ABSTRACT
This book is a story of the making of a policy, one that could not be more vital
to the people whose lives policy making touches, and one that includes many
different players with many different agendas located across a wide variety of
sites. This is a book about policy making processes, an understanding of which is
fundamental to a full appreciation of the impact that policies have on everyone’s
daily lives. Water Policy Processes in India analyzes the policy making process in
the post economic reform era of India beginning 1991. The argument made here is
that since the 1990s globalization and the rescaling of the state have brought about
a contextual “messiness” in the debate about policy production. Viewed in rela-
tion to global pressures, as well as local, subnational, and national imperatives,
this volume addresses the contemporary shifts in policy production in post-reform
India that can be seen as a microcosm of the policy making process in all its com-
plexity across the developing world. By (1) analyzing the process through which
policies are developed and implemented, (2) investigating the aims and motives
behind policies, and (3) identifying the potential areas of intervention in order to
improve the policy process in both its development and implementation stages,
this book attempts to understand what policy making means in practice, and in
all its complexities brought about by the processes of globalization.
