CHENNAI: Water should be planned, built and paid for like roads and power networks if India is to sustain economic growth in an era of climate volatility, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) to the Government of India, V Anantha Nageswaran, said on Monday. He argued that decades of treating water as a free resource had encouraged waste, underinvestment, and growing vulnerability to both floods and droughts.
Addressing the CII Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Summit in Chennai, Nageswaran said water security should be treated as critical economic infrastructure underpinning agriculture, industry and urbanisation, rather than as a standalone environmental concern. He called for greater investment in storage, groundwater recharge, wastewater reuse, desalination where viable, and watershed management to make the economy more resilient.
Nageswaran also criticised urban planning that allowed development over lakes and waterbodies while restricting vertical growth, saying it had worsened both flooding and water scarcity in cities such as Chennai.
He argued that infrastructure could not remain sustainable if services continued to be priced below cost. “Free is the most expensive word in public policy,” he said, warning that underpricing ultimately shifted the burden to taxpayers or left public assets to deteriorate through poor maintenance.
Quoting the Thirukkural, he said ancient Tamil wisdom recognised that water formed the foundation of civilisation. Modern India, he argued, needed to place water at the centre of its infrastructure strategy if it was to build a resilient economy capable of sustaining long-term growth.
Budget will have long-TERM VISION, says Min
CHENNAI: Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay-led government’s first Budget will depart from the convention of being merely an annual spending exercise and instead serve as a long-term vision document for the state’s development, Minister for Public Works and Sports Development Aadhav Arjuna said on Monday, outlining plans to reshape infrastructure planning through greater transparency and better asset utilisation. Speaking at the CII summit, Arjuna said the government would move away from short-term infrastructure creation towards projects designed to maximise the value of public assets, and support sustained economic growth, arguing that transparent governance was essential to attracting investment. ENS