Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal also said that people uprooted due to developmental projects likes dams should be made partners in progress so that governments are able to get their support for such schemes.
He lamented that while people are "okay with the water going waste", they are not receptive to the idea of sitting across the table to discuss issue of inter-basin transfer.
"We are not even prepared to sit across the table to discuss issues and see how best we can utilise this for the mutual benefit of the entire populace of the country," he said addressing a seminar on river interlinking.
Bansal said interlinking does not mean depriving one region of water and taking it to the other. "What we say is that if there is surplus water in a basin which can legitimately be transferred to the deficit regions without impacting the economy of the surplus region, why should we not attempt to transfer that."
Secretary, Water Resources Dhruv Vijai Singh was more vocal when he said that states with abundant water resources show themselves as water scarce when it come to inter-basin transfer.