Irrigation, Embankments, and Floods

Laws relating to irrigation, embankments, and floods constitute one of the oldest and most developed areas of water law in India and this chapter focuses on these subject matters. The first section of this chapter focuses on irrigation laws. Irrigation laws in India show a peculiar characteristic of co-existence of the conventional command and control model and the new participatory management model. Thus the first section reproduces a sample of these two models. While most of the irrigation laws deal with embankments as well, there are laws that exclusively govern the construction and maintenance of embankments and such laws are the focus of the second section. The third section moves on to the issues of flood control and flood management and reproduces a recent law on flood plain zoning, an issue that is generally not covered under laws relating to irrigation and embankments.