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In ‘hydraulic societies’ state power, suggested Karl Wittfogel, flows from the control of water. His thesis on ‘oriental
despotism’ was based on the observation that in many Asian societies rain water had to be collected and made
available for irrigation and consumption, often using human and animal power to collect, store and draw such water.
Wittfogel believed hydraulic societies, as Max Weber dubbed them, tend to produce powerful bureaucratic and
despotic states. So, is too much democracy or too little governance weakening the ability of the Indian state to
perform its due role as an administrator of water collection, preservation, utilisation?
Not far from that tragic monument to the centrality of water to human habitation, Fatehpur Sikri, yet another famous
lake has dried up. The drying up of the lake at the Sultanpur bird sanctuary in Haryana need not be viewed as an
isolated case of degeneration of a water body due to human negligence. It is symptomatic of a trend that has resulted
in the death and decline of countless lakes and other types of water bodies all over the sub-continent. In the north,
the well-known Sukhna lake near Chandigarh, the Batkal lake in Haryana, the holy Pushkar lake near Ajmer and
water bodies at the national park in Bharatpur in Rajasthan are among those whose existence is under threat. Even
the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar is reckoned to have shrunk by over 15 km in the past six decades. Similar is the
case in the south where tanks and ponds have traditionally been among the most important sources of water. Mega
cities like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru, which rose on the foundation of manmade lake-based supply of water,
have experienced a shrinking of such vital sources of water. Most of even those which have survived have seen
woeful degradation of water quality due to pollution and discharge of untreated wastes. Such neglect of water
resources is untenable, especially considering that vast parts of the country are already water-stressed and the total
water demand is projected to double in the next two decades.
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