Hi Friends,

Even as I launch this today ( my 80th Birthday ), I realize that there is yet so much to say and do. There is just no time to look back, no time to wonder,"Will anyone read these pages?"

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
27 June 2013

Now as I approach my 90th birthday ( 27 June 2023 ) , I invite you to visit my Digital Avatar ( www.hemenparekh.ai ) – and continue chatting with me , even when I am no more here physically

Saturday 17 February 2018

NATIONAL RESOURCES POLICY ?


Need :  More than an Judgement

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Times of India ( 17 Feb ) carries following news :



Rivers national assets, no single state can seek rights over them, says SC



The Supreme Court on Friday said waters of inter-state rivers were national assets and no single state could seek full rights over it, extinguishing origin states’ claim of exclusive rights over the waters of an inter-state river. “ (Rivers) Being in a state of flow, no state can claim exclusive ownership of such waters or assert a prescriptive right so as to deprive other states of their equitable share,” said a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.


The CJI narrated the gradual shift of the international river-water-sharing principle from the ‘Harmon Doctrine’ to the more equitable sharing propounded in the Helsinki Rules of 1966 and Berlin Rules of 2004. The ‘Harmon Doctrine’, based on an opinion of former US attorney general Judson Harmon issued a hundred years ago, holds that a country is absolutely sovereign over the portion of an international watercourse within its borders. The CJI said the principle of equality did not imply equal division of water, but equal consideration and economic opportunity for the co-basin states.


“To conceive that equality rests on equal sharing of water within an arithmetical formula would be fundamentally violative of the established conception of equitable apportionment because the said concept inheres multiple factors,” the SC said and asked all river water tribunals to follow this principle.



The SC also referred to the Campione Consolidation of ILA Rules on International Water Resources 1966-99, which advocated taking into consideration the inclusion of water of an aquifer, that is underground water or ‘fossil water’ intercepted by the boundary between two or more states, while determining the shares of basin states over an inter-state river.


During its exhaustive search for principles for equitable sharing of interstate rivers’ water, the SC cited the National Water Policy of 1987 and 2002, which more or less reiterated the Helsinkisss Rules. The policies stated that the “drinking-water needs of human beings and animals be the first charge on any available water”, the SC said.





While welcoming this judgement, I feel that the larger issues raised by me in respect of “ Natural National Resources “ in my following 4 year old blog , remain unanswered


I urge the Central Government to come out with a draft legislation for public debate

Needed - some Simple Answers !  [  17  Feb  2014  ]




17  Feb  2018





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