sharpeye

New Water Policy More Contentious By Dr Arvind Kumar* *President, India Water Foundation, New Delhi. The New Water Policy (NWP) draft 2012 is reportedly replete with more contentious issues and least helpful in tackling existing issues. The formulation of new draft policy has been facilitated in an undemocratic way sans participation of all stakeholders. Undoubtedly t he draft explicitly states that water needs to be managed as a community resource held by the state under public trust doctrine, but concurrently it underscores the need to treat water as an “economic good”. Instead of treating water as ‘economic good’ , it should be treated as sustainable development instrument. Viewed in a broad spectrum, the draft policy does not seem to offer anything significantly different from what the old one suggested; only the wordings are different. The emphasis in NWP on the privatisation of water delivery services and that water be priced is likely to be met with strong opposition