Competing Demand and Management Practices

In recent decades, scarcity of water has been experienced due to an increasing trend in competing demands of the different stakeholders in different countries leading to a number of conflicts within the basin, between the basins of the state and between the states and countries. It has now been aggravated manifold due to the demand from different users like agriculture and industry besides domestic water supply. Increasing demand for fresh water on one hand and limited as well as polluted water supply on the other hand have made the situation worse in recent years in most of the developing countries. The problem has now been further aggravated owing to the decline of water quality due to pollution invariably by the different users, resulting in ‘water market’. Diverting the water, particularly through the larger dams from the natural flow of the river to the new areas has also become very difficult from the ecological and environment and displacement and rehabilitation point of view.