A Case for Protected Indian Waters

Abstract

Water pollution has caused our rivers and associated inland water network to cripple. The pitiful condition of the river Ganga that lies choking on the mires of burgeoning city lives as a startling testament. So how do we cleanse our rivers? The Uttarakhand High Court, in an unprecedented move, conferred legal personhood to these living non-entities, unwittingly producing challenges in the wake of their rulings. By reading rights for the rivers equivalent to human rights, the higher judiciary uncovered jurisprudential infancy concerning conferring legal identity to nature’s inanimate assets, which do not fully ply at man’s behest. On the contrary, by drawing a comparison between the South African and Indian water law, a frailty is found present in the legislative writing within the domestic statute. Therefore, in the present circumstance, the judiciary has its hands tied- on one hand with the possibility of overstepping its vires and on the other summoning contestations to jurisprudence. Against this context, the study examines the protected area system in place for the marine ecosystem, proposing an extension of the concept to the inland water network, giving illustrations to produce an appreciative understanding of the regime that may supplement the existing practice to control and prevent deterioration of the riverine ecosystem before we go past a point of no return.