Water governance reform

The fifth and last in a series of weekly articles on the new National Water Policy

The decision to form the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019 was an important milestone in reforming water governance in India. It brought together under one umbrella the departments dealing with drinking water and irrigation. Ever since Independence, the governa­nce of water has suffered from at least three kinds of “hydro-schizophrenia”: that between irrigation and drinking water, surface and grou­nd­water, as also water and wastewater. The new Nat­ional Water Policy (NWP) suggests urgent action to overcome each of these divisions.
 
Government departments at the Centre and states have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries, working in