Adaptiveness in water management institutions: nature, existence and impact

Abstract

The effective management of water resources is assuming enormous importance in India in the recent years. Sound water resource use is crucial for sustaining and raising food production, increasing rural incomes, alleviating poverty, and meeting drinking water as well as other human and industrial needs. It is now widely recognized that apart from engineering feats, good institutional arrangements are crucial for the sound management of the resource. In light of this, the development of water institutions has been taken up in India, but remains a major weakness. Existing water institutions are found to be lacking on various counts, and one of the critical deficiencies identified is the lack of adaptiveness to the significantly varying resource status, the temporal and spatial variation in availability and needs, and the different socio-economic settings. Matching rules to local circumstances is often difficult (Ostrom, 1992). As a result, institutional failures are common and lead to poor management of the resource. Literature on institutions has presented the impact of institutional structure on institutional evolution (Williamson, 1967). The institutional processes are known to determine aspects such as the ability and optimal rate of institutional change (Poirot Jr., 2002). At the same time processes and structure are known to mutually shape each other. Governance is known to determine the capacity of institutions to respond to various needs and situations (Williamson, 1985). Such inputs are used to build a conceptual framework for analyzing adaptiveness and its relationship to institutional performance in water management institutions. However Ostrom (1992) promptly points out that crafting of institutions never ends. In any complex and dynamic environment the set of rules-in-use at any point in time is unlikely to have achieved optimality. Designing institutions involves creating new forms of relationships between individuals she adds. This research has undertaken an in-depth examination of the issue of adaptiveness in the local water resource management institutions in India, exploring the status of its existence in the present institutions, the nature of its need, and the impact better adaptiveness has on performance and sustainability. It explores the relationship of adaptiveness to institutional structure, institutional processes and institutional governance and models the association of these and other factors to various measures of performance of the institutions. Qualitative preliminary studies were conducted to inform the survey conducted for data collection. The research is based on a survey of 464 households across a sample of 22 water institutions in three different states. The data was analyzed to draw conclusions about the relationship of adaptiveness to important institutional design components; the institutional structure, institutional processes and institutional governance. These results were used for modeling the relationship of these factors and other factors, used as control variables, to some dimensions of performance using statistical tools. The conceptual framework and the models are expected to inform better institutional design. The research is expected to be helpful to institutions by informing them about institutional processes, institutional structures and institutional governance mechanisms that help them to sustain and perform better. The research is useful to policy makers as it informs them about institutional design to enhance adaptiveness and performance of the water management institutions. The research is expected to be useful to academics as it explores the link of adaptiveness to various institutional factors using a conceptual framework and models the relationship of these and other factors to various measures of institutional performance.