Adaptiveness in Water Management Institutions in India: Nature and Impact

• Main Authors: Bhamoriya, Vaibhav P, Gandhi, Vasant P
• Format: Publication
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: International Development

The effective management of water resources is assuming enormous importance in India inthe recent years. Sound water resource use is crucial for sustaining and raising foodproduction, increasing rural incomes, alleviating poverty, and meeting drinking water as wellas other human and industrial needs. It is now widely recognized that apart from engineeringfeats, good institutional arrangements are crucial for the sound management of the resource.In light of this, the development of water institutions has been taken up in India, but remainsa major weakness. Existing water institutions are found to be lacking on various counts, andone of the critical deficiencies identified is the lack of adaptiveness to the significantlyvarying resource status, the temporal and spatial variation in availability and needs, and thedifferent socio-economic settings. As a result, institutional failures are common and lead topoor management of the resource. This research has undertaken an in-depth examination ofthe issue of adaptiveness in the local water resource management institutions in India,exploring the status of its existence in the present institutions, the nature of its need, and theimpact better adaptiveness has on performance and sustainability. The research is based ona survey of 464 households across a sample of 22 water institutions in three different states.It explores the relationship of adaptiveness to institutional structure, institutional processesand institutional governance and models the association of these and other factors tovarious measures of performance of the institutions.