The law holds no water

14/12/2004

The law holds no water The consumerism of post-industrial societies has put natural resources under acute pressure. The worst hit has been water. India is no exception to this crisis. Here, governments have responded by framing laws to manage and conserve this scarce resource. On the face of it, this seems quite a good way to deal with the problem. After all, there should be some measure to arrest unbridled water exploitation.

But our legal framework is ill-equipped to deal with the crisis. For one, the government should realise that a uniform set of rules to regulate water usage throughout the country is neither applicable nor functional. Even common sense dictates that the rules governing water usage in arid Jaisalmer should be very different from those in wet Cherrapunji.

Then, the state continues to regard water as an appendage to private property. This is, in fact, a development of the modern era. Under the Roman legal system, water was never regarded as a resource to be owned: it was categorised as res extra commercium (outside the ambit of commerce) and was a part of the commons, res communes. But the English legal system departs radically from the Roman one. So, in colonial times, the state became the owner of every single resource in its territory

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