Water: Conflicts and Alternative Concepts in India

The crisis in the water sector is having an increasingly negative impact on the access to water for agricultural, industrial, and drinking purposes, especially in rural areas. Worst hit are poor and marginalised groups such as women, who are in charge of providing drinking water to families, Adivasi and Dalits who have weak water rights, and small-scale farmers. There is an urgend need for just, democratic and equitable forms of water governance. In all parts of India, groups and communities are claiming the right to water and developing models of people's control over and community use of water resources - for energy and agriculture, for consumption, for cattle, for washing and bathing.

Water to the People. Drinking Water and Water for Livelihoods. April 2008, ed. by EED (Germany) and Centre for World Solidarity (India): Download (pdf-file 1,24 MB)

Privatising the water sector

Development aid for transnational water corporations as a solution to the global water crisis? Summary of the WEED Working Paper: Privatising the Water Sector (November 2001): Download (pdf-file 70 kb) 

Agriculture: Water for food

While in the 1990s the World Bank's privatisation policy aimed primarily at the urban water sector, now she promotes investments in all water sectors, especially irrigation. A large part of this goes into physical infractructure, into multipurpose dams and large irrigation systems. Parallel to this the Bank supports reforms like the formation of water user organisations, the introduction of higher prices for water and the reorganisation of water rights. Intention is to commercialise and modernise irrigation agriculture, which would leave out most of small-scale farmers and speed up the concentration process towards export oriented agroindustry.

Water for Food - Water for Profit. The World Bank's policy in the agricultural water sector. Background Paper (Brot für die Welt) Dezember 2005:

Download (pdf-file 1,18 MB); Summary (pdf-file 51 kb)

 

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