Mihir Shah Committee

Background and evolution

India's water institutions were shaped in the decades after Independence around building large dams, canals and irrigation projects. The Central Water Commission (CWC), dominated by civil engineers, focused on surface water infrastructure, while the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), dominated by hydrogeologists, focused on groundwater. Yet groundwater had become India's main source of irrigation and drinking water, and falling water tables, pollution and the gap between created and utilised irrigation potential showed that the old approach was not working.

In 2015, the Ministry of Water Resources set up a committee under Mihir Shah, an economist and water expert, to recommend restructuring of the CWC and CGWB. The committee consulted experts and stakeholders and submitted its report in 2016, arguing that India needed a paradigm shift in water governance.

Key features and provisions

• National Water Commission: merge the CWC and CGWB into a single body, the NWC, under the Ministry of Water Resources, with divisions on irrigation reform, river rejuvenation, aquifer mapping and participatory groundwater management, water quality, water security, urban and industrial water, and knowledge management.
• Multidisciplinary staffing: include agronomists, ecologists, social scientists, economists and management experts, not just engineers.
• Irrigation reform: focus on completing and improving existing projects, command area development and participatory irrigation management, rather than building new large dams.
• Participatory groundwater management: aquifer mapping with community participation and treating groundwater as a common pool resource.
• River rejuvenation: maintain environmental flows and restore catchment areas.
• Demand management: promote crop diversification, efficient irrigation like drip and sprinklers, and water pricing reforms.
• Basin-level planning: manage rivers and aquifers at the basin level, involving states and users.