National Water Policy, 2002

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The Union Ministry of Water Resources has undertaken a review and revision of the National Water
Policy (NWP), 2002. Some points regarding to that are mentioned below as the recommendations
given in an editorial of The Hindu:
There is a gross mismanagement of water in India as evidenced below:
o Intermittent and unreliable water supply in urban areas
o Rivers turned into sewers or poison
o Water related conflicts between uses, sectors, areas and states
o Irrigation system in disarray
o Depletion of aquifers in many parts of the country
o Inefficiency and waste in every kind of water use
o Environmental impacts of big water-resource projects
Hence there is need for a radical reform of water policy
Need to adopt a stringent restraint on the growth of demand for water
On the supply side the primacy will have to shift from large, centralized, capital-intensive
water resource development (WRD) projects with big dams and reservoirs and canal
systems, to small, decentralised, local, community-led, water-harvesting and watershed-
development programmes, with the big projects being regarded as projects of the last
resort.
Multiple perspectives on water
o Rights perspective
o Social justice/equity perspective
o Womens perspective
o Community perspective
o State perspective
o Engineering perspective
o Citizen/water-user perspective
o Environmental perspective etc