For years, it has been felt that engineers of the Irrigation and Water Resources Departments are far removed from human considerations while planning and executing a project. This is why concerns at displacement and rehabilitation of project-affected people and farmers for whom the water is meant are not addressed while conceiving a project.

Taking cognisance of this lacuna, the Planning Commission, in consultation with the Water Resources Ministry, now wants social workers and anthropologists included in the “human resource profile” of the departments. These “social mobilisers” would have to ensure effective participation of the stakeholder farmers, right from planning and implementation to monitoring and maintenance of a project.

In a “new approach to water management” at a time when the Ministry of Water Resources is looking at a new water resource policy, a strategy note of the Planning Commission recommends that no major investment be made in a dam construction project before issues such as land acquisition, relief and rehabilitation of those affected by the project and forest clearance were “sorted out.”

Clearance for a project should be given only after the entire distribution network for taking the water to farmers is provided. In fact, the Commission feels that “given all the problems facing large dams in India, there should be higher priority for watershed management.”

The note categorically states that command area development should occur “pari passu” (hand in hand) with dam construction and include the revival of traditional water harvesting systems present in the command. The command area development programme and the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) should be merged, and the project should be considered completed only when all minor canals and distributaries are completed and water users associations are in place, says the paper, prepared by Mihir Shah, member in-charge of rural development and water resources.

More importantly, it is felt that an agricultural improvement programme focussing on the type of crop that should be cultivated in a particular command area must be made mandatory for each project.

Insisting on reforms in the water sector that show improvements in both recoveries and water use efficiency, the Commission is developing schemes in collaboration with the Ministry, which could be up scaled. Rationale pricing of water and electricity will help in higher productivity per drop of water, and greater procurement and price support for dry land crop will work as incentive for farmers to move away from water-intensive crops.

The National Water Mission that takes into account the effects of climate change needs to prioritise documentation and modelling of surface and groundwater resources in each river basin to facilitate river basin planning to benefit users of each basin.

For this, sub-river basin organisations should to be set up. Among other functions, they should ensure effective management of the groundwater.

The Commission has noted that the net irrigated area through canals during the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme from 1996 to 2010 had stagnated. Gaps between the potential created and utilised has grown owing to “implementation failures, shoddy maintenance, absence of water users associations and low managerial capacity of irrigation department staff.”

As part of the new approach, it is suggested that a comprehensive map of the country's aquifers with their storage and transmission characteristics at a watershed scale be prepared. This will facilitate rural drinking water supply schemes to be directed through aquifer management plans and help in crop water budgeting.