Abstract
Water management in India in the coming years will have to take an entirely different trajectory from what was followed since Independence, if recent trends are any indication. At the national level, the trends are: rising per capita incomes and improving living standards; rapid urbanisation and higher population growth rates in large cities; fast changing structure of the national economy; changing consumption pattern, with increasing preference for high calorie food—milk and milk products, and meat ; fast improving transportation , and information and communication networks in rural areas ; ageing population , and rising rural farm wages. These trends would create new water management needs and priorities for the future. Along with technological, institutional and policy interventions for water demand management , large water projects would be an integral part of the future solution. But, a section of the civil society argues that ‘viable alternatives’ to large water projects exist by propagating certain myths . This chapter makes an objective assessment of these ‘alternatives’ and shows how they fail to meet the future ‘water management needs’ by confronting these myths. Accordingly, the trends that are most likely to emerge in future in the water management sector are deciphered.
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Dinesh Kumar, M. (2018). Future Water Management: Myths in Indian Agriculture. In: Biswas, A., Tortajada, C., Rohner, P. (eds) Assessing Global Water Megatrends. Water Resources Development and Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6695-5_11
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