Governing Water in India

Inequality, Reform, and the State

Leela Fernandes

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780295750446
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Intensifying droughts and competing pressures on water resources foreground water scarcity as an urgent concern of the global climate change crisis. In India, individual, industrial, and agricultural water demands exacerbate inequities of access and expose the failures of state governance to regulate use. State policies and institutions influenced by global models of reform produce and magnify socio-economic injustice in this "water bureaucracy."

Drawing on historical records, an analysis of post-liberalization developments, and fieldwork in the city of Chennai, Leela Fernandes traces the configuration of colonial historical legacies, developmental-state policies, and economic reforms that strain water resources and intensify inequality. While reforms of water governance promote privatization and decentralization, they strengthen the state centralized control over water through city-based development models. Understanding the political economy of water thus illuminates the consequent failures of the state within countries of the Global South.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Historical Formation of India’s Water Bureaucracy
• Chapter 2. The Regulatory Water State in Postliberalization India
• Chapter 3. The Political Economy of Federalism and the Politics of Interstate Water Negotiations
• Chapter 4. Regulatory Extraction, Inequality, and the Water Bureaucracy in Chennai
• Chapter 5. State, Class, and the Agency of Bureaucrats
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index