Linking Science and Policy: IWMI-Tata Water Policy Research Program

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1 SDI9 25/1 Linking Science and Policy: IWMI-Tata Water Policy Research Program Tushaar Shah, International Water Management Institute, Elecon, India As India faces a major water scarcity, there are disagreements between the policy makers and the scientists as to the best way forward. In this article, Tushaar Shah, looks at how the IWMI-Tata Water Management Institute is working to avert the problem. India: grim water future India is in the throes of a major water crisis, and as of now, seems the least prepared to meet it. In the global water scarcity map, the bulk of India falls in the deep red league of regions that also include North China plains, Pakistan, most gulf countries and parts of Sub- Saharan Africa. By AD 2025, all these are expected to face absolute water scarcity. There are other grounds for India to worry too. Aggregate analyses ignore the massive regional variations in its water situation. Nearly a third of India is drought-prone and has a serious drinking water crisis, besides depleting aquifers and deteriorating water quality. In contrast, a fourth of India is intensely flood-prone and is subject to prolonged conditions of surface water logging after normal monsoons. The GBM basin of three major Himalayan rivers viz. Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghana with a total catchment area of million sq km also constitutes South Asia s so-called poverty square, with more poor people living in it than in all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Severe water quality problems often co-exist with water abundance as well as water scarcity.while West Bengal needs to find ways of coping with arsenic in groundwater, almost all of the rest of India needs to figure out how to deal with rising content of fluoride and nitrates in drinking water supplies drawn predominantly from groundwater wells. It is often said that water scarcity is mainly a problem of inefficient resource management. True, but when water scarcity, poverty, household food insecurity, livelihood vulnerability all combine to forge powerful and interlocking downward ratchets, as these do in India, resource management tends to acquire a meaning that is far different and much wider than what water resource management means, for instance, to Australians or Californians. Bridging the gap between science and policy India has a huge scientific competence In South Asian discussions, it has been commonly assumed that development of groundwater irrigation has occurred where recharge from rainfall and surface water is large. ITP study on Groundwater Socio-ecology of Asia showed the reality to be different. As the above map of India and Pakistan Punjab which overlays tubewell density with population density shows, much groundwater development for irrigation has occurred in peninsular India which has little groundwater but high rural population density. Figure 1. Groundwater Socio-ecology of South Asia. base in water resources employing perhaps several tens of thousands of hydrologists, hydro-geologists, water resource engineers, water quality experts, soil scientists. However, often many of those who formulate the nation s water strategies are politicians or civil servants, generalists who are far more preoccupied with the problems of the people rather than with water resources. The chasm between the two constituencies is such that science has little impact on policy unless scientific work and ideas are presented in a policy-relevant fashion. It is to meet this need that the International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka and Mumbai-based Sir Ratan Tata Trust collaborated to However, often many of those who formulate the nation s water strategies are politicians or civil servants, generalists who are far more preoccupied with the problems of the people rather than with water resources. create the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Research Program (ITP). The idea was not to duplicate scientific work, in which local research institutions are already strong, but to work downstream and bring more science in popular discourse on how India can solve its water problems. ITP has been an innovative experiment 1

2 SDI9 25/1 Figure 2. Rise and Fall of Groundwater Socio-ecology. [Source: Shah, Tushaar, Aditi Debroy, Asad Qureshi and Jinxia Wang Sustaining Asia s Groundwater Boom: Overview of Issues and Evidence, Natural Resources Forum.] on several grounds. Indian NGO s are used to receiving financial support from international agencies; however, ITP represented one of the first instances in which an Indian private foundation and an international institute belonging to the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) agreed to contribute equally to running a partnership. Second, ITP has adopted an explicit problem-solving, policy oriented research focus. Third, its strategy has been to work primarily through collaborations and partnerships with local NGOs and research groups, while the small project team based in Anand in Gujarat plays the role of synthesizing research by scores of partners and collaborators, and where appropriate, of contributing international experience and scientific expertise drawn from IWMI s global pool. Finally, central to ITP s operating philosophy has been effective dissemination of its policy research so that it enriches the national discourse on water resources issues, which was its original aim. ITP began in mid-2000; but it has already produced a significant corpus of research and acquired some visibility. It has worked with around 45 NGOs and some 50 local research institutions and groups, organised over 20 consultations and workshops for researchers and policy makers. Some of the finished and peer-reviewed research carried out under the ITP ends up, besides as journal articles, also as Water Policy Briefs produced by IWMI s communications division. These are shared extensively amongst parliamentarians, administrators, researchers, media and NGOs through direct mailings as well as its regularly updated website Good deal of other research outputs also available on the web site are shared as ITP Highlight and ITP Comment. Types of policy research ITP has adopted a rather broad and inclusive view of the term policy research as applied research that contributes to or enriches national and regional thinking and discussion involving policy action. In retrospect, the 2

3 SDI9 25/1 Following success achieved in Murray-Darling basin in Australia in several basins in Europe and elsewhere, a compact of institutional and policy innovations popularized as Integrated River Basin Management has become the new mantra for restoring order in developing country water sectors. Recent ITP research has argued that such uncritical transposition of such models may be problematic because the context of South Asian and African countries is different in at least four key respects: a) Hydrology: As the above figures show, many Asian and African river basins face far more adverse and trying hydrological regime. B) Demography: when coupled with their demographic conditions characterized by high population density in catchment areas as well as valleys explains why water infrastructure as well as use pattern here are configured differently from river basins in industrialized societies where the bulk of the population has settled in towns and cities near the estuaries; c) Organization: many IRBM practices such as economic pricing of water, focus on service provision, clearer water rights, etc- become difficult to implement in Asian basins because the organization of the water sector is characterized by large number of tiny users scattered over a vast countryside with little contact with formal sector agencies. D) Stage of Development: finally, huge differences in levels of economic growth have decisive impact on priorities of people as well as public systems. Because of these differences, many of the IRBM practice fail to stick in poor countries. The only thing that can be done easily is restructuring territorial water administration into river basin organizations. However, this is at best a cosmetic change which is unlikely to have any significant impact either on basin level water productivity or its allocation to higher value uses. ITP research has therefore advocated that institutional reform in the water sectors of developing countries must take a context-specific, evolutionary path rather than by swayed by copybook adoption of IRBM approaches. Box 3. Limits to Leapfrogging: Why River Basin Management Models perfected in Murray Darling, Australia and Europe may not work in Asia and Africa. research carried out under the ITP has shown several distinct orientations. Some of it has explicitly tried to draw attention to the Big Picture. For example, Indian discussion on water use in agriculture has been largely blind to the growing social and economic significance of groundwater irrigation. Existing groundwater research is dominated by physical modeling and location-bound work, and oblivious to socio-economic, institutional and policy dimensions of the burgeoning national groundwater economy. Some ITP work has aimed to paint the big picture of this economy, its impact on livelihoods and farm productivity, working of groundwater markets and other institutions, and explored totally new hypotheses about how this crucial economy rises and falls, and with what socio-ecological fall out (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). Some other ITP research has tried to play a whistle-blowing role in relation to critical national choices. One such is the new mantra of Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM). Global discussions and donor thinking about the appropriate unit of water resource planning and management have been swayed in recent years by successful experiences of France,Australia and other industrialized countries in river basin management. Laced with World Bank and ADB loans, many developing countries including India have begun to restructure their water institutions into river basin organisations without much thought about whether these fit their realities. ITP research has argued that blind, unthinking adoption of these models may be unhelpful if not counterproductive because of the vast differences in the context of industrialised countries where IRBM has worked and of countries like India where these models are being transplanted (Figure 3). Some ITP research has aimed at seeding large-scale new action initiatives. One example is ITP s Central India Initiative (CInI). Most of India s indigenous people who constitute the bulk of her rural poor live in central Indian high lands that constitute catchment areas of 3

4 SDI9 25/1 64 districts identified in this map are home to the bulk of India s indigenous people. These districts fall in the catchment of major river basins. Their people bear the brunt of irrigation development but share none of its benefits. ITP s Central India Initiative aims to develop a programmatic effort for decentralized small-scale water harvesting and irrigation development interventions that can improve tribal livelihoods through improved water control. Box 4. large river basins including Narmada and Mahi (Figure 4). These are the people who have borne the brunt of displacement and uprooting caused by irrigation projects without sharing any of their benefits.yet, this region, with high drainage density, offers vast, untapped opportunity for large scale development of small-holder land and water management interventions. If done in a program-matic fashion, such an initiative can have powerful impact in terms of livelihoods creation and improved food security. To develop a strategy for such a programmatic intervention, ITP collaborated with some of the prominent NGOs working with tribal communities to launch Central India Initiative (CInI). The aim of this research now supported with new grant of funds by Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai to engage grassroots NGOs and national strategic players such as the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Government of India s Ministry of Tribal Development and others in a program of participatory research to evolve the design of a programme that India has inherited several hundred thousand tanks which, for centuries, have been at the centre of its village life and livelihood systems. With the decline of feudal authority structures, the common property institutions that ensured the upkeep of these tanks have eroded; as a result, today, India s tanks lie in disrepair. Several donor supported programs continue to be designed to restore these to their original glory through expensive engineering rehabilitation as flow irrigation structures. ITP research has argued that these are destined to fail because even in their degraded state, tanks provide multifarious socioeconomic, cultural and ecological services whose value far exceeds the gains from flow irrigation. A tank rehabilitation strategy that has best chance of success would be one designed to enhance the multiple uses village communities have for tanks. Box 5. Socio-ecology of Tank Rehabilitation in India. 4

5 SDI9 25/1 might eventually be implemented in some 80 districts of this region. Regardless of whether the large initiative fructifies or not, ITP partner Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai has already adopted CInI as a key component of their grant-making program. Different from this is ITP s North Gujarat Initiative, which is in the nature of action research proper. One of the most intractable water management challenges that India faces is arresting groundwater depletion caused by run away growth in tubewell irrigation. Against less than 1 km 3 before 1960, Indian farmers today pump over 200 km 3 of groundwater for watering their crops every year. This is more that any other country in the world including China and the US use.the results are easy to see. Water tables have fallen by more than 5 meters in over half of India s districts since And in many parts, they are falling 3 meters every year. In such regions, a chronic kind of fatalism has gripped farmers who have realised that it is only a matter of a few years before they will have no groundwater to pump. In order to explore ways of restoring sustainable farming approaches in such ecologies, ITP established North Gujarat Sustainable Groundwater Use Initiative (NGI) in collaboration with local farmer organisations and NGOs. In particular, with additional support from Sir Ratan Tata Trust, ITP has begun working with irrigators in 30 villages in Banaskantha district. The NGI has four components: promotion of micro-irrigation and water saving irrigation practices in crops like alfalfa; promotion of water-saving crop alternatives; decentralized groundwater recharge activities; and proactive water education of farmers, women and school children. During its two years of operation, the 30 NGI villages have become a kind of laboratory in which a variety of technologies and sustainability approaches have been tested and their results documented. Institutional design is another area that has attracted considerable effort of ITP research.this includes ITP research on questions like: what might be effective approaches for rebuilding communities stake in improved management and upkeep of hundreds of thousands of tanks that were once the mainstay of their livelihood systems (Figure 4)? How best to improve the management and productivity of small and large scale irrigation infrastructure either by turning its management over to user organizations or through promoting partnership between farmers and agencies. Similar, and somewhat related is Impact Research. Has 50 years of irrigation development had any significant impact on rural poverty in India? Has Gujarat s model of turning over government tubewells to farmer groups for management produced beneficial impact? Does it offer lessons for other forms of participatory irrigation management? These are some of the issues ITP has dealt with in its work on institutional reform in Indian water sector. Impact and future plans It is early days yet to assess the impact of ITP. However, there are indications that the kind of practical, policy-oriented research that ITP has specialised in doing has a growing appeal. Its annual Partner s Meet in which the entire year s research by the ITP team and its collaborators is presented and discussed thread bare has begun to attract largescale participation from the academia, NGOs, government and donor agencies. The event, and the research presented, have also been getting increasing press coverage in local and national media. Within IWMI and the CGIAR, ITP is widely viewed as a model for fostering meaningful collaboration between international and national institutions, particularly in the private sector. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Biography missing Besides continuing with its existing portfolio, ITP team now plans to take on bigger tasks. In 2004, ITP will initiate a 3 year research program on India s new, ambitious plan to link Himalayan and peninsular rivers at a cost of US$120 billion. Billed as one of the largest infrastructure projects undertaken ever, the River-linking project has been mired into a bitter controversy even before it started. ITP believes that the project and India s water future deserve a debate of greater quality and substance, based on analyses and information rather than a slanging match based on prejudice and opinions that at it is currently subjected to. The new project ITP plans to undertake will aim at improving the quality of national discussion on this mega-project. ENQUIRIES Tushaar Shah Principal Scientist International Water Management Institute Elecon Anand India t.shah@cgiar.org 5