"Water governance in Assam: Priorities for knowledge-based interventions" - Report of a consultation organised by Aaranyak, at Guwahati, Assam in June 2012

Assam, the biggest of the seven North-eastern states of India, is a melting pot of various communities from various regions. The state with abundant natural resources and rich historic heritage, however, is faced with unique challenges. Some of these are: a high preponderance of natural disasters, difficult terrain, and water induced hazards, perhaps, being the most critical one. 

Background

With a view to come out with a prioritised set of activities covering inter disciplinary research, intervention and policy advocacy for addressing the most important issues and problems in the water sector for the state of Assam, a day long ‘Consultation forum on water governance in Assam: Priorities for knowledge-based interventions’ was organized by Aaranyak, Guwahati with support from the India Water Partnership (New Delhi) on June 9, 2012 at Guwahati.

The consultation deliberated on all major water related issues and their mitigation measures based on suggestions from the participants with special focus on two issues owing to their widespread affect on the lives and livelihoods of a large population of the state. These were (i) flood, riverbank erosion, land degradation due to sand deposition and associated problems and (ii) drought like situation and water scarcity recently experienced throughout the state.

In his welcome address, Bibhab Kr. Talukdar, Secretary General, Aaranyak stressed that it is important to discuss, prioritise and find ways to solve these problems. Sharing the pretext of the consultation, Partha Jyoti Das, (Head, Water, Climate & Hazard Programme, Aaranyak) explained how these set of problems have been impacting people for last five decades, and the fact that we are yet to find an effective and sustainable strategy for mitigating these disasters only compels us to rethink the entire regime of flood and erosion management programmes that are in practice in the state.

The existing governance of flood management needs to be radically reformed and such revamping of the system includes application of state of the art science and technological innovations that are socially acceptable to the people. He shared how on the basis of their engagement with local communities and wide range of stakeholders of several flood affected districts of the state over last four years, they have come to realise that it is high time the state adopt a specific policy for integrated management of flood, river bank erosion and land degradation without in order to streamline the entire flood governance mechanism.

The pressing issues

The drought-like situations that have been frequently occurring since the year 2005 is another serious concern for the state about which little research and documentation is available. Low seasonal rainfall and decrease in sub surface and ground water reserves are the plausible reasons of development of such situations. There is a need to investigate the entire sub surface water regime of the tributary catchments that have experienced such events frequently.

Although these are localised phenomena, proliferation of water crisis situations in the post and premonsoon seasons all over the state have affected several lakhs of people making them suffer a lot for drinking water as well as water for agriculture. The state needs to take both short-term and long-term measures urgently to provide alternative sources of safe drinking water and irrigation facilities in such drought affected areas.

Again, it is a known truth that climate change is having and will continue to have a significant impact on our water regime, but our knowledge about the nitty-gritty of such impacts is limited. Neither do we have an adequate database of our water resources (surface hydrology, ground water, water budget etc.). It has become important to mainstream climate change implications in water governance as a whole for which amendment of or formulation of new policy will be required.

He mentioned flood, erosion, siltation, water scarcity, water quality, wetlands degradation and shrinking, conflicts over interstate and transboundary rivers, exploitation of groundwater, reduction in aquatic biodiversity, dwindling traditional water wisdom, urban flooding, poor irrigation, water pollution, health hazards as critical water issues in Assam which need immediate attention.

But since it is not possible to discuss all of these topics in one consultation, the two aforementioned themes had been selected. Reiterating the lack of vision, integrated planning, and management, efficiency, and accountability in governance, he shared photographs of siltation and excess water situation in Matmora, Dhemaji and Lakhimpur areas of Assam.

The idea behind the consultation was to prepare a road map of activities in action research and strategies with guidelines mapped through the lens of governance to deal with the causes and implications of the water induced hazards that the state has been relentlessly suffering for last five decades.

Eminent sociologist, Walter Fernandes, adding on to the important issues pointed out, identified declining soil fertility and soil erosion also as crucial topics stressing that the soil that comes nowadays in floods in not fertile while erosion is an ongoing thing to be dealt with.

 Flood and erosion management

 The participants deliberated on how and why the state water policy, after intense consultations was drafted, but not adopted. It was discussed that the policy would have to be redrafted in consonance with the National Water Policy. There were suggestions on having a regional water policy, including Sikkim and North Bengal instead of a state policy and that a regional body was required for the same.  It was also pointed out that it was imperative to take Bhutan and its rivers that flow down to the western part of Assam into account.

 Discussing on the lack of availability of data, the room felt for a need for proper documentation of data and information without which it was impractical to draft any recommendations. Exemplifying the point, the case of Brahmaputra was raised, where for Ganga, the data is updated every five years; it is not done for Brahmaputra. Not just hydrological data but also droughts, floods, and sedimentation were equally identified as important.

Questioning sustainability and the way forward, Er. A.K. Mitra, Former Secretary, Water Resources Department, Assam pointed out that India has the largest river network but limited knowledge and limited fund and that is a formidable challenge. Deliberating on the problems of flood and erosion management in the state, the participants felt the need to see the sensitivity of all parameters.

During floods, the experts tend to take into account only water, not the soil, the characteristics of which are as important a parameter as water. There are also socio-economic problems of land ownership when new land comes up as the river changes course as a result of which some portions of land get immersed while some new are formed.

It was felt that there was a need to study what has been done so far taking all the parameters into account, analyse the different methods implemented and then gauge the feasibility of these methods in the context of the given situation in contrast to the general practice of going to the site and implementing a method, which sometimes work and sometimes do not. 

Also, it came across that people are still stuck in the short-term policies; they are fire fighting. Good governance required good policy and therefore the experts need to converge on one policy. Suggestions on involving youth came up given the fact that no matter how much is discussed the battle is going to be carried forward by the youth of the state.

Reiterating on the negligence of the sociological impact, Walter Fernandes pointed out too much dependence on engineering technologies without looking at its sociological repercussions as in building bridges without taking into account the drainage and vegetation.

Reinforcing on the lack of available data and its management, the participants felt that using modernized systems of data accessibility is the need of the hour. And not just data collection or acquisition but also finding a way in which that this data could be put up in a public domain is crucial.

Chandan Mahanta, Professor, IIT Guwahati, talking on the gap between policy makers at the national and global level and the local communities, said that there is a need for a handholding in terms of contextualizing these policies and documents to the local situation. From the governance point of view, there is a need for a third party to act as a bridge and help translate the policies and intervention to the communities.

Water scarcity or drought-like situation

Partha Jyoti Das raised the issue of lack of proper government mechanism to deal with drought like situations as different from floods and that in severe conditions when people have to dig water out of potholes to get water, where do these people from communities go and what are the institutions, departments involved. Discussions brought to light that the PHED, irrigation, agriculture and the disaster management departments have stake in such situations. Research and development could help devise proper mechanism to cope with a drought like situation in Assam, one of these could be cultivation of some varieties of drought resistant crops.

Utpal Gogoi, Regional director (in-charge) Central Groundwater Board, NE Region countering the arguments showed data stressing that there cannot be a drought in Assam as enough groundwater is available. The challenge only lies in utilizing this resource by proper governance.

However, there were discussions and disagreements in the house regarding the points put across by Gogoi. Expounding on it, Dr. Abhinandan Saikia, Assistant Professor, TISS Guwahati was of the view that we cannot afford to be lenient. The disappearing of wells of Kerala did not happen in a single day and this could well be an indication. In some years, the figure could show something else and we need to conscious.

Explaining a trend seen from the same data of 2011 compared with that taken in 1971, Utpal Gogoi remarked that it showed a slight rise.

Chandan Mahanta underlined that it is important to have a deep understanding of the relation between surface water and ground water and how they interplay with each other. We cannot exploit groundwater squarely without developing a proper knowledge base. We need to have a systemic understanding of the complete hydrology, impact etc. because in the Northeast, we keep emphasizing on the surface, but here the sub-surface is even more intriguing. We also need a better groundwater quality and quantity management authority

Climate Change perspective

The house discussed that a lot of studies are being done on climate change in the Northeast all over the world but which one to implement is an important question. It was recommended that the most vulnerable communities impacted by climate change should be identified and their interests be protected. Also local traditional ingenuity in these terms that have stood the test of time be documented and the government should facilitate their promotion.

A few suggestions came up to study the overall water governance preferably for Assam or the entire Brahmaputra basin, identifying all the secondary data and preparing the knowledge base building upon the gaps and adding fresh ones. It was decided that the recommendations as discussed by the participants during the consultation would be framed and shared with all after careful and focused deliberation.