Dear reader, perhaps you would like to throw some light to this cloudy question of mine - especially the ones in the water sector. The questions relates to the governance and water sector in India.
We all know Panchayati Raj was formalized in the country in 1992, famously known as the 73rd constitutional amendment. This made mandatory for the villages to have their committees, known as Gram Sabha Panchayats. The reason of this change was to empower villages with self governance so these Gram Sabhas could make independent decisions for their villages. Now, this is big. Change certainly won’t come fast and the government is supposed to play a role of hand holder to this process.
But the water resources sector which basically thrusts on agriculture (95% of its schemes) has an important lowest level grouping, popularly known as Water Users Associations (WUA). For example, when a new canal or its minor supplies water, the beneficiary farmers will form a WUA . Technically, WUA’s are a simple farmer participation method incited in almost every part of the world as a decentralized method of management. But in India this all is done in the pretext of Panchayati Raj. While WUA’s cut across political boundaries of Panchayats they have nothing to do with these Panchayats. The latter are nowhere in the picture. Naturally because of the specialized task like the crop yield expected from these WUA’s, there is still top down approach to the way these WUA’s are managed, if I say the least. Also, such an approach takes thrust away from addressing issues such as equity, ecology, sanitation and so on. Now, isn’t this also a slight deviance from the constitution as well?
I will look forward to your comments.
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2 comments:
Enlighten me a bit about the WUA. Are WUA's Central government mandated bodies? What is the legal standing of WUAs?
WUA’s are more or less a state mandate.
Water User Associations (WUA’s) under Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) were enacted in several states* in 1990. Prior to this, pilot WUA’s were attempted under the cooperatives act. Thereafter, a few states from the list provided legal status (through new acts) to WUA’s from being an NGO to a GO. In other states - which have their PIM working groups or steering committees, WUA’s continue to function as NGO’s under the cooperatives society act. Thus, with states expected to provide enabling environment and capacity building mechanisms to these WUA’s, WUA’s are a state mandate effectively.
Following is a good resource if you have time.
Hyperlink Code
*These states are - Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamilnadu.
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