Water Disputes in the Cauvery and the Teesta Basins: Conflictual Federalism, Food Security, and Reductionist Hydrology

Nilanjan Ghosh () and Sayanangshu Modak ()
Additional contact information
Nilanjan Ghosh: Observer Research Foundation
Sayanangshu Modak: Observer Research Foundation

A chapter in Sustainable Development Insights from India, 2021, pp 317-341 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This paper postulates that the water conflicts in India are essentially results of three major policy-driven factors: (a) the federal structure of the nation, where water has been made part of the State List; (b) wrong delineation of the food security policy with food security being viewed through the lens of production and procurement of high water-consuming crops like rice and wheat; and (c) lack of an integrated ecosystems approach to understand the land–water–food nexus in the water policy of the nation. The same has been argued in this paper with expositions from two transboundary water conflicts, namely the interstate water conflicts over the Cauvery, and the water conflicts at various levels over the Teesta (Bangladesh–India, centre-state, economy-ecosystem). In the process, the paper argues for a paradigm change from the reductionist approach to a holistic approach to water governance embedded in the emerging thinking of Integrated Water Resource Governance at a basin scale.

Keywords: Interstate waters; Conflictual federalism; Property rights; Minimum support prices; Food security; Integrated basin governance; Arithmetic hydrology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-33-4830-1_16

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789813348301

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-33-4830-1_16

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().