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To ensure that this is a direction acceptable and beneficial to all, open public consultations need to be the backbones of such policies. Thus looking at the immense importance of water to society & environment, it is extremely important to have consultations on the recently published Draft 2012 National Water Policy [
Having limited participation of communities in the process threatens to make the exercise almost entirely undemocratic and is likely to be hijacked by vested interests. Though it has been stated that consultations about the Policy have been held [
The attention given in the Draft NWP 2012 to information sharing, climate change, priority to basic human needs and ecosystems are welcome, but these may remain at superficial lip service level without clearly defined norms and credible mechanisms to achieve these objectives.
On the whole, the anti-farmer, pro-private company, anti-poor stance of the current draft is disappointing and it seems the water resources establishment has refused to learn lessons from the past. There has been only a notional attempt at a democratic process in the formulation of the new draft policy and it seems an opportunity that comes once in a generation may be lost if we hurry too much to proceed without open, publicised consultations right down to gram sabha level.
We urge the water resources establishment, including the Union Ministry of Water Resources, Central Water Commission and the Planning Commission to reinstate a credible participatory, democratic process for formulating new National Water Policy in the changing climate, keeping societal and ecosystemic sustainability and equity in mind. A mere 29 days period for comments from the date of publication, that too when the draft policy is put up only on the website, seems too less, for ground concerns to be able to reach the administration [
Download this press release from the SANDRP website here.
Last date for sending comments on the Draft Policy to the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) is 29th Feb 2012. Comments should be sent by email to: nwp2012-mowr@nic.in.
Himanshu Thakkar (ht.sandrp@gmail.com),
Parineeta Dandekar (parineeta.dandekar@gmail.com)