Water Law in India ─ An Introduction to Legal Instruments

This extensively revised second edition is perhaps the only existing volume to offer a comprehensive panorama of legal instruments concerning water in India. It includes a general introduction on water law in India, contextual introductions for each chapter, and reproduces key legal instruments that make up the complex and varied field of water law and policy. It also includes relevant international law instruments, national-level policies, laws, administrative directions, and extracts of relevant case law. This volume also reproduces a variety of state-level instruments, chosen according to their representativeness, with other available instruments from different states listed at the end of chapters. It also reproduces a number of legal instruments in other areas of law, such as environmental law, that cover water in direct or indirect ways to give the reader an understanding of the breadth of water law. Overall, this volume attempts to bring together the different and varied types of legal instruments in the water sector and legal instruments in other areas of law covering water to give an overall perspective of the field of water law in India. In the process, it highlights, to researchers, policymakers, lawyers, and other people interested in water, the importance, complexity, and fragmented nature of the legal and policy frameworks that inform the sector.

Philippe Cullet is professor of International and Environmental Law at SOAS University of London, UK and a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India.

Sujith Koonan is a law researcher at the Environmental Law Research Society, New Delhi, India and a doctoral candidate at SOAS University of London, UK.