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21st Century Water Governance
The Mihir Shah Committee report analyses the complexity of the water sector in a finely nuanced manner and understands what needs to be done, but it fails to convince how its ideas could fructify. The report’s prescriptions, executed through a new structure, could fetter the water sector instead of setting it free to innovate.
If water governance does not improve in India, we seem headed straight towards disaster. Groundwater tables are abysmally low in many parts of the country; many of our main river basins are closed. And the expressed demand for water might not even be half met in the next decade.
Under the circumstances, the Mihir Shah Committee has done nothing short of a valiant job. Looking into the functioning of two key national water institutions, the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), and recommending that they be more closely tied at the hip, the committee has tried to integrate national water institutions, as water itself is integrated in the real world.
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