ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the recognition of the right in India and the various ways in which it has been partly realised through legal instruments that do not refer to the right. It then examines the challenges that arise in a context of evolving water policy and the push for privatisation. The chapter looks at some dimensions of the right that need to be addressed to ensure that it does not remain subservient to economic understandings of water. The focus is on the need to end disconnections, in particular automated disconnections, the need to realise the core content of the right through provision of free water and the need to rethink the content of the right in light of new thinking around water as a shared substance, based on the need to recognise it as common heritage and the need to manage it based on the principle of subsidiarity.
