The Geographical Journal, 2010, doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2010.00384.x
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces
of water management in the Krishna river
basin, South India
geoj_384
1..11
JEAN-PHILIPPE VENOT*, LUNA BHARATI†, MARK GIORDANO‡ AND
FRANÇOIS MOLLE§
*International Water Management Institute, PMB CT 112, Cantonments, Accra, Ghana
E-mail:
[email protected]
†International Water Management Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal
‡International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
§Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Montpellier, France
This paper was accepted for publication in August 2010
As demand and competition for water resources increase, the river basin has become the primary
unit for water management and planning. While appealing in principle, practical implementation of
river basin management and allocation has often been problematic. This paper examines the case
of the Krishna basin in South India. It highlights that conflicts over basin water are embedded in a
broad reality of planning and development where multiple scales of decisionmaking and non-water
issues are at play. While this defines the river basin as a disputed ‘space of dependence’, the river
basin has yet to acquire a social reality. It is not yet a ‘space of engagement’ in and for which
multiple actors take actions. This explains the endurance of an interstate dispute over the sharing of
the Krishna waters and sets limits to what can be achieved through further basin water allocation
and adjudication mechanisms – tribunals – that are too narrowly defined. There is a need to extend
the domain of negotiation from that of a single river basin to multiple scales and to non-water
sectors. Institutional arrangements for basin management need to internalise the political spaces of
the Indian polity: the states and the panchayats. This re-scaling process is more likely to shape the
river basin as a space of engagement in which partial agreements can be iteratively renegotiated,
and constitute a promising alternative to the current interstate stalemate.
KEY WORDS: Krishna – India, river basin management, allocation, politics, scale
Introduction
A
s demand and competition for water resources
increase, a strong international consensus has
been created regarding the need for Integrated
Water Resources Management (IWRM) (GWP 2000).
In this context, the river basin is invariably singled out
as the natural unit for organising water management
(Warner et al. 2008). There is, however, little agreement on how IWRM initiatives should be designed,
implemented, and evaluated (Watson et al. 2007).
Conventional approaches see river basins as rational
units where technical ingenuity strives to ensure that
supply remains in line with societal demand (Molle
2007). Designing appropriate basin-wise allocation
mechanisms takes centre stage (Allan 2006) and
holds the promise of addressing the impacts of water
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development, land use and climate change on livelihoods and limiting the scope for conflict over scarce
and disputed water resources.
From a resource availability perspective, the river
basin approach is appealing. Sharing and integrating
data may show where there is balance or imbalance
in resource allocation, but solutions rest in a much
larger world than the river basin itself. A clear discrepancy between the rhetoric and the reality of basin
water management worldwide has led many authors
to question the river basin approach to sustainable
water management on several grounds. First, delineating river basins is not easy, as groundwater basins and
surface watersheds rarely match, making integrated
management a challenge (Warner et al. 2008).
Second, river basins are not neutral spatial units. Contrary to the common hydrologic vision that presents
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
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Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
them as natural and non-political, river basins are
disputed arenas that overlap political boundaries and
are appropriated – or not – differently by different
users pursuing multiple, and possibly conflicting,
objectives (Molle 2009; Warner et al. 2008). Third,
natural resources management takes place across
multiple scales and institutional levels. Water use and
demand are, for example, driven by dynamics that go
beyond the hydrological and topographic boundaries
of water availability.
The discourse around the naturalness of the river
basin tends to erase this complexity, possibly leading
to unsuccessful interventions and to the persistence
of environmental degradation. Understanding the
process of river basin development and the scope for
future management strategies requires going beyond
a water-centred and basin-centred vision of water
management (Molle 2007).
Following Watson et al. (2007) who call for a critical analysis of IWRM, this paper engages with the
political dimension of river basins and the multiple
drivers of water development and management by
using the notion of space. It focuses on the rhetoric,
practices and limits of current interstate allocation
mechanisms to achieve equitable and sustainable
basin management in the federal setting of India. The
case of the Krishna basin in South India illustrates that
interstate water disputes over the use of water are a
persistent phenomenon despite calls for IWRM and
existing basin water allocation procedures. Negotiations over basin water allocation have reached a stalemate, and there is little sign of improvement in the
near future (Richards and Singh 2002). This paper
aims at understanding why and at identifying possible
alternatives. The paper provides a socio-technical
analysis of water availability, taking into account the
social forces that shape water use and allocation.
Methods used are multiple and characteristic of interdisciplinary research. They include a literature review,
secondary data analysis for land use change and water
accounting, interviews with key informants, and
analysis of policy document.
The second section gives the analytical lens of the
study. The notions of space and scale are used to
shed light on the root causes of basin water management challenges in India. The third section
describes the trajectory that is the history, the politics
and the multiple drivers of water development in
the Krishna basin. The fourth section highlights the
shortcomings of current mechanisms for interstate
negotiation and basin water allocation in the Indian
context. The fifth section explores possible alternatives to current basin water negotiations and investigates the potential for establishing new negotiation
platforms in order to achieve sustainable water
management. A short conclusion reflects on the
Krishna case study. Recognising the river basin as
a political arena, among many others, in which
water-related decisions are taken and going beyond
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a water-centred vision is needed to attain sustainable
water management.
The river basin: space of engagement
or dependence?
Space and scale are concepts that have long been
used in the field of geography:
Space is a [social] product [. . . it] serves as a tool of
thought and of action [and . . . ] in addition to being a
means of production it is also a means of control, and
hence of domination, of power.
Lefebvre (1974, 26)
In the literature, there has been a lively debate about
the politics of scale (Smith 1992), surrounding the
idea that scales are socially constituted in historically
specific ways (Perkman 2005). Beyond their apparent
naturalness as ‘relatively differentiated and selfenclosed geographical units’ (Brenner 2001, 599),
scales are social and political constructs mobilised by
individuals, groups, or the state in order to frame
problems and solutions in particular ways and to
favour specific courses of action (Delaney and Leitner
1997; Lebel et al. 2005; Marsden 2000). This reveals
three interconnected aspects of scales (Perkman
2005):
1 their nature as social formations, implying the need
for political mobilisation for the construction of a
new scale;
2 their function as sites of governance, dependant on
the existence of institutional arrangements for channelling interests and coordinating decision making;
and
3 their construction as an unit for intervention via
narratives and discourses.
Space then becomes an open and ongoing production
(Lefebvre 1974; Massey 1993) subject to re-scaling
processes; that is, the emergence of new territorial
scales (Brenner 2001). This ‘continuous reshuffling
and re-organization of spatial scales is an integral part
of social strategies and struggles for control and
empowerment’ (Swingedouw 1997, 141 as quoted in
Brenner 2001, 608).
The river basin has emerged as the natural unit for
the planning and the management of water resources
(see Molle 2009 and Warner et al. 2008 for critical
reviews). It is a ‘new scale’ but it is also one way
among others to structure space. Its uses reveal particular visions of space and of its functions. Ghiotti
(2006), for example, highlights that the river basin can
be seen and used as:
1 an operational entity to structure social and economic territories, design policies, appropriate and
control Space;
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
2 a platform to articulate and coordinate processes
that are designed at – and affect – other scales; and
3 a space whose control is disputed by other constructions of space such as the nation, the state, the
community.
These three aspects of the river basin can be brought
in alternatively or concomitantly by different actors
whose agendas unfold at multiple levels. They reveal
that river basins are political constructs.
Using the terminology of Cox and Mair (1991), the
first two dimensions of the river basin as identified by
Ghiotti (2006) indicate a space of ‘engagement’
(structuring and operational entity) and a space
of ‘dependence’ (coordinating platform), respectively.
Both dimensions are needed for basin management
mechanisms to be effective. This also requires the
existence of institutions constituting the river basin as
an object of governance and a social support to
provide resources and legitimacy to those institutions.
The next section focuses on the Krishna basin and
examines whether these requirements are met in the
Indian context.
Multi-level trajectory and space of dependence: the
example of the Krishna basin, South India
The Krishna river basin is the fifth largest river system
in India. It drains an area of 258 514 km2 in three
South Indian states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra (Figure 1). In 2008, the basin
population was 74 million (Venot 2009). The Krishna
River originates in the Western Ghats, drains the dry
areas of the Deccan plateau, and forms a delta before
discharging eastwards into the Bay of Bengal.
Since the 1850s, the Krishna basin has witnessed a
dramatic development of irrigation and water use with
the construction of large-scale projects, minor irrigation schemes and a booming groundwater economy.
In the early years of the twenty-first century more than
130 medium and major irrigation projects tame the
Krishna River and its tributaries. Together, they can
store about 54 billion cubic metres (Bcm), or 95% of
the pre-1965 runoff when few dams were in existence. A further 175 000 minor irrigation structures
have a significant impact on the overall river basin
balance (Venot 2009).
Historical basin-wise water accounting (Figure 1,
see Molden 1997 for details on the methodology)
highlights that total water depletion, defined as the
use or removal of water from a river basin that renders
it unavailable for further use downstream (this
includes direct rainfall evaporation) rose by 19% over
the period 1955–2000. It averaged 181 Bcm/year in
1990–2000. The increase was primarily due to an
expansion of irrigated agriculture and to widespread
supplemental irrigation of formerly rain-fed crops. As
a result, the discharge to the ocean declined from
44.3 Bcm/year in 1955 to 17.1 Bcm/year in 2000. In
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
3
2001–4, during an extended period of low rainfall, the
outflow to the sea dropped further to 0.8 Bcm/year
(Venot 2009).
Shiva (1991) highlights that water demand is at its
highest in Andhra Pradesh (47% of the total demand
in the Krishna basin), followed by Karnataka (33%)
and Maharashtra (20%), while Maharashtra and Karnataka, in this order, are the main contributors to
surface water flows due to higher rainfall and lower
water uses. Under these conditions, the planning and
development of water projects in the Krishna basin
have traditionally led to major interstate disagreements that contribute to intense inter- and intra-state
political struggles. This tension is expected to further
sharpen as demands for water increase. In the early
stages of basin development, in 1969, the Government of India (GoI) set up the Krishna Water Disputes
Tribunal (KWDT) as an attempt to solve enduring
interstate water disputes. In 1976, the KWDT allocated the 75%-dependable flow (flow exceeded in 3
out of 4 years) between the three states. The ruling was
provisional and expired in 2000. Interstate negotiations to revise the agreement have been ongoing since
2004 but seem to have reached a stalemate.
The Krishna river basin is a hydrological and topographical reality but the planning and management of
basin water allocation and uses are embedded in a
broader political context. Processes unfold at multiple
scales and numerous non-water issues are at play. The
next sections describe these multi-level and political
processes at the federal, state and local levels and
how they shape the river basin as a space of dependence rather than a space of engagement. This sets
limits to what can be achieved through basin water
allocation and adjudication mechanisms – tribunals –
that are too narrowly defined.
Federal level
The Indian water resources governance structure and
policy process remains one of centralisation and hierarchy, dominated by water bureaucracies reluctant to
devolve their power (Mollinga 2005). Therefore, institutional and policy initiatives such as decentralisation
and participatory management in the mid 1990s and
the National Water Policy of 2002 have failed to shape
river basins as spaces of engagement. These new
scales are yet to be socially appropriated by users as
operational platforms. However, river basins clearly
constitute spaces of dependence. The above water
accounting shows that spatial and historical dynamics
of basin water result from agricultural and rural development policies that have been promoted since India
gained independence. A first group of policies has
concentrated investments on groups and areas that
offered the highest potential for development and
political gains, leading to medium- and large-scale
irrigation projects in downstream regions. Other
policies promoting minor irrigation, watershed and
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4
Maharashtra
Chhattisgarh
Pune
Warangal
Solapur
Vishakhapatnam
Bijapur
Kris a
n
Kolhapur
Goa
Hyderabad
Krishna
Raichur
Dharwad
h
Vijayawada
Cumulative water depletion vis-à vis total rainfall
in the Krishna Basin, South India
Andhra
Pradesh
Bellary
Bay of Bengal
1955-1965
Nellore
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
Mangalore
50
0
100
150
200
250
1990-2000
Krishna River
Basin
Chennai
Bangalore
Karnataka
Billion
cubic meters
Mysore
Coimbatore
Kerala
Comparative water depletion in the Krishna basin:
Evapotranspiration from different land covers and human consumptive uses
Tamil
Nadu
Cochin
Irrigated
agriculture
10
20
30
0
10
20
30 0
10
Trivandrum
Source : J.P. Venot, International Water
Management Institute (Hyderabad office).
M&I
uses
1955-1965
% 0
200 km
Natural vegetation
Rainfed agriculture
Discharge to the
Ocean (%)
1990-2000
Layout and design: Cyrille Suss and Claire Levasseur
Figure 1 The Krishna basin: setting and historical water accounting
20 0 4
0
10
20
30
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
The Geographical Journal, 2010
Orissa
Mumbai
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
drought-proofing programs, or facilitating access to
credit, targeted upper secondary catchments that had
less benefited from the Green Revolution package,
leading to increased groundwater use.
State level
State policies, priorities and politics drive water
resources development and define the river basin as a
space of dependence rather than a space of engagement too. In all three states of the Krishna basin, the
protective approach to irrigation development that
consists of spreading available water thinly over a
large area and to a large number of farmers remains
central despite its practical failures (Mollinga 2003).
Indeed, it is a way to secure the political support of
rural constituencies that constitute the true spaces of
engagement in the democratic setting of India and
provides convenient legitimacy to the state and its
irrigation bureaucracy for infrastructural development
on the basis of equity and poverty-alleviation principles. The latter also motivate credit policies and
electricity subsidies that fuel an uncoordinated development of local groundwater. In the Krishna basin,
groundwater depletion tripled from 1955 to 2000 and
accounts for 40–50% of all irrigation depletion, with
dramatic impacts on downstream water availability
and reliability (Venot 2009).
Other state agendas drive water development
regardless of basin boundaries and water availability.
Producing hydro-electricity by transferring water to
the west coast is a priority for Maharashtra; limiting
fiscal deficit is important for all three states and has
been a major driver for the promotion of participatory
irrigation management (Gulati et al. 2005); in Andhra
Pradesh, preventing regional tensions and state implosion (notably under the pressure of independence
claims from the Telangana region) has long been and
still is a major driver of infrastructural development
(Venot 2009), as is meeting the water needs of its
capital city, Hyderabad, through water transfers (Celio
et al. 2009). Given those multiple rationales that
underpin water availability, use and distribution,
water resources management strategies that define the
river basin as the sole scale of intervention – such as
allocation procedures in India – are likely to fail.
5
causing shortages further down the irrigation system.
However, managers may have to change their practices during low flow years, introducing rotational
supply or deficit irrigation to meet crucial demand
of standing crops. This induces farmers’ adjustments
such as shifting cropping pattern and calendar, resorting to groundwater use, suspending cultivation, livestock sale, out-migration, and tampering with the
irrigation system (Venot et al. 2010). On the one hand,
uncoordinated strategies can subvert management
and allocation efforts at the basin/project level, generate environmental problems, and induce a social
selection as not all farmers have the ability to adjust to
scarcity. On the other hand, understanding and
accounting for local innovativeness can help in the
implementation of basin allocation mechanisms.
Challenges to river basin management in India
There is no river basin authority and there has been no
basin-wide planning
Iyer (1994,191)
As early as 1956, with the Rivers Board Act, the
concept of integrated basin development and management was seen as a possible response to water
problems in India (Iyer 2003). The idea is reiterated in
the National Water Policy of 2002 (GoI 2002). As most
Indian rivers cross state boundaries, interstate negotiations are key elements of sustainable basin management. The Constitution of India provides the overall
framework for the apportionment of water among
states. As a last resort – after direct negotiations among
states have failed – interstate water disputes are meant
to be adjudicated by tribunals set up by the GoI at the
request of at least one of the riparian states. But most
tribunals have reached a stalemate and have failed to
shape the river basin as a space within which stakeholders can engage. In the words of a former senior
public servant of the Indian water sector, interstate
conflicts over Indian river waters are becoming
intractable (Iyer 2003). This section shows how this
intractability is linked to technical and institutional
shortcomings of tribunals but also to their failure to
recognise that politics are an integral part of river
basin management.
Local level
Cumulated local level practices impact water allocation and use at higher scales, hence defining the river
basin, once again, as a space of dependence. In
average years, farmers tend to intensify production.
This, in turn, requires a more generous and flexible
water supply and has social and environmental
externalities because of a decline in downstream
water availability. Managers may meet those demands
when there is little competition for water. This
leads to increasing project-level water use while
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
Hydrological complexity: technical limits
Other than the 2007 Cauvery award, most tribunal
awards were enacted in the 1970s and the early
1980s. They were based on an incomplete understanding of river basin hydrology and they need to be
revamped. In the case of the Krishna, several technical
shortcomings explain why the tribunal could not
manage and accommodate change, therefore leading
to over-commitment, conflicts and environmental
degradation.
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Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
First, the KWDT explicitly recognised the notion of
‘surplus water’ as all water in excess of the 75%
dependable flow and stated that the downstream
riparian, Andhra Pradesh, was free to use it with the
caveat that it shall not acquire any formal right to it.
But as environmental concerns take centre stage –
and the need for instream water flows is increasingly
recognized – policies, rules and infrastructure based
on this notion become counter-productive. They
indeed create new demands for water already committed to the environment and are likely to compound conflicts.
Second, the KWDT allocated fixed volumes of
surface water on the basis of the 75%-dependable
flow. It did not offer an adequate platform to manage
low-flow years, an issue of utmost importance for the
downstream riparian. A proportional apportionment
scheme was contemplated but never implemented
due to the early opposition of Andhra Pradesh that felt
its irrigation projects – already well developed at that
time – would be constrained in the case of scarcity
(Sajjan 2005). Given upstream water development,
Andhra Pradesh might be willing to reconsider such
an arrangement.
Third, groundwater use was neglected by the
KWDT when it stated that the three states ‘will be free
to make use of underground water within their respective territories in the Krishna river basin [and] use of
underground water shall not be reckoned as use of the
water of the river Krishna’ (GoI-KWDT 1976). Recent
trends in groundwater abstraction in secondary
upstream basins lead to streamflow depletion, lower
downstream availability and reliability, and constitute
new challenges that can’t be addressed by current
allocation procedures.
Lastly, the KWDT mentioned that ‘beneficial use
shall include uses . . . for domestic, municipal, irrigation, industrial, production of power, navigation,
aquaculture, wildlife protection and recreation
purposes’ (GoI-KWDT 1976). However, it did not
mention the relative shares allocated for these consumptive and non-consumptive uses. As new water
claims arise, allocation mechanisms must move from
allocating surface ‘blue’ water between irrigation
projects to more inclusive mechanisms that account
for multi-level and multi-sectoral dynamics. This
requires a better understanding of the hydrology, its
variability, and the interactions between surface,
ground and ‘green’ water (soil moisture and rainfed
evaporation) on the basis of transparent and effective
data collection.
negotiations. Delays in the establishment and the proceedings of a tribunal, and in the giving and the
notification of its award, are seen as further flaws of
the current approach (Iyer 2003). More significantly,
tribunals accommodate different water rights regimes.
First, they endorse the riparian rights of the states.
Second, they explicitly recognise prior appropriation
rights by protecting existing use. Third, they sanction
the rights of the states to further develop water
resources by considering planned future uses (Venot
2009). Multiple rights regimes shape the river basin as
a space of dependence. In the case of the Krishna
basin –where the award was provisional – the three
states engaged in massive developments of their
hydraulic infrastructure to lay claim to water resources
and ensure they would be holding a prevailing
position during the renegotiation. This led to an overcommitment of basin water where water demand
exceeds the KWDT allocations.
Another recognised limitation is the institutional
deadlock the actors find themselves in if one of the
parties does not accept the tribunal award. Although
declared as binding and final, the award is often
questioned by states who subsequently file review
petitions, seek the intervention of the Supreme Court
or of the federal government (Iyer 2003). This has been
observed after the recent adjudication of the Cauvery
(Pani 2009) where Karnataka and Tamil Nadu contested the award and repeatedly called for further
intervention by the Prime Minister of India, without
any foreseeable solution.
The most common suggestions to address those
institutional shortcomings include the creation of a
national and independent water commission and a
permanent federated structure incorporating river
basin authorities and water user associations, as well
as the provision of effective judiciary mechanisms to
make the award of the tribunal truly binding (for
instance, Richards and Singh 2002). Others highlight
that the system is not badly designed but has been
wrecked by ‘politics’ and that what is needed is a
respect of the constitutional provisions (Iyer 2003).
But such proposals fail to acknowledge that conflicts
between state governments are not the only form of
conflict. Conflicts are multiple in nature and scale;
they can occur between the centre and the states,
between regions of a state, between agriculture and
urban users, and between users and the state. To
address those issues, other resolution mechanisms – at
other scales than the river basin – are required.
Identity and politics: a disputed space
Institutional shortcomings: dependence rather
than engagement
Richards and Singh (2002) highlight that the process
of adjudication (tribunals) is ambiguous and opaque,
and inevitably leads to adversarial positions and
maximum claims that impede any middle ground
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Interstate water disputes are entangled in the broader
Indian polity. Complex financial, political, and developmental relations between states and the federal
government underpin interstate water conflicts. They
are, nevertheless, not addressed by the adjudication
process. D’Souza (2002) indeed highlights that legal
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
adjudication through tribunals tends to insulate the
allocation process from the socio-historical context of
basin development. It depoliticises the issues by
framing them in terms of equitable apportionment that
technology and science could solve while, she argues,
interstate water disputes are an expression of neocolonial development conflict pressed upon states by
the federal government (D’Souza 2002). Less forcefully, it is widely admitted that tribunals are institutions characteristic of a strong ‘paternalistic’ federal
government and ‘childly’ non-assertive states (Iyer
2003; Anand 2004; Maitra 2007).
The KWDT, for example, internalised the development project of a young nation, championed at the
federal level by the Planning Commission of India
that emerged as the main agency for dam planning
and development (D’Souza 2006). With a strong
involvement of the federal government through the
discourse of development and the financing of irrigation projects, it is no surprise that the KWDT was
ineffective in curbing water abstraction. It can then
be said that the river basin approach remains an artifact shaped by the federal government (D’Souza
2002). The river basin becomes a disputed space
through which the federal government tries to assert
its control over the territory of India through water
negotiations.
But the political configuration of India has changed.
Economic processes remain piloted by the Planning
Commission of India and tend to a greater centralisation of decisionmaking. Nonetheless, coalition and
regional politics are assuming an increasing importance and the push towards democratisation and
decentralisation means that states are assuming an
ever prominent role in Indian politics (Kohli 2001).
This induces a disconnect between the dispute resolution mechanisms (the tribunals) and their operational environment (Maitra 2007). States are keeping
the upper hand on their water resources. In addition to
the fact that the ‘development mission’ of the central
and state governments sets limits for basin authorities
to regulate water use, the latter are perceived by state
governments as possibly eroding their authority to the
benefit of the central government. Hence, calls for
basin agencies have remained dead letters since the
River Board Act of 1956 (Iyer 1994).
This political tension is clearly illustrated by the
endless debate over the status of water and interstate
rivers in the Indian constitution. Water-sharing principles have always been highly controversial and
national policy documents have mostly steered clear
of the idea (Iyer 1994 2003). Identity and politics
define the river basin as a disputed space that states
refuse to engage with. This may be due to the ‘quasifederal’ nature of India centred on the notions of
regional distribution, central planning, and political
integration (Maitra 2007). This calls for exploring
alternatives to the current basin-centred vision of
dispute resolution.
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
7
Opportunities for governing basin water in India
Multiple agendas drive water-related decisionmaking
at multiple scales, hence shaping the river basin as a
space of dependence. Institutional arrangements such
as tribunals narrowly focus on sharing surface blue
water among states and fail to acknowledge the multilevel drivers of basin development and to give any
role to actors other than water bureaucracies. They
therefore fail to establish the river basin as an arena
the society can truly engage in. As different actors give
different weight to different problems, extending the
domain of negotiation from that of a single river basin
to multiple scales and to non-water sectors by including, for example, agriculture, energy, trade, and environmental issues, could foster cooperation. These
re-scaling processes, we argue, are more likely to craft
the river basin as a space of engagement for integrating and sharing information, and accommodating the
conflicting positions of the three riparian states of the
Krishna basin. This implies adopting a dynamic vision
of scales and space in which the focus is about understanding and accommodating nested arrangements.
The next sections distil some elements for an alternative approach to interstate water negotiations in
India as a means to design socially and environmentally acceptable water management strategies for the
future of the Krishna basin. Common to the options
discussed below is a call for direct dialogue among
the states and between the local users and the states –
through their political representatives at the Panchayat
level and the states and the states within the overall
framework set up by the Constitution of India, that is,
the tribunals.
Beyond blue water: environment and multiple
sources of water
There is increasing evidence of the adverse impacts of
water and land degradation on people’s livelihoods
and downstream ecosystems. Environmental concerns
have started to gain strength and the notion of environmental flows that embodies a compromise
between water development for productive use and
ecosystems’ protection is beginning to generate significant interest among Indian policymakers. But the
volumes of water required are significant (Smakhtin
and Anputhas 2006) and environmental flows determine how much water supply can be further developed. They are also often used by downstream states
to justify higher water demands while they must be
monitored in the basin as a whole. Mainstreaming
environmental issues in the Indian water sector
agenda remains a challenge, notably in fully committed river basins such as the Krishna. Decisionmakers
need to be convinced that letting free flowing water in
the river channels can yield benefits to the society as
a whole. Discussions over environmental flows could
be linked to the debate on agriculture and payments
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Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
for environmental services. This would also mean
opening up the space of water negotiations to
environmental groups of the civil society, and to the
ministry and the states departments of environment
and forest.
Agriculture and food policies designed at the
federal level have strong impacts on basin water
development and the environment. They are often
at loggerheads with objectives of water demand
management and environmental preservation (Venot
2009). Procurement and minimum support price
policies, for example, act as incentives to farmers to
cultivate water-consuming crops such as sugarcane,
paddy and wheat, regardless of water availability. In
upstream secondary basins, this has led to significant
land use change and environmental degradation
such as declining baseflows and groundwater overabstraction. But, rainfed agriculture still remains the
main productive water user at the basin level
(Figure 1) and is the major livelihood of the poorest
communities. The environmental and social significance of rainfed agriculture need to be recognised
and discussed together with blue water allocation.
This would provide an opportunity to link and rationalise water interventions and agricultural and rural
development planning by involving users and decisionsmakers from all relevant agencies, from the local
to the federal level.
For instance, interstate cooperation could be as
follows: downstream riparians could participate in the
financing of watershed programs that enhance green
water use in upstream states in exchange for reliable
and timely blue water supplies. Delays in runoff
would also have additional benefits and perform environmental services such as flood mitigation. Enhancing green water use in upstream watersheds might
result in decreased runoff downstream and potential
conflicts. A proper understanding of basin flows in
relation to consumptive water use of green and blue
surface and groundwater (see Molden 1997 describing the water accounting framework) and the related
spatial and social trade-offs should be the basis of
such negotiations.
Reforming the procurement system through which
India redistributes grains from surplus to deficit
regions by enhancing direct trade linkages between
surplus (Andhra Pradesh, downstream) and deficit
(Karnataka and Maharashtra, upstream) states could
also help in negotiating an agreement between the
three riparian states, with the federal government
playing a regulatory role. In India, grain procurement
dates back to the 1960s. By the early 2000s, the Food
Corporation of India was purchasing about 20% of the
total net production of cereals in India (50% of all
cereals in the market) and Andhra Pradesh notably
contributed to 30% of the total procurement of rice
(Landy 2009). With direct procurement between states
being possible since 2002, Andhra Pradesh surplus
could meet the rice deficits of both Karnataka
The Geographical Journal, 2010
and Maharashtra. Upstream states could commit
themselves to securing surplus paddy production
downstream through adequate blue water supplies;
the downstream state would commit itself to selling
paddy, that is, virtual water, at a preferential rate to
upstream states. This move towards a more decentralised procurement has already been advocated at the
state level and could contribute to solving some of the
challenges of the current system (transport, stocks;
Landy 2009). While politically sensitive, it has been
shown that virtual water trade has the capacity to limit
the impacts of local water scarcity (Allan 2007).
Beyond water: sharing the benefits of the
energy–irrigation nexus and other uses
Power-generation projects are also a source of conflicts between states as the most efficient option for
hydropower generation is transferring water out of the
Krishna basin towards the west coast, in Maharashtra.
The first KWDT accounted for this sensitive issue
when designing its award in the 1970s (GoI-KWDT
1976). However, increasing hydropower production
remains high on the Maharashtra agenda. It is strongly
opposed by the two downstream states as transfers
would affect downstream water availability. All three
states have increasing power needs. Coupling water
and energy issues in multi-sectoral negotiations
among relevant agencies could allow reaching an
agreement whereby water would be transferred out of
the basin. This would limit the risks of floods and part
of the energy produced would be supplied to downstream states through an extension of the power
network partly funded by the upstream riparian state.
Finally, power supply policies are effective tools for
groundwater demand management (Shah 2009) and
could constitute an innovative instrument for interstate basin water allocation if they were to be considered by tribunals.
Municipal and Industrial (M&I) uses have tripled
during the past 50 years. They only represent 1% of
all depleted water in the basin (Figure 1) but already
drive re-allocation from rural to urban areas (see for
instance Celio et al. 2009 on the case of Hyderabad).
Because of their economic and political importance,
M&I users get the upper hand and meeting their
demands becomes the first priority of governments
(Molle and Berkoff 2006). De-facto reallocations and
their impacts on rural areas are likely to become
more common in the near future. Recognising this
reality in the fast-developing states of the Krishna
basin is required. When planning re-allocation to
M&I users, more attention needs to be given to the
consequences of such transfers. This can be achieved
through more direct negotiation among the concerned communities.
Finally, linking water negotiations to trade discussions needs to be explored as trade agreements have
been shown to drive changes in water use patterns (for
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
instance, Neir and Campana 2007 on the case of
NAFTA and US–Mexico water disputes).
Promoting new platforms of negotiation
The above considerations highlight the need for multilevel cooperative negotiations among the three riparian states of the Krishna basin, whereby the federal
government holds a regulatory role. At present, tribunals give little incentive for direct cooperation at the
state level (Anand 2004). However, such direct negotiations are made necessary because of the changing
politics of India, with increasingly stronger states. The
recent past provides examples of such negotiations. In
the late 1990s to early 2000s, the state of Karnataka
decided unilaterally to increase the height of the Alamatti dam located on its territory. This would have had
significant impacts on water availability further downstream, in Andhra Pradesh (Venot 2009). This move
sharpened states’ disputes over the Krishna waters.
But pressure by decisionmakers of Andhra Pradesh,
epitomised by the lodging of an appeal in the
Supreme Court of India, led to a bilateral agreement
between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh on the height
and the operation rules of the Alamatti dam. This
happened in the absence of a basin-wise regulatory
framework as the first KWDT tribunal award expired
in 2000 and the new tribunal had not reached a
decision. Hyderabad provides another example
whereby Andhra Pradesh signed two separate agreements with the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka to
secure water transfers from the neighbouring Godavari river basin to its capital city (Celio et al. 2009). In
both instances, state-level – rather than basin-level
–agreements were reached. The Tungabhadra irrigation project gives another example of a state-designed
agreement between Karnataka and Andhra-Pradesh
(Mollinga 2003). Tribunals should offer a formal arena
where agreements among states regarding specific
projects can be negotiated. Such direct inter-state
agreements – recognised and sometimes initiated by
the federal system – are common in the United States
(interstate compacts) and Australia (water-sharing
plans).
Linking negotiations over the Krishna to other
spaces and notably other river basins, such as the
neighbouring Godavari, could also offer new perspectives on interstate allocation. India is currently contemplating the construction of a national water grid
called the National River Linking Project that could
provide the needed framework, but this would also
require opening the scale of negotiations to actors
located beyond the topographic and hydrologic
boundaries of the Krishna basin and a careful consideration of equity and environmental concerns.
Generally speaking, there is a need to enlarge the
platform of negotiation beyond the irrigation bureaucracies of the three states and the experts nominated
by the federal government. Within the state apparatus,
© 2010 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2010 Royal Geographical Society
(with The Institute of British Geographers)
9
this means extending the negotiation ‘horizontally’ so
that members of other departments such as the energy,
agriculture, rural development and environment
departments participate in the discussions. The other
possibility is to entrust broader portfolios to a limited
numbers of negotiators with different backgrounds, so
that sectoral interests do not dominate the negotiation
process. Involving third parties from other river basins
or other states who would have less at stake in the
negotiation could also help in de-emotionalising the
dispute and reaching an agreement (Anand 2004). In
Australia, it has been observed that the possibility of a
third party state intervention shapes the river basin as
a space of engagement and pushes negotiating states
to reach an agreement.
Beyond the state apparatus, the negotiation process
needs to be extended ‘vertically’ so that water users
can directly voice their demands. This could be done
through their local representatives: the Panchayats
that are the true space of political engagement in the
democratic setting of India and whose importance is
deemed to increase in the current context of decentralisation, as mentioned in the National Water Policy
of 2002. Agreements at the local level are prerequisites for socially and environmentally acceptable
water allocation mechanisms at larger scales. This has
already been tested in the case of the South Indian
Cauvery river basin, though farmers’ input to the basin
negotiation process has been indirect and consisted of
better awareness (Pani 2009). Solutions emerge at the
local level too. Farmers’ adjustments are major buffers
during low-flow years and offer an opportunity for
adaptable allocation frameworks. But mere coping
adjustments need to be converted into pro-active strategies through services supporting the agricultural
sector, such as better access to credit, improvement
of market chains, extension services, better access to
information, supporting diversification, adequate
planning of conjunctive water use (Venot et al. 2010).
Finally, economic diversification can help in overcoming water scarcity as other sectors consume less
water than agriculture. Policies should focus on
turning the benefits derived from water use into other
forms of capital and provide means to make this new
capital productive and people less dependent on the
resource base. Diversification offers the opportunity
and the resources that are needed to achieve water
management solutions by providing rural dwellers
opportunities outside the agricultural sector.
Conclusion
IWRM with a focus on the river basin as the primary
unit for planning, development and management is
heralded as a solution to water problems worldwide.
While appealing in principle, practical implementation has often been problematic. This paper uses a
case study of the Krishna basin in South India. It
highlights that interstate water conflicts remain largely
The Geographical Journal, 2010
10
Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India
unresolved in India despite such long-held calls for
IWRM and the existence of basin water allocation
mechanisms.
Framing the river basin as a social and political
space sheds light on the root causes of continued
interstate water disputes in India and allows opportunities for sustainable water management to be identified. The terminology of Cox and Mair (1991) is useful
to assess the constraints and opportunities for basin
water planning in India. The river basin is a hydrological and topographical reality. It defines water flows
and, together with climate, constrains the amount of
water that is available without resorting to transfers
from other basins, hence connecting users via the
drainage network. This casts the river basin as a ‘space
of dependence’, regardless of the political structures
that manage water resources. But, the river basin is
also entangled in a broader polity and constitutes a
disputed space through which different actors try to
assert their control via water planning. Finally, while it
has been proposed as the fundamental unit of water
management for over a century, the river basin largely
remains a ‘new space’ without social reality. It is not
yet a ‘space of engagement’, a necessary condition for
basin-centred mechanisms to promote sustainable
water management.
There are contradictions between the physical
organisation of water and the socio-political reality
that craft the river basin as a disputed space of dependence, and the policy rhetoric presenting the river
basin as the unique space of engagement for water
planning and management. Current institutional
arrangements such as tribunals fail to address this
multiplicity of scales, therefore falling short of shaping
the river basin as a true space of engagement. They
also frame water disputes in technical terms that
science is expected to resolve and remain narrowly
focused on sharing surface blue water. They leave out
– or assume that federal and state administrative and
political authority can solve – the hydrological complexity of the river basin and the multi-level financial,
political and developmental relations that underpin
water disputes. They show high degrees of inertia and
fail to recognise that power and struggle are at the
core of water allocation. In the case of the Krishna,
this led to water over-commitment, conflicts, and
environmental degradation as the KWDT internalised
the Indian development project.
The failure of interstate allocation and basin planning is not only due to institutional weaknesses and
the absence of a firm hand of governance – as is
often and rightly pointed out – but also to a lack of
space for meaningful engagement of multiple actors.
This sets limits to what can be achieved through
basin water planning alone. This paper does not call
for yet another layer of new institutional arrangements but rather, and within the limits set by the
Constitution of India, for tribunals to account for the
true spaces of political engagement that characterise
The Geographical Journal, 2010
the Indian polity: the states and the panchayats. By
recognising the role and the importance of these
spaces and by facilitating direct interactions among
them rather than focusing on surface basin water,
tribunals would shape the river basin as a space that
multiple actors de-facto engage with. The need for
meaningful engagement and interactions among
actors and the problems of scale are recognised in
the IWRM literature (Watson et al. 2007). We argue
that a reorganisation of space, that is, broadening the
scope of the negotiations to go beyond water and
incorporate agriculture, energy, trade and environmental elements, and beyond boundaries by considering the multiple scales of decisionmaking is
a promising alternative to induce the necessary
engagement for IWRM. This also means that natural
resources management should not only aim at managing the resource base but also at promoting alternative sustainable livelihoods, less vulnerable to
water stress. Rather than a silver bullet and an apolitical chimera, river basin management should be
seen as a practical and political activity that is, like
any others, subsidiary to national, regional and local
concerns. Institutional arrangements for basin management should provide an umbrella under which
actors engage politically at other scales. Politics are
at play, yes, but this illustrates the working of the
Indian democracy.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
(ACIAR). The authors thank Trent Biggs, Frederic
Landy, Sylvain Massuel, Hugh Turral and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
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