Water Security in India: Hope, Despair, and the Challenges of Human Development

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Few people actively engaged in Indias water sector would deny that the Indian subcontinent faces serious problems in the sustainable use and management of water resources. Water resources in India have been subjected to tremendous pressures from increasing population, urbanization, industrialization, and modern agricultural methods. The inadequate access to clean drinking water, increase in water related disasters such as floods and droughts, vulnerability to climate change and competition for the resource amongst different sectors and the region poses immense pressures for sustainability of water systems and humanity. Water Security in India addresses these issues head on, analyzing the challenges that contemporary India faces if it is to create a water-secure world, and providing a hopeful, though guarded, road-map to a future in which Indias life-giving and life-sustaining fresh water resources are safe, clean, plentiful, and available to all, secured for the people in a peaceful and ecologically sustainable manner.

Reviews

An impressive addition to the growing body of literature reexamining the definition of "security" in the 21st century. Further distinguishing this work is the authors' thoughtful examination of water security as it applies to Indiamaking this one of the first studies to do so. -- Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted, Eastern Washington University, USA
This book affords an important, well-researched case study on the problem of freshwater sustainability. The authors tackle the complex issue of how human security is actually a tightly-interconnected array of factors including governance; particularly state capacity for regulating water supply and quality, as well as private water rights, water markets, and trans-boundary institutions which cooperate over water allocation. By rejecting that narrow definition of human security as the avoidance, say, of basin-wide conflicts that threaten peacekeeping, Asthana and Shukla are able to show how this important concept actually require institutions charged with managing vital resources such as water to: provide for basic human needs; ensure the renewability of a resource; and, reduce vulnerability to climate and other environmental hazards which threaten its vigor. They further argue that human security for water is achieved by enabling the political and economic institutions which manage these resources to become more resilient through reforms that make them more representative as well as responsive to popular demands and socially-just outcomes. Students of water policy everywhere will immensely benefit from this work - not just scholars focused on South Asia." * David Lewis Feldman, Professor, Departments of Planning, Policy and Design and Political Science, University of California, Irvine, US *
[Water Security in India] makes a compelling and data-driven case for waking up to the alarming realities of water challenges faced by the Indian subcontinent . . . For anybody interested in water security, its intricate links with other forms of security and the threats water stress poses to the South Asian region in general . . . this book is a must read! -- Sudhanshu Sharma, London School of Economics, UK * LSE Review of Books *
Water more then anything else will play a major role in either preserving or destroying life in the 21st century. With climate change and global warming threatening the planet, a focused study like this is an eye-opener, which we cannot choose to ignore * Laxman D. Satya, Professor, Department of History, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, US *

Author Bio

Vandana Asthana, a Professor of Government, Eastern Washington University, USA, writes and researches the human and developmental challenges of water and environmental security in South Asia with a special focus on India. Dr. A.C.Shukla, former member and Chartered biologist of Institute of Biology, London, UK is a well-known, widely traveled speaker, researcher and author of several books and articles on environment, policy and security.