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From Individual to Community brings together a set of papers that provides critical commentaries on various facets of the ongoing process of development. The book addresses issues that concern developing countries-such as globalization, economic growth, rural transformation, gender equality, educational reforms and the Dalit movement-from a multidisciplinary perspective. Based on the theoretical framework of the normative principles, the book evaluates issues that are specifically relevant in the Indian context-rich versus poor, globalization versus sustainable development, and so on. Devoid of any ideological rigidity, this book is an unbiased exposition of the material as well as ideological positioning of globalization, development and change. This book also commemorates the birth centenary of Professor Malcolm Adiseshiah, former Deputy Director General of UNESCO and a Padma Bhushan awardee, who was also founder of Madras Institute of Development Studies.

This paper aims to set the stage with an outline of the conceptual, analytical and theoretical aspects of water institutional reforms and a synthesis of the main findings from the reform experiences of six countries: Australia, Chile, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Utilizing the latest developments in the literature on the subject, this paper presents the analytics of unbundling water institutions to show their endogenous and exogenous linkages, the transaction cost approach as a diagnostic framework for understanding the role of factors affecting water institutions, and a stage-based perspective to provide insights into the internal mechanics and dynamics evident in the process of water institutional change. Using this analytical framework and theoretical approach, this paper also identifies a few practically relevant principles for reform design and implementation. Based on a review of country reform experiences, the paper also synthesizes reform theories with actual practices by providing anecdotal evidence for various theoretical postulates and practical reform principles.

The Institutional Economics of Water evaluates water institutional reform and water sector performance from an institutional economics and political economy perspective. Against an exhaustive review of the theoretical and empirical literature on institution and performance both in general and in water sector contexts, the title develops an alternative methodology built on: ‘institutional ecology’ principle, ‘institutional decomposition and analysis’ framework, and ‘subjective theory’ of institutional change. Empirical application of this methodology with information collected from 127 water experts from 43 countries/regions and a cross-country review of recent water sector reforms within an institutional transaction cost framework enables the book to conclude with significant implications for both theory and policy in the realm of water sector reform in particular and institutional reforms in general. ‘We are both impressed by the book. It will merit prominent publication as a far-reaching application of innovative methodologies to an important, and well explained, worldwide policy problem.’– Randall Calvert, Washington University, St. Louis, US and Thrainn Eggertsson, University of Iceland ‘[The] literature review . . . is one of the best and most comprehensive that I have seen.’– Daniel W. Bromley, University of Wisconsin, US

Although the water supply and sanitation sector of the state of Karnataka in India has made significant progress in terms of area coverage and, to some extent, meeting consumption targets, two tasks, i.e. fulfilling the unmet backlog demand and meeting the water needs of future population, continue to remain as its major challenges. Based on an analysis of the data and information pertaining to the sector during 1999–2001, this paper aims to assess the financial capacity and reform commitment of the state to meet these sectoral challenges successfully. Towards this end, this paper (a) describes the current status and recent performance of the sector, (b) reviews the financial health of the sector including an estimation of the magnitude of budgetary subsidy, (c) discusses the causes for and consequences of subsidy growth; (d) identi.es the issues and strategies for sectoral reforms including an evaluation of some recent reform initiatives and (e) concludes by highlighting the major implications for sectoral policy in the state in particular and India and other developing countries in general.

Taking water institutions as an illustrative context, this paper attempts a quantitative analysis of the structural and functional linkages within institutional structure and indicates their performance implications and strategic importance for promoting institutional reforms. Against an overview of existing empirical works on institutions in general and water institutions in particular, the paper develops an analytical framework for specifying alternative models of institution-performance interaction within the water sector under different assumptions concerning institutional linkages and their structural properties. These models are, then, empirically estimated using the perception-based information provided by an international panel of 127 water experts from 43 countries and regions around the world. Based on the model results, the paper offers quantitative evidences for institutional linkages and their performance implications, and concludes by indicating their policy roles, especially in developing some reform design and implementation principles useful to overcome the technical and political economy constraints for institutional reforms.

This article critiques the Mihir Shah Committee report and the articles about it in this journal (24 December 2016). It says that although the report has intended to be an attempt at restructuring of water institutions, it has, unfortunately ended just as an exercise in restructuring \"water organisations,\" and its contents get reduced to a mere \"preface\" rather than a serious analytical attempt towards a practical approach to institutional restructuring in the water sector.

[...]water economic research in India cannot be complete without referring to his works in one form or the other! Briefly, his empirical works addressed the following themes: (i) impact of irrigation investments on agricultural stability and productivity; (ii) assessment of India’s irrigation potential; (iii) water resource development and irrigation expansion with economic and ecological sustainability; (iv) comparative economics of canal vis-à-vis minor irrigation; (v) economics of well irrigation in hard-rock regions, (vi) groundwater depletion and environmental degradation in canal areas; (vii) social and private cost-benefit analysis of water-saving technologies; and (viii) changing investment behaviour of farmers and capital formation in agriculture. While reviewing the literature on water-saving technologies, Dhawan observed that conventional cost-benefit methods are conceptually weak to account for the full costs and benefits of these technologies because they do not capture the social costs and benefits of the impact of these technologies on water consumption and labour use under different ecological and socio-economic contexts. In view of this serious limitation, Dhawan argued against the use of conventional methods to decide government subsidies because such subsidies presume the technology adoption to result in substantial positive social benefits through water and labour saving.