Governing India’s Water Future

Context

Climate-Resilient Water Management: New Delhi hosted the ninth India International Water Week 2026 from 22–26 September, organised by the Ministry of Jal Shakti under the theme “Climate Resilient Water Management.”
From State Innovation to National Learning: India’s 2001–2014 Gujarat experience is examined as an important precursor to subsequent national water-governance reforms.
The 2001–2026 case study highlights governance, financing, institutional reform and community participation as complementary foundations of water security.

What Should Effective Water Governance Mean for India?

Governance Architecture: Water governance refers to the institutions, laws, policies, financing arrangements and decision-making processes governing water resources and services.
Its scope extends beyond supply infrastructure to resource allocation, conservation, quality, irrigation, groundwater, sanitation, ecosystems and wastewater, making coordination essential across sectors and levels of government.
Constitutional Federalism: Under Entry 17 of the State List, water is primarily a State responsibility, subject to Entry 56 of the Union List concerning interstate rivers and river valleys.
Article 262 separately empowers Parliament to provide a framework for adjudicating disputes concerning the use, distribution or control of interstate river waters.
Resource And Service Integration: Water governance must connect resource availability with service delivery, because infrastructure cannot remain sustainable without dependable underlying resources.
The Central Water Commission’s Assessment of Water Resources of India 2024 estimates India’s average annual water resources at approximately 2,116 billion cubic metres, providing an important national baseline for resource planning.
Groundwater And Surface Water: Effective governance requires consideration of surface water and groundwater as interconnected components of the national water system.
The 2025 groundwater assessment estimated 448.52 billion cubic metres of annual groundwater recharge, 407.75 billion cubic metres of annual extractable resources, and 247.22 billion cubic metres of annual extraction.
Institutional Coordination: India’s institutional architecture includes the Central Water Commission (CWC), Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and National Water Informatics Centre (NWIC), alongside State water institutions.
Their respective roles in resource assessment, groundwater monitoring and water information provide the technical foundations for evidence-based governance.
Basic Water Security: Water governance also concerns the reliability and quality of household water services, not merely physical connectivity.
As of 27 November 2025, official data reported tap-water connections for approximately 15.75 crore of 19.36 crore rural households, equivalent to 81.34%, under the Jal Jeevan Mission.
Pollution And Public Health: Water governance necessarily includes pollution prevention and regulatory oversight, because contaminated water directly threatens human and ecological health.
The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 establishes Central and State Pollution Control Boards and provides powers concerning effluent discharge, sampling, inspection, laboratories and pollution-control directions.
Data-Based Planning: Reliable information is fundamental because water availability varies substantially across basins, seasons and hydrogeological conditions.
India’s official water-information architecture therefore treats basins, sub-basins and watersheds as distinct hydrological units, supporting more scientifically grounded resource assessment and planning.

What Constrains India’s Water Governance?

Institutional Fragmentation: India’s water administration remains divided across irrigation, drinking water, groundwater, sanitation and environmental functions.
This fragmentation can weaken coordination because surface water, aquifers and wastewater remain hydrologically interconnected.
Overlapping institutional responsibilities can therefore produce sectoral decisions without basin-wide resource assessment.
Federal-Basin Misalignment: India has 25 major river basins and 103 sub-basins, many extending across multiple States.
Political jurisdictions therefore intersect with interconnected hydrological systems, complicating coordinated interstate resource management.
Divergent State interests can consequently impede basin-scale planning and consensual allocation decisions.
Groundwater Overexploitation: The 2025 assessment recorded 247.22 BCM extraction against 407.75 BCM extractable groundwater resources nationally.
Among 6,762 assessment units, 730 units were classified as over-exploited, indicating significant spatial concentration.
Such extraction patterns expose aquifers to depletion risks where recharge cannot sustain withdrawals.
Agricultural Water Inefficiency: Agriculture accounts for around 80 percent of India’s water resources, according to the governance assessment.
Agricultural water-use efficiency remains comparatively low, estimated at only 25–35 percent.
Persistent irrigation inefficiency consequently intensifies freshwater pressure under rising agricultural and climatic demands.
Water-Quality Contamination: Groundwater quality remains uneven, with nitrate, fluoride and arsenic exceeding permissible limits.
Of the 15,239 groundwater samples collected across the country for testing, 19.8% had nitrate or nitrogen compounds above the safe limit, according to the CGWB’s Groundwater Quality Report, 2024, based on data for 2023.
Fluoride and arsenic exceeded permissible limits in 9.04 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively.
Urban Wastewater Disconnection: India generates approximately 112 billion litres of wastewater daily, while only 28 percent receives treatment.
The Economic Survey 2025–26 reports that less than 27 percent households have underground sewerage.
This limits effective collection, treatment and subsequent reuse of urban wastewater resources.
Climate-Ecological Volatility: Climate change is altering rainfall patterns, evapotranspiration and hydrological extremes, increasing uncertainty around water availability.
Changing floods and droughts complicate infrastructure planning based upon historically stable hydrological conditions.
Meanwhile, infrastructure-centred approaches can overlook river flows, sediments, wetlands and ecosystem functions.

How Can India Build Water-Secure and Climate-Resilient Governance?

Basin-Scale Integration: Future planning should treat the river basin as the principal unit for integrated water decisions.
Basin plans should jointly assess hydrology, ecology, agriculture, urban demand and downstream requirements.
Such planning should align local priorities with basin sustainability and inter-State coordination.
Governance-Led Reform: Future investments should pair infrastructure expansion with clear institutional responsibilities, financing and accountability.
The Gujarat experience during 2001–2014 demonstrates the value of sustained institutional prioritisation.
Its Chintan Shivirs offer a useful model for structured stakeholder deliberation around water priorities.
Resource-Service Convergence: Water-resource planning should integrate source sustainability with service delivery, ensuring infrastructure follows dependable availability.
Future urban planning should anticipate non-potable reuse for industry and other suitable applications.
The objective should be reliable services, rather than infrastructure measured only through physical connections.
Community-Centred Stewardship: Future local water planning should give communities meaningful roles in planning, monitoring and maintenance.
The Delhi Declaration, adopted at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention, 2018, identified four scaling principles.
These were Political Leadership, Public Funding, Partnerships and People’s Participation.
Participatory Groundwater Management: Groundwater planning should be organised around scientifically delineated aquifer units and accessible resource information.
Community institutions should participate in extraction decisions, recharge planning and monitoring within appropriate water budgets.
This would connect scientific assessment with collective stewardship of shared groundwater resources.
Circular Water Economy: Future urban systems should integrate wastewater treatment with assured non-potable demand, creating viable reuse pathways.
Investment decisions should assess treatment performance, lifecycle costs and dependable offtake before expanding reuse infrastructure.
Treated used water should increasingly be evaluated as a resource within urban planning.
Evidence-Based Accountability: India should develop interoperable water-information systems supporting comparable data, transparent decisions and evidence-based evaluation.
Future governance should track reliability, quality, efficiency, ecological outcomes and financial sustainability through measurable indicators.
Data should inform allocation, investment appraisal, groundwater planning and climate-risk assessment across governance levels.

Concluding Insight

India’s water future requires governance before engineering, integrating basin-scale planning, aquifer stewardship, community participation and circular water economies. Such climate-resilient water governance can reconcile human needs with ecological integrity, advancing SDG 6 through reliable, equitable and sustainable water management while strengthening India’s broader pathway towards water security and resilient development.

UPSC Prelims Connect

Q.With reference to ‘Water Credit’, consider the following statements: (2021)

It puts microfinance tools to work in the water and sanitation sector.
It is a global initiative launched under the aegis of the World Health Organization and the World Bank.
It aims to enable the poor people to meet their water needs without depending on subsidies.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 2 and 3 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

Ans: C

UPSC Mains Connect

Q.What are the salient features of the Jal Shakti Abhiyan launched by the Government of India for water conservation and water security? (2020)

Q. Suggest measures to improve water storage and irrigation system to make its judicious use under the depleting scenario. (2020)

QuestlinkIAS Practice Question

Prelims:

Q. With reference to water governance in India, consider the following statements:

The constitutional framework places water under the State List, while separately recognising a Union role concerning inter-State rivers and river valleys.
Article 262 enables Parliament to provide for adjudication of disputes concerning the use, distribution or control of waters of inter-State rivers or river valleys.
India’s 2025 groundwater assessment recorded annual extraction exceeding annual extractable groundwater resources at the national level.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 1 and 3 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

Ans: (a)

Mains:

Q. Water security in India requires a shift from fragmented service delivery towards integrated, basin-scale and participatory governance. Analyse the institutional, federal, groundwater and ecological dimensions of this transition.

Source Editorial- From India to Global South, a Gujarat water-governance model