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Abstract
“There is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little
water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water badly – such that
billions of people and the environment suffer.” (World Water Vision 2000).The management of water resources is becoming increasingly challenging in
India with accelerating growth and development. Scarcities are becoming frequent
and managing the distribution across vast areas of the country, and amongst
millions of users, in a way that is sustainable, is becoming a major problem.
Irrigation is crucial for agriculture and rural incomes in India. The technical solutions
to the difficulties are typically known and are often implemented, but the institutional
issues of control, organization and management within the political economy of
democracy and small farm agriculture are becoming exceedingly difficult and pose
the most serious challenge.
This paper presents some preliminary results of recent field-based research
supported by ACIAR which examines institutional issues in water resource
management in India’s agriculture. Among different approaches, it focuses on the
new institutional economics framework for studying the subject. The effort is to draw
lessons and suggest an effective institutional framework for improving water
resource management institutions in India. The paper is based on primary data
collected from a variety of settings in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and
Maharashtra.