Why are several ministries including Water Resources and Finance strongly endorsing re-engagement with the World Bank in the full-range of water-related issues?
Banking upon a set of commissioned studies by a handful of Indian experts,the report concludes that the country needs as much World Bank’s money as itsknowledge to build water-secure future. It’s no secret that the apex bank’sknowledge comes in attractive package - buy one get one free. Firstpiece of knowledge: increase per capita water storage from a dismal 200 cubicmeters to match that of growing economies like China whose storage is as much as2500 cubic meters. The only way to do that is to build large dams and extensiveirrigation networks. But haven’t this been heard before?
Dissecting the country’s water sector with clinical precision the reportunfolds its malignant tissues: endemic corruption, lack of accountability, poortariff collection and paucity of cash. Using its controversial scissor ofreforms, the World Bank advocates a business model built onhigh-reward/high-risk hydraulic infrastructure that mobilizes public and privatefinancing to ensure efficiency, equity and sustainability in the water sector.Knowing well that water resources is an intensely political process, the reportdoesn’t miss to hang a carrot: reforms provide returns to politicianswho are willing to make changes.
The report and the prescriptions contained therein have been hailed bypoliticians of every hue. Not without reason though. As fiscal deficit mounts,political leaderships need budgets that could be spent on personnel and onsubsidized public services. Though the report has been critical of an enormousbacklog of deferred maintenance of existing infrastructure that reflects watermachinery’s gross inefficiency and lack of accountability, its prescriptionfor increased lending to rebuild infrastructure to pull this beleagueredmachinery out of the current abyss defies logic.
The report seems highly motivated as it acknowledges research that it deemssupportive of its prime argument. It conveniently ignores the fact that India islosing over 36 billion cubic meters of existing storage capacity every year dueto siltation and associated reasons. The report craftily escapes the unresolvedissue of displacement due to submergence of large tracts of inhabited lands.Clearly, in its 60th year of existence the World Bank is reinventing itselfto rid past the turbulent history of its presence in India’s water sector thusfar.
There is no denying of the fact that water storage facilities need to improveto account for temporal and spatial variations in rainfall pattern in thecountry. The report does acknowledge that `all water is local and each place isdifferent’ and that `one size will not fit all’ but ends up advocatingmonoculture of engineering infrastructure that are rarely site-specific. Thecore of the argument relates to the fact that 50 per cent of precipitation fallsin just 15 days and over 90 per cent of river flows occurs in just four monthsin the country.
There are no two opinions that storage capacity ought to improve in the daysahead. How indeed this is put into practice is the question. Should it be at thecost of displacing millions of poor through submergence of fertile lands orshould it be through engagement of the communities in reviving water bodiesacross the country? Should water continue to be monopolized by few at the costof large majority of population that is deprived of its legitimate entitlementto water for survival as well as for securing livelihoods?
The report offers a bundle of such self-contradicting arguments. Though itacknowledges that the `era of the individual coping strategies’ has beenremarkably successful and that communities are the country’s greatest `assets’,its prescription continues to ignore both. The report argues in favor ofreforming the water sector but doesn’t acknowledge the need for institutionbuilding at the local level to bring about paradigm shift in water governance.Isn’t hyping India’s Turbulent Water Future serving the hidden agendaof those who gain from the implementation of the crises management strategies?
Formerly with the World Bank, Dr Sudhirendar Sharma is a water expert and isattached with the Delhi-based the Ecological Foundation.