Water conservation planning in India suffers from a 'reactive' rather than 'proactive' approach. Discuss with suitable examples.

India's water governance responds to crises after they arrive rather than anticipating them. The Central Ground Water Board's 2025 assessment found 730 of 6,762 assessment units (10.8%) still 'over-exploited' [1], while inter-State disputes flare seasonally — evidence that planning remains episodic, though recent scheme-based shifts show corrective intent.

Evidence of the reactive approach

• Crisis-triggered water sharing: In the Cauvery basin, releases are decided by periodic distress orders — the CWMA in July 2026 directed Karnataka to release 3,500 cusecs/day to Tamil Nadu for 15 days — rather than by a pre-agreed distress-sharing formula [2].
• Litigation over storage planning: States move the Supreme Court after a deficit monsoon instead of building lean-season buffers; the CWMA/CWRC framework itself emerged only from the Court's 2018 verdict, not from voluntary basin planning [2].
• Dispute resolution after escalation: Tribunals were traditionally constituted only once positions hardened; the Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2019 added a Disputes Resolution Committee precisely to bring negotiation before adjudication [3].
• Demand-side neglect: Groundwater extraction nationally stands at 247.22 BCM, with paddy- and cane-heavy regions drawing down aquifers unchecked until wells fail [1].

Shift towards proactive planning

• Atal Bhujal Yojana (2019) funds community-prepared water security plans in 8,220 water-stressed gram panchayats across seven States — supply-side to participatory, data-driven governance [4].
• Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain, extended in 2025 to 148 districts, times recharge works before the monsoon rather than after failure [5].
• NITI Aayog's Composite Water Management Index benchmarks States annually, using competitive federalism to reward anticipation over crisis response [6].

Reactive management is thus a symptom of weak basin-level institutions, not of scarcity alone. The way forward lies in binding distress-sharing formulae, real-time basin data, aquifer-level participatory planning and crop-water alignment — converting episodic firefighting into a rights-and-recharge framework consistent with SDG 6 and the spirit of cooperative federalism.