ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces readers to the history and historiography of waters in India, shedding light on the development and trends within the field. It discusses the capture the complex, multilayered dimensions of water challenges within the Indian context and will address the issue via political economy, history, and the ecology of water management. A strong feature of Indian environmental history is the presumed existence of a pre-colonial equilibrium that was destroyed by the "metabolic rift" of the colonial period. Paul Greenough's "standard environmental narrative" shows that scholars, from Marxists to New Age Utopianists, have insisted upon the transition from harmony to disruption, justice to inequity, and prosperity to misery. Within the Indian water scenario, there seems to be a strong contradiction between policy frameworks and planning driven by hydrology-oriented solutions and the real need of the hour towards an integrated, comprehensive, and hydrosocial understanding of water resources for addressing water sustainability.
