







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 1 (2): 69–72, July 2018 

 
CONVERSATIONS 1: Water Governance 
 

From Reductionist to Holistic Paradigm: Combining 
Ecology, Economics, Engineering, and Social 
Sciences in a Transdisciplinary Framework for Water 
Governance 
 

Nilanjan Ghosh  
 
INTRODUCTION 

Despite the ongoing paradigm shift in global water governance in favour of 
demand management and ecosystem restoration at the basin scale, South 
Asia adheres to its archaic and reductionist view of engineering perceiving 
water merely as a stock of resource to be stored and used. 

The requirement of large constructions for “training rivers” was shown to 
the world by the USA during the first half of the 20th century, thereby 
promoting these structures as harbingers of progress. In South Asia, the 
structural interventions over the flows became integral components of the 
colonial legacy introduced and formalized under the British rule. Early 
British projects in India were exemplified by the Sarada Barrage, and the 
Upper Ganges Canal to divert water from the Ganges at Hardwar. This 
“structuralist” tradition continues even today, along with the tradition of 
the dominating numbers of civil engineers in the Ministry of Water 
Resources (MoWR). Mihir Shah, in this conversation, has provided a 
succinct analysis of the existence of the outmoded British Common Law as 
the backbone of the legal framework for water governance in India, as also 
the outdated knowledge of the present day bureaucracy and technocracy to 
address the new emerging challenges of water governance. 

 
 Senior Fellow and Head of Economics at Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata; & 
Chief Economic Adviser at World Wide Fund for Nature, India; nilanjan.ghosh@gmail.com.  

Copyright © Ghosh 2018. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 

4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.36  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.36


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [70] 

Meanwhile, the perception of water governance in the US, EU, and other 
parts of the world has been changing with the realization that water 
conflicts, more often than not, are outcomes of the constructionist 
paradigm. Water professionals have been vocal about livelihoods problems 
that arise from the losses in ecosystem services resulting from ecosystem 
damages. This led to a trend of decommissioning dams globally. There is a 
strong feeling that reductionist engineering and myopic economics need to 
be replaced by a more transdisciplinary knowledge base that combines 
engineering with ecological sciences, ecological economics, and other social 
sciences. 

 

ADHERENCE TO “ARITHMETIC HYDROLOGY” 

Contrary to an integrated and holistic thinking, water governance in India 
relies on a few stand-alone numerical measures of physical state of the 
resource — a paradigm that Jayanta Bandyopadhyay described as 
“arithmetic hydrology”. Interlinking of Indian rivers is based on the 
premise of transferring water from “surplus” to “deficit” river basins. This 
very definition of “surplus” and “deficit” river basins is a vital example of 
“arithmetic hydrology”, attempting to classify rivers in terms of potential 
irrigability of land alone. In other instances, physical availability defined 
solely in terms of per capita availability becomes the decision variable for 
water management. These definitions are clearly bereft of understanding the 
broader ecosystems and livelihoods concerns in a river basin. 

Again, the notion of ‘environmental flow’, defined in India as a certain 
percentage of the total flow, is plagued with scientific inaccuracy. In this 
Conversation, Angela Arthington—while authoritatively highlighting the 
central importance of environmental flows in basin governance—points 
out: 

Spatial patterns must be accommodated in basin-scale e-flow assessments. The desired 
social-ecological benefits are achieved by sharing the available basin water, in space and 
time, according to a balance decided by collaborative decision-making and trade-off 
processes. The challenge is to agree on a desired future state of the river basin’s aquatic 
ecosystems, including their societal, cultural and spiritual values, and then to agree on a 

socially acceptable level of water diversion at basin scale. 

Much in contravention to this scientific position, which calls for a 
negotiated approach to e-flows assessment, the National Water Policy 2012, 
of the Govt. of India, states, '[…] a portion of river flows should be kept 
aside to meet ecological needs ensuring that the low and high flow releases 
are proportional to the natural flow regime, including base flow 
contribution in the low flow season [...]'. This sentence, which reflects the 
ubiquitous perception of e-flows in the policy-making machinery in India, 



[71] Nilanjan Ghosh 

gives the impression that as if a single number can ensure the entire 
working of a river system and dictate the norms of basin governance. The 
various functions of a river system for the ecosystem, society and culture, 
and the economy are erased out by this 'arithmetic hydrology' norm. 

 

RELIANCE ON THE NEO-MALTHUSIAN THESIS 

The water bureaucracy and technocracy in South Asia still believes that it is 
‘scarcity’, delineated as scant physical availability of water, that leads to 
water conflicts. On the global academic front, despite this neo-Malthusian 
creed being popular till the 1990s, it is now heavily challenged by its 
detractors that include Simon Dalby and the Copenhagen School. 

Even empirical evidences of conflicts of the Himalayan South Asian river 
basins reveal much broader forces at work than mere quantitative 
representations of scarcity. The conflict over the Farakka barrage between 
West Bengal and Bihar is primarily with the hypothesis that ‘backwater 
flows’ resulting from high sedimentation in the barrage are responsible for 
high-season floods in Bihar. On the other hand, the potential concerns in 
the Brahmaputra basin are also over floods, hydropower, and poverty. 

Yet, the prominence of the neo-Malthusian thinking in the Indian 
bureaucracy can be witnessed in the ways water governance and conflict 
resolution are approached. The resolution mechanism worked out by the 
Cauvery Water Tribunal in 2007 was based on myopic number -games for 
sharing the waters, without much consideration about the broader 
institutions, economics, eco-hydrology, and holistic understanding of the 
conflicts. The recent Supreme Court order has attempted to correct this 
folly by reallocating water to urban use from agricultural use, thereby 
sending across a signal to the agricultural economy to practice demand 
management of water. 

 

CAN CHANGE HAPPEN? 

In 2016, the Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India published 
two important documents under the chairmanship of Mihir Shah: the Draft 
National Water Framework Bill and A 21st Century Institutional Architecture for 
India’s Water Reforms. Both called for the much-needed change in the 
paradigm of water governance. The second document hit the hornet’s nest 
by its call for dismantling the Central Water Commission (CWC) and 
Central Groundwater Board (CGWB), and replacing it with a more 
transdisciplinary National Water Commission (NWC). This attempt to 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [72] 

break the archaic dominance of engineers and hydro-geologists in water 
bureaucracy has ruffled a few feathers.  

Despite resistance from corners of vested interests, the water governance 
policy narrative has to change from a reductionist paradigm to a more 
holistic paradigm based on transdisciplinary thinking, as also stated by 
Arthington in the context of e-flows. It is imperative that India leads the 
way for South Asia in water governance by evolving with a transdisciplinary 
knowledge base of rivers. Such a knowledge base needs to be developed by 
combining fluvial geomorphology, engineering, hydrology, hydro-geology, 
ecological sciences, tectonic sciences, ecological economics, law, 
international relations, political sciences, sociology, social anthropology, 
humanities and culture, and institutional theory so as to emerge with the 
appropriate institutional mechanisms for basin-level governance. 


