Opinion - News Analysis   

Aspirations and an Earth forgotten

T.N. Narasimhan

India's water crisis shows that aspiration-driven human actions are incompatible with the laws that govern water as a natural phenomenon.

— FILE Photo: K.R. Deepak

EVERY DROP COUNTS: Finding enough water for everyone's needs is a major challenge.

EVERYONE AGREES that there is a water crisis in India, compounded by problems of land management and of protecting the environment and ecosystems. Safe and stable supplies of water have to be made available to meet elementary human needs of India's poor, and the needs of agriculture, industries, and urban communities. Landfill sites have to be found for ever-increasing urban and industrial wastes with minimal impacts on threatened freshwater supplies. Building materials for massive projects of road and building construction must be produced without causing damage to watersheds. Yet India does not have a coherent national water policy. Nor is there an indication of a holistic approach to managing fragile natural resource systems.

But, many opinions exist on water. From a legal perspective, water is considered to be state property, with associated authority to enact laws. Accordingly, governments at various levels appear to view water as a source of power to enforce progress and democratic values. Whether water can be privately owned as a commodity, or whether the state holds water in trust for the people are constitutional issues of scholarly debate.

At a time of economic boom, entrepreneurs believe that privatisation of water, and introduction of innovative technologies driven by market forces will solve India's water problems through efficient water use. Those believing in engineering as a means of social progress enthusiastically recommend linking India's major rivers to homogenise variability of water distribution and availability over the country. Non-governmental organisations argue that ancient Indian wisdom of harvesting rainwater for common good is being ignored by modern technological solutions that exacerbate water woes and cause unintended resource damage. Social scientists, concerned with welfare of the poor and gender inequity, find water laws to be coercive rather than enabling self-governance. Those dealing with groundwater management are frustrated by the legal debate over whether groundwater is private property of the overlying land owner or whether it comes within the scope of eminent domain, when in fact surface water and groundwater together constitute a single unified resource. Amidst these debates, citizens at all levels, from the poor to the affluent, share a sense of despair.

These diverse perceptions share a common thread, namely, human aspirations. They represent what individuals, groups of individuals, or even the government may wish to possess or yearn to achieve, and how water may be used to further the aspirations. Notably though, water itself is not a matter of concern. The mindset is that adequate water supplies exist, and that all water needs can be met through carefully worded policies and incentives, aided by technology.

The reason for this aspiration-motivated mindset is understandable. Following the Second World War, democracy, the preferred form of governance around the world, has nourished among all a sense of "right" to liberty, freedom, and opportunity. The world's poor demand their right to water, health, and education. Others demand their rights to accumulate property without legislated limits. In this atmosphere, various segments of Indian society compete to exercise their respective rights. However legitimate these expectations might be, India's water crisis shows that aspiration-driven human actions are incompatible with the laws that govern water as a natural phenomenon. Fifteen hundred years ago, Roman scholars who codified law made a profound distinction between things that could be owned as private property, and things such as air, flowing water, the sea, and the sea-shore that belong to all, and so cannot be owned privately. The former are governed by changing laws of humans, while the latter are governed by immutable laws of nature. Given this profound distinction, rational approaches to solving India's water crisis must necessarily shift attention from human yearnings to attributes of water resource systems. Attention must be devoted to balancing aspirations of diverse social segments with constraints of immutable laws that govern natural resources. In essence, the democratic ideal of "right" has to be tempered by a deference to nature, manifested as "responsibility."

Rights and responsibilities

How may rights be balanced with responsibilities? In a finite Earth where life and non-life are inexorably linked, adapting to nature requires concerted effort of all branches of human knowledge. Although science may superficially seem very different from the humanities (for example, philosophy, history, justice, aesthetics), they are components of a single continuous spectrum. Thus, India's water crisis demands for its resolution a coming together of all components of human knowledge. Nevertheless, what one finds is that water and natural resource policies appear to be made with focus on human aspirations without significant scientific guidance. At a time when science has a critical role to play, India's prestigious academies of science do not appear to actively counsel the government on the imperative for scientifically sound natural resource policies. It may be that they are preoccupied with spectacular developments in materials technology and bioengineering, or that they have traditionally restricted themselves to intellectual pursuits, staying away from policy matters.

It is tempting to believe that modern technology with spectacular ability to probe and manipulate matter and molecules will help us predict and control nature at will, given time and resources. Unfortunately, adapting to the Earth's natural resource systems requires a very different set of complementary skills, knowledge, and mindset. These systems are large, complex, interconnected, and cannot be precisely described or controlled. In managing these, the best available science has to be combined with an equal measure of thought and judgment based on human considerations.

Even as India is currently preoccupied with exercising its blessings of democracy, the Earth remains forgotten. Human values, however noble, are transient. It is unrealistic to follow policies or enact laws assuming that nature will somehow facilitate arbitrary human aspirations. At a time of unprecedented promise of economic prosperity, India will do well to deliberately step back and reflect on whether this vision of prosperity based on materials and commerce can be sustained when the Earth remains ignored.

(The writer is Professor Emeritus in the College of Engineering, and in the College of Natural Resources, University of California at Berkeley.)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Difficulties of a fourth innings
Hurt sentiments and moral policing
Food economy under the UPA government
Aspirations and an Earth forgotten
Road death — the neglected issue
Corrections and Clarifications
BSP's victory
Attack on artist
The 1857 Revolt

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu