The World Water Prize laureate has fostered a rethink on water resource management 
PAROMITA SHASTRI interviews Asit K. Biswas
This IIT, Kharagpur alumnus 2006 Stockholm World Water Prize laureate and now founder-president of Third World Centre of Water Management, Mexico City, fostered a critical rethink among UN agencies and governments over water resources management and changed the way the world thought about water.
You have "challenged the status quo" on water? How would you explain that?
In the area of water development, there are many myths and fruitless discussions at present, including in India. Let me give you a few examples. During the past 12 years, international institutions have pushed heavily the concepts of integrated water resources management (IWRM) and integrated river basin management (IRBM). Very few people realize that IWRM is a 60-year old concept. While the international bandwagon on IWRM is very strong, surprisingly there is no agreement even on what it means. Yet the world now thinks this is the solution, whatever it may mean! No one has even asked the simple question as to why in 60 years we still cannot find a good example of IWRM at macro and meso levels anywhere in the world. It is safe to predict that concepts like IWRM or IRBM will not work in countries like India, even though these are the most "fashionable" solutions at present.
Similarly, there are now considerable unproductive discussions in India on issues like large dams or rainwater harvesting. These are not either/or solutions. Under certain conditions, in a specific area, large dams could be the best solution. Under different conditions, rainwater harvesting could be the optimal solution. In another place, both options may be necessary. In the real world, small could be beautiful, but it could also be ugly. Similarly, big can be magnificent but it could be a disaster. We need to examine the context within which the solution is to be applied. There is simply no universal solution that is applicable under all conditions. Those who propose such dogmatic and universal solutions are dead wrong.
What is the Biswas-Hansen formula?
The Biswas-Hansen report was prepared for the United Nations system to see how the water activities of the various UN agencies could be effectively coordinated. We proposed specific solutions, but the sad fact is that these agencies do not wish to be coordinated. They mostly want to do their own things, and talk of the need for coordination. If the will is not there, any coordination process becomes irrelevant. The situation has improved a little bit in recent years, but any real coordination between the various UN agencies in the water sectors still remains a distant dream.
What was the contribution of the UN International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IWSSD)?
IWSSD for the first time put the access to clean water supply and sanitation in the world’s political agenda. Tens of millions of people in developing world gained access to clean water and sanitation during this Decade, much of which would not have occurred without IWSSD. Though much still remains to be done in this area, the general consensus has been that the Decade was a great success.
Why and how should developing countries look at water management differently from developed countries?
There are many reasons as to why water management should be different in developing countries. Let me just give you one example. Annual rainfalls in Delhi and London are somewhat similar: the difference is around 15 percent. However, in London, it rains all over the year, but, in Delhi, much of the rainfall occurs in about 90 hours (not consecutive) during the monsoon. Areas having regular rainfalls over the year need a completely different water management strategy compared to places like Delhi, where the main focus has to be how to collect, store and then use this vast amount of rainfall over a very short period in any year.
The technical approaches for two such radically different climatic regimes have to be very different. It is a curious irony of fate that developed countries are in temperate regions and developing countries are in tropical and semi-tropical regions. Because the climatic regimes of developed and developing countries are different, their water management practices have to be different as well.
In addition, economic, social, political, institutional and environmental conditions are different, and levels of corruption are different. Thus, even among developing countries, what works in India may not work in Brazil and vice versa. There is simply no one single approach for water management for a very heterogeneous world.
What does India's water future look like? Are we heading for war and severe scarcity?
The main problem of India is not scarcity of water, but its mismanagement. For example, technically and economically, there is absolutely no reason as to why residents of Chennai, Delhi or Mumbai cannot have a reliable, clean water supply on a 24-hour basis. Water mismanagement is endemic in the country. Sadly, even water management in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is significantly better than in Delhi or Kolkata. Very few people realize that some 40 to 60 percent of water pumped from reservoir never reaches the targeted users. Even the quantities that reach the users are not being used efficiently. No wonder the country faces chronic water problems! Even Cherrapunji now has a water problem for certain months of the year!
I can sit down with any water authority of an Indian mega-city, and work out a detailed programme for an efficient and safe 24-hour water supply, at a very affordable economic cost, by simply improving the existing management practices. Whether there is political and bureaucratic will to solve these problems, is another issue. India should not face any problem in the future if its water resources are managed efficiently.
How does subsidisation, prevalent in many developing countries, affect water resources?
Subsidised water cannot contribute to efficient water management. If water is highly subsidised, people will not use it efficiently. This is, unfortunately, a fact of life. People must pay for having access to clean water in their houses on a 24-hour basis, as well as for collection, treatment and disposal of wastewater. There is simply no other alternative. The present block tariff system that is practised in many parts of the world, where an initial lifeline block of water is provided to all households at highly subsidized rates, is not efficient in terms of economics or equity. Generally, such tariffs have ended up in subsidizing the rich and penalizing the poor, exactly the reverse of what was intended. In addition, it has reduced the income of the water supply corporation, and has discouraged water conservation for the entire population, leading to "lose-lose" situation. What is needed is a very targeted subsidy for the poor, but the subsidy should be structured in such a way that it would encourage water conservation. This is what Singapore has done very successfully. India can learn much from the Singaporean experience.
Is privatisation the solution for solving the distribution problems in developing countries?
Lot of energy is being spent in the developing and developed world in discussing the role of privatization. Let us check the facts. At present, only about 6-8 percent of the world’s population receives water from the private sector. Even under the most optimistic projection, no more than 15 per cent will receive water from the private sector by 2020.
Instead of being obsessed with the debate as to whether the public or the private sector is the best option, the fundamental question we should be asking is how to make the public sector more efficient, since by even 2020, some 85 percent of the world’s people will still be receiving water from the public sector. The performance of the public sector is not inherently bad: in fact, the most efficient water supply system in the world is run by the public sector (Singapore) but equally the most inefficient ones are also in the public sector.
Our analyses show that in many parts of the world, private sector has improved water management practices significantly. Equally, I can give examples where private sector has worsened the services. Thus, the debate between public and private sector is basically a red herring. We should go for any alternative that will provide a reliable water supply economically and equitably, without any dogmatic baggage.
Privatisation usually leads to rise in/imposition of water charges and are opposed by poor country citizens. How to avoid that?
If the objective is to provide good quality water to all, consumers will have to pay for it, irrespective of whether it is provided by the public or private sector. If the water is free, or heavily subsidised, there will never be enough water and very few consumers will practice water conservation. With respect to how to provide clean water to the poor, there are many alternatives that India can explore. Countries like Chile or Singapore have solved these problems. India could do well to consider such practices.
What do you think of India’s sporadic privatisation efforts?
I come to India, for a variety of professional and personal reasons, once every six months. I am a member of the Expert Advisory Group of Kalpasar Project of the Government of Gujarat and trying to develop a future-oriented water management course in my alma mater in the IIT, Kharagpur, with support from the Asian Development Bank. I met with the Prime Minister and Water Minister when I was in Delhi in July. Both are remarkable individuals with clear grasp of the water problems facing the country. If we can ensure efficient water management through human resources development, India should have a water-secure 21st century. I am cautiously optimistic that this is doable. I also think we need to move away from the dogmatic debate of public vs private sector. We should consider a public-private partnership, where provision of water services stays in public hands, but with extensive outsourcing if specific activities to local private sector. These activities could range from IT requirements, meter reading, billing, leak detection and repair, fleet management. Anything that the local private sector can do better than the public sector should be outsourced. This could be a viable model for India.
What is the worst crisis area in India--groundwater, urban water supply or irrigation?
Regrettably, the bad news is that groundwater, irrigation and urban water supply in India are all in bad shape because of mismanagement over decades. The good news is that all these can be overcome, certainly within our lifetime, given the political will and an informed citizenry that realizes that water management in the country needs radical overhaul, and sooner the better.
Expansive Vision
'...we will refine and develop our tactics to rebuild, consolidate and expand the revolutionary movement in the vast plains of India, to advance the People's War to drown the enemy in the great ocean of the class struggles of the vast masses' 
SAJI CHERIAN
"…..with great determination we will strive to advance and expand the Guerrilla war to establish Base Areas in the strategic areas; we will refine and develop our tactics to rebuild, consolidate and expand the revolutionary movement in the vast plains of India, to advance the People’s War to drown the enemy in the great ocean of the class struggles of the vast masses"
-- Mupalla Laxmana Rao @ Ganapathy in an interview on October 14, 2004
This Maoist vision, articulated by the ‘General Secretary’ of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), remains intact and is being actively operationalised. The dream of "expanding into the vast plains of India", follows a strategic framework located in Mao Tse Tung’s larger scheme of ‘Protracted War’. The first step in the war is devoted to organisation, consolidation and preservation of ‘regional base areas’ situated in isolated and difficult terrain. Such organisational building, in varied forms, is now increasingly visible in areas that hitherto remained at the margins of Maoist influence or that were completely devoid of such influence.
Although the state of Andhra Pradesh registers a Maoist presence in all 23 of its districts, focused counter-insurgency operations over the past few months have forced the Maoists to scurry into those areas where there presence was traditionally marginal. With the police making inroads in the ‘heartland’ Telangana districts – Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam – and the Nallamala Forest area stretching across parts of Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool and Nalgonda districts, the Maoists are now trying to shift their bases to the Nellore district as well as some of the North coastal districts bordering Orissa, including Srikakulam, Vishakapatnam, Vizianagaram and East Godavari.
In Nellore, the relatively insignificant Maoist faction, the Communist Party of India–Marxist-Leninist-Janasakthi (Janasakthi, for short) has been operating from the Rapur Forest area. The district provides good road, rail and sea connectivity, besides its proximity to Tamil Nadu. Police have been alerted on reports of Maoist cadres being active in remote villages of the Sitarampuram mandal (Block), which borders the Nellore, Kadapa and Prakasam districts, and some cadres have stayed in certain villages of the Rapur, Venkatagiri, Pattapupalem and Allur mandals.
In the neighbouring state of Orissa, the administration disclosed, in March 2006, that as many as 14 out of the 30 districts registered a Maoist presence, though under the union government’s Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme, only seven districts – Malkangiri, Rayagada, Koraput, Gajapati, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj and Sundargarh – have been declared Maoist affected.
In March 2006, a ‘white paper on the law and order situation’ prepared by the state government had mentioned that "after spreading their influence in bordering districts such as Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Mayurbhanj, the Naxalites were trying to establish their foothold in Dhenkanal, Jajpur and other districts… The ultras were trying to link Bhubaneswar and Cuttack with southern part of the state through central districts such as Kandhamal and Boudh."
On March 27, 2006, the state government admitted that Maoists had spread roots to Kandhamal, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Ganjam and Nabarangpur districts.
To establish their foothold, the Maoists have been quick to take up local issues, which pit inhabitants of a particular district against the administration.
For instance, in Jagatsinghpur district, leaflets signed by Maoist cadres have been recovered from various parts, protesting the setting up of industries, arguing that these would adversely affect the livelihood of the poor.
Appreciating the growing threat, the Orissa Home Department has reportedly decided to open three marine police stations in Jagatsinghpur district to check the entry of Maoists through waterways. Earlier, in the tribal protests at Kalinganagar that led to the deaths of 11 tribals on January 2, 2006, in police firing, apprehensions were raised on the role of Maoist front organisations in instigating the protestors. Tribal issues have been systematically exploited elsewhere as well, and a senior police official disclosed, "their increasing presence in Jajpur has been established by now. The radicals instigating the tribals cannot be ruled out."
In Karnataka, the state home minister M.P. Prakash claimed on August 25, 2006, that Maoist activities in the state had been contained and their presence was limited to just four districts, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Raichur and Bellary. Ironically, the same night, Maoists attacked the Divisional Forest Office (Wildlife), about 13 km from Sringeri in Chikmagalur district, on the border of the Udupi district. The Police Superintendent of the Anti-Naxalite Force (ANF) Chennaiah said, "before ransacking the office, the gang pasted bills and pamphlets of Maoist literature and also warned the authorities to remove the nearby Thanikod checkpost".
The administration is apparently turning a blind eye to previous incidents in Chikmagulur and is unwilling to declare the district ‘Maoist-affected’. Some past incidents in the district include:
May 17, 2005: A group of about 15 Maoists killed a Congress party activist, Seshappa Gowda, who was also a member of the Koppa Taluk Panchayat (a local self-government body), at Menasinahadya in the Chikmagalur district.
November 6, 2005: Maoist cadres blew up a forest check post after threatening the guards at Thanikod in the Chikmagalur district
November 15, 2005: A woman Maoist was arrested from the forest area near Sringeri in the Chikamagalur district.
Incidents of intimidation and abduction have also been reported from other districts, including Udupi and Tumkur, and political mobilisation by the Maoists have been widely noticed.
Former home minister M. Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress Party) speaking in the state legislative assembly on July 13 stated that 5,000 families in Bangalore were involved in Maoist activities. Coming from a former home minister, who would have had, during his tenure, unlimited access to intelligence feeds, this claim cannot be ignored.
Karnataka has always remained in the Maoist scheme of things, although they suffered a temporary setback in February 2005, when their ‘state committee secretary’, Saket Rajan @ ‘Prem’, was killed in an encounter in Chikmagalur district. However, brushing aside the setback, the Maoists restructured their ‘state committee’ in Karnataka and appointed Noor Zulfikar alias Sridhar in place of the deceased Prem, in addition to six other members on the new Committee.
Recovered Maoist documents, including the 2001 ‘Social Conditions and Tactics’ survey of selected villages in Karnataka, elaborate on a detailed strategy of mobilisation in the state.
Prepared by the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) in October 2001 (which merged into the CPI-Maoist in September 2004), this is an exhaustive study of the "Perspective Area" in the Malnad region (Belgaum, Uttara Kannada, Dharwad, Shimoga, Udupi, Chickmagalur, Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Mysore and Chamarajnagar districts) to "accomplish the transformation of the Perspective Area into a Guerrilla Zone, to organize the people in class struggle, build mass organizations, set up party cells, form militia, establish Special Guerilla Squads (SGSs) and conduct guerrilla warfare in about a dozen Local Guerilla Squad (LGS) areas."
Similarly, in Maharashtra, Gondia district is witnessing increasing Maoist mobilization and consolidation, due to operations carried out by security forces in the neighbouring Gadchiroli district. In November 2005, Maoists pasted posters in many villages of Deori tehsil of Gondia, announcing a recruitment drive. While, in the Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary, Maoists set ablaze a protection hut at Tippat in January and at Mangezara on February 24, 2006. Over the past months, they have become active in the sanctuary and have threatened forest department employees against moving in the forest. They have also instructed villagers around Nagzira not to venture out during the night. The sanctuary is convenient for Maoists to sneak into Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
The Maoists in Maharashtra are not just spreading their network in rural environs. An assessment report prepared by the state intelligence department indicates that 57 non-government organisations (NGOs) and social action groups in Mumbai have been short-listed after being found to fund and help Maoists. The organisations arranged for medical treatment for Maoists, often in nursing homes in cities. According to state Director General of Police, P.S. Pasricha, "We are keeping close tabs on the activities of functionaries belonging to a section of the NGOs. A couple of recent arrests and subsequent interrogation of office-bearers of these groups have made us more aware of the security threat they pose." 12 NGOs and social action groups short-listed for funding and helping Maoists have been found to be extremely cash-rich. Funds may have been transferred to guerrilla units inside jungles through "informal money remittance systems", a senior intelligence officer disclosed.
The Maharashtra state Committee of the Maoists comprises four ‘divisions’: North Gadchiroli-Gondia, Chandrapur, Mumbai, and Surat. Police reports also add that the Maoists have been building up front organisations in Mumbai and Surat in Gujarat, identifying the potential of these places as economic strongholds. Police officials revealed that "the Maoists are actually conducting a sort of preliminary survey in Mumbai, Surat and other areas to begin their systematic infiltration in urban areas. In fact, they are making front organisations to facilitate their goals of creating a space for them in these major urban areas." This is entirely consistent with the projections of the 2004 "Urban Perspective Document" which identified two principal "industrial concentrations" as targets of Maoist expansion: the Bhilai-Ranchi-Dhanbad-Calcutta belt in the East; and the Mumbai-Pune-Surat-Ahmedabad-Surat belt in the West.
In neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, three Maoist squads or dalams, the Paraswada, Tanda and Malajkhand dalam have been active in four districts – Balaghat, Dindori, Mandala and Sidhi. According to state Police records, violent Maoist activities have been taking place in Madhya Pradesh since 1990 and, at least 33 police personnel, 37 civilians and five government servants have been killed, while the police have shot dead 12 Maoists in 53 shootouts between 1990 and June 2006.
In Uttar Pradesh, although the casualties in Maoist violence over the past years have been low, Maoist presence in the eastern districts bordering Bihar are a cause of concern. 26 villages of the Gorakhpur division have been identified as Naxalite-affected, twenty-five of these in Deoria district and one in Kushinagar district. After a survey, a list of 680 Maoist-affected villages across the state was handed over to the state government. In addition to the 26 in Gorakhpur division, there are 226 villages in Chandauli, 88 in Mirzapur, 254 in Sonbhadra, 33 in Ghazipur, 54 in Ballia and two in Mau district, which are reportedly Maoist affected.
Carved out from Uttar Pradesh, the mountain state of Uttaranchal has remained vulnerable due to its difficult and sparsely populated terrain and porous border with Nepal. The state administration, in recent times, has been concerned over the mushrooming of Left Wing organisations in the three border districts of Pithoragarh, Udham Singh Nagar and Champawat. district Magistrates and senior police officials in these areas have been asked to visit villages once a month along with officials of other departments, to discuss problems faced by people in an effort to counter mobilization by Left Wing extremists.
In the eastern state of West Bengal, the Maoists carried out their first ‘direct action’ in the Nadia district, after consolidating their presence in the neighbouring Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore districts. On July 15, 2005, a Maoist 'central committee' member had remarked that, apart from these three districts, "our mass base in Murshidabad, Malda, Burdwan and Nadia is ready. After five years, we will launch our strikes." On June 20, 2006, two ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist tribal leaders, Uttam Sardar and Swapan Sardar, were killed by a group of Maoists at Chandpur in Nadia. The Maoists have also threatened at least a dozen CPI-Marxist leaders in Nadia. According to police officials, areas where Maoists are active in the district are Phasilnagar and Nasirpur villages in Karimpur, Teghari, Badbillo and Durgapur villages in Nakashipara and parts of Chapra and Kotwali Police Station areas.
Closer to the nation’s capital city, intelligence agencies have warned of the mushrooming of various Maoist front organisations in Jind, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar, Hisar, Rohtak and Sonepat districts of Haryana, in the recent past. While speaking to reporters in Jind, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda stated that the Maoists would not be allowed to grow their roots in the state, but police officials are of the opinion that Maoists appear to have chosen to take advantage of caste conflicts in the state as a part of their strategy of consolidation in Haryana. The backward caste communities, dalits and other oppressed communities have been chosen because the middle class in Haryana is reasonably strong and the number of landless and poor is comparatively smaller than states such as Andhra, Bihar and Orissa. Besides raking up local caste conflicts, they have also staged plays about revolutionaries, to exploit the sentiments of the youth. The August 31, 2005, incident at Gohana where dalit houses were set on fire by upper caste jats was seen as an opportunity for these outfits to make attempts to spread their influence, according to intelligence sources.
Even as the security establishment counters the Maoists in a fragmented, disoriented and incoherent fashion, the latter remain systematic in their approach, working strictly according to clearly articulated plans.The Maoists clearly recognize that they are up against a powerful state that has the resources to counter them, and that the challenge lies in effectively utilizing guerrilla strategies and tactics, working around the state’s strengths – rather than against these - planning and executing operations with minimum losses, and spreading their network to areas, both rural and urban, where the state is evidently in a slumber.
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Saji Cherian is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
