The effective management of water resources is assuming enormous importance in India in the recent years. Sound water resource use is crucial for sustaining and raising food production, increasing rural incomes, alleviating poverty, and meeting drinking water as well as other human and industrial needs. It is now widely recognized that apart from engineering feats, good institutional arrangements are crucial for the sound management of the resource. In light of this, the development of water institutions has been taken up in India, but remains a major weakness. Existing water institutions are found to be lacking on various counts, and one of the critical deficiencies identified is the lack of adaptiveness to the significantly varying resource status, the... |