India is still not able to differentiate between building water infrastructure and managing water resources. Most of the interventions, particularly during early monsoon, increasingly lead to conflicts between regions, states and people.

Water release from dams is now an annual political drama that peaks when monsoon is delayed.
This year, the state government decided to rele-ase water for the Krishna Delta from Nagarjuna-sagar. The reason stated was that for these farmers, a delay in preparing nursery beds would lead to a loss of productivity would be a threat to national food security.

Yet another reason was that a delay in monsoon would affect harvest that might then coincide with toofans (storms) in Octo-ber and early November.

The logic is fine, but taking water from dead storages has put the entire Hyderabad city that draws water for drinking from these storages in a vulnerable situation.

Sure, the farmers growing paddy in the delta regions are contributing to food security of the state and country. But the same is true with farmers who are producing paddy with bore wells and other private sources.

Paddy is cultivated in 4.71 million ha, out of which 25 per cent is under canal irrigation. This means a major portion of paddy cultivation is outside the canal irrigation.

Most paddy in AP today is cultivated by farmers who invested their own money into sourcing water. That means the argument that the current releases from the dead storage of the dam by state government is to favour a small section of relatively rich farmers who already getting almost free water from the large dams.

This decision of putting all Hyderabad population with drinking water insecurity in the name of food security is not going to convince anyone.

The food security of this state and the country now equally depends on farmers who have invested their own money and created irrigation facilities through borewells and other sources.

They are contributing more to the food security with less dependence on government funding. All farmers today are relatively disadvantaged, but am-ong them those farmers who created irrigation fac-ilities with their own mo-ney and borrowing are co-ntributing to food security.

In many ways the recent releases discriminate the farmers against those farmers who don't have access to government funded irrigation source.

By releasing water early from the dead storage, the government has violated its own norms, policies.
It is also not in the spirit of equitable distribution of water resources.

It also totally negated the National Water Policy 2012. Between the needs of irrigation and drinking water, governments have to prioritise drinking water. It can't assume that rains will come and fill the reservoirs. Decisions have to be based on the water available not on the anticipated flow. The recent releases can't be justified on any ground.

Governments are expected to resolve conflicts - not create and contribute to them. Water conflicts in India are going to have a major impact on various sectors. Governments today, by taking ad-hoc decisions to favour one section or other will only fuel more conflicts.

The Author was Water Policy Advisor for WWF-International from 1993-2010 based at Gland, Switzerland. E-mail: bg@agsri.com