Interstate Cooperation

The Namami Gange Programme (NGP), being implemented through the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), is a key flagship programme of the Government of India. Besides the extensive focus on infrastructural assets, the NGP is distinct from the perspective of institutional innovations for greater and effective implementation where the NMCG has the status of an authority along with an elaborate institutional structure at subnational scales. The institutional interventions are with a clear intent to turn the NGP into an autonomous and self-governed institutional ecosystem for enduring impact of the NGP. However, interstate water cooperation poses formidable challenges and suffers from an absence of coherent structures and processes for interstate cooperation. The project aims to focus on the critical policy and institutional ecosystem for rejuvenating rivers – the interstate cooperation in the larger Indian federal governance framework.

The research delves into interstate cooperation for Ganga to assess the interstate relations within the Ganga basin and identify the potential policy directions and institutional solutions to pursue them. In the subsequent phase, it will deep dive into specific substantive issues of hydrological interdependencies, shared risks, and means of pursuing collective action for river rejuvenation.