A controversy in Maharashtra

A Bill linking water rights to family planning derails the debate on the State's chronic water shortage.

LYLA BAVADAM in Mumbai

COERCIVE family planning methods have never been known to work but this did not deter the Maharashtra State Legislative Council, the Upper House of the State legislature, from approving on April 7 the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Bill, which imposes a two-child family norm on farmers in the State who wish to avail themselves of irrigation benefits. The Bill, as passed by the Upper House, said that farmers who have more than two children after the Bill becomes law will be denied access to irrigation water and the existing irrigation benefits that they enjoy will also be cut off. Failure to comply with the rule could result in imprisonment and a fine.

However, when the Lower House took up the Bill on April 13, it caused an uproar and the government was forced to modify the clause. Instead of denying water, the government will now be charging farmers with larger families up to one and a half times more than the going water rates.

Shiv Sena member Divakar Raote, who was on the all-party legislative committee to which the Bill was referred, said he disapproved of the clause linking water rights to the size of farmers' families because it was an "injustice... and their rights would be violated".

The draft Bill is the brainchild of Water Resources Minister Ajit Pawar, nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. Ajit Pawar says the Bill is designed to address the chronic water shortage that Maharashtra has been facing for close to a decade. "The water resources are static but our population is increasing," he says, justifying the need for such a law.

However, linking issues of family planning and water rights is a "deliberate and Machiavellian stroke" that has changed the nature of the water debate completely. The real issue at stake in water management and conservation is participatory monitoring of water by users. This is the only way to resolve chronic water shortages and to ensure equitable distribution of water. Critics of the Bill say that its aim is neither water conservation nor equitable distribution. They say the Bill is largely a tool to enable the Maharashtra government to be eligible for a World Bank loan.

Like other critics of the Bill, K.R. Datye, water engineer and founder of the Society for People's Participation in Ecosystem Management, believes that its most controversial aspect - linking family planning with water rights - is just a smokescreen. "Coercive family planning is not something anyone would risk," he says, dismissing the potential threat to farmer's rights.

"The most important aspect of water conservation and management is that it should be independent of regulatory authorities and this aspect is missing in the Bill," says Datye. According to him, the chronic water shortage can be resolved if users participate in monitoring water use, there is scientific evaluation of the process, there is an independent agency for documenting and recording processes, and, most importantly, environmental concerns guide the process. None of these has been factored into the Bill. Instead, it concentrates on the formation of giant water-monitoring corporations and the construction of huge water projects. Datye says: "Why waste this money? The Maharashtra government should upgrade existing facilities, extend the service area, and bring in new systems of financing." Datye feels that these methods would be more effective and would also be in tune with the new water policy of the Central government.

If the Bill is passed, a Water Resources Regulatory Authority will be created to "regulate water resources, facilitate and ensure judicious, equitable and sustainable management, allocation and utilisation of water resources, besides fixing rates for use of water for agriculture, industrial, drinking and other purposes". Opponents of the Bill do not believe that the Bill will create a situation of equitable or sustainable water use.

The equity issue, especially, is being dodged. "It is my hunch that this Bill is at the instance of the World Bank," says the economist H.M. Desarda, formerly a Planning Commission member. "It relies on changing the mechanism of water rights from a socio-economic-political process to a clear commercial one. It creates a scenario whereby the process will eventually be dominated by a regulatory body largely comprising bureaucrats. The structure the Bill leans towards is clearly one that is in line with the World Bank's `market-oriented' thinking," he says.

Creating a Water Regulatory Authority takes the water debate out of the political arena. It becomes a commercial process. This demolishes the whole idea of social justice and entitlements, and takes something as basic as water into the realm of negotiable rights.

Maharashtra's progressive policies have slowly been changing character and thereby coming under fire. Three years ago, when the National Water Policy was modified, Maharashtra chose not to toe the Centre's order of priority for water use, that is, drinking water, agricultural water and industrial water. Maharashtra chose to give priority to industry over agriculture in its water policy. In that context, the contents of the Bill come as no surprise.

There are indications throughout the Bill that expose its duplicity. The process formulated in the Bill, for instance, is too `top down' and excludes the user from the decision-making and monitoring processes. The key issue for good water use lies with the regulatory system. "It should be a user-participative system. If users monitor and regulate their own water use, then there will be the maximum efficiency," insists Datye. But this, he says, would "not make the Bank happy". "Ajit Pawar's game is to create water users' societies so that he can, on the face of it, tell the World Bank that his government is following the Bank's stated aim of participative management. His aim is to get a big loan from the Bank," according to him. He believes that the Maharashtra government is doing exactly what the N. Chandrababu Naidu government did in Andhra Pradesh - that is, "forming numerous water user societies without adequate and appropriate user monitoring systems, getting a loan from the Bank, and then falling deep in debt".

The Bill states: "It has become essential to put some strict restrictions while giving water entitlement as overall availability of the water in the State is less." While there is obviously a link between water shortage and the number of water users, the quantum of water is "less" not so much because of the number of users but because of the indiscriminate methods of water use. Agriculture in the State is plagued by the increasing use of water-intensive crops, inappropriate cultivation of crops for various climatic regions, and the rampant use of chemical fertilizers. The digging of deep borewells, deforestation, soil erosion and the consequent loss to the water table are some of the reasons for "less" water in the State.

Solutions to the water shortage include adopting user-participatory monitoring methods and stringent rules for groundwater use, planting climate-appropriate crops, judicious planting of water-intensive crops, minimising the use of chemical fertilizers, taking advantage of soil moisture as a water conservation method, reforesting land, and stopping soil erosion. These are the only long-term solutions to the State's persistent water shortage.