Water Governance in Puducherry

This article retraces the emergence of contemporary water governance in Pondicherry/Puducherry as a case study to illustrate how new forms or shades of participatory management strategies have recently been created to address the water crisis in a South Indian locality close to the sea. The article first examines evidence of earlier self-governing institutions, engaging premodern agrarian communities in managing sustainable water resource development. It then contrasts this with how manufactured risks produced in the Anthropocene through modernisation and urbanisation processes created serious local water crises that demanded urgent action and prudent management strategies. The analysis articulates how the resulting new shades of management in the form of private-public partnerships of collective action constitute effective new forms of participatory local water governance.