ABSTRACT
Making sense of policy processes requires an understanding of how power and
knowledge defi ne spaces of engagement – privileging a few and excluding the
others. This task calls for a historical perspective that situates contemporary water
policy reform in India within the larger processes of neoliberalism, an ideology
of market forces and decentralization that has led the Indian state to turn away
from the Nehru-Mahanalobian1 socialist model of centralized development plan-
ning and adopt the politics of globalization and economic liberalization. This
chapter will examine how these new ideas have gained ascendancy in the area of
policy making and profoundly infl uenced the way water is perceived, defi ned,
and managed.
