods, droughts, water quality, etc. Climate change compounds the challenge further, manifesting most profoundly in water-related risks, which are complicated further by their extra-territorial and trans-jurisdictional nature. We have argued earlier that India’s water resources development goals lie in the realm of transboundary river water governance: both international (India shares its key river basins of Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra with its neighbours) and interstate (36 federal constituents share 25 river basins; all interstate rivers except one). This geography challenges the conventional notion that water is a State subject. It brings the constitutional scheme for water governance to the centre forcefully: that it is subject to the powers of the Union over regulation and development of interstate rivers (as outlined in Entry 56 of the Union List). India’s policymaking and governance must be reimagined from this crucial perspective for its water security and Viksit Bharat goals. What kind of federal water policymaking and institutional reimagining is required to pursue these goals?
The abandoned effort to redraft the National Water Policy, initiated in 2019, was a lost opportunity to address these critical issues. The theme Water Security for Viksit Bharat of TREADS Dialogues aims to address this agenda to inform and support national water policymaking to work with states for water security. The approach is to brainstorm some related questions with scholars, thought leaders, practitioners and other stakeholders towards setting the water security agenda for the Viksit Bharat vision, in a closed-door, invited-only setting with Chatham House rules.
Find insights from the dialogues below.
