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October 08, 2025
Water Challenges in the Anthropocene: Lessons from India
Recording available here: University of Manitoba Sustainability YouTube Channel
Join us for the next webinar in The Last Drop Water Researchers Speaker Series. Dr. Mihir Shah, Distinguished Professor at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR, will speak to “Water Challenges in the Anthropocene: Lessons from India.”
The Anthropocene makes the need for a paradigm shift in water management and governance more urgent than ever before. Large swathes of humanity still remain stuck in the mid-20th century paradigm of command-and-control over river systems and endless extraction and exploitation of groundwater. Dominated by the disciplines of engineering and hydrogeology, such a perspective persistently ignores the need for a trans-disciplinary and holistic approach to a common pool resource like water, acutely aware of the interconnectedness across different elements of the water cycle.
India’s experience of water policy can be deeply instructive for us to draw the most pertinent lessons from both its mistakes, and from the multiple innovations that have been proposed in recent decades. This talk will be an attempt to share some important learnings that emerge from this experience, based on first-hand attempts at shaping this policy both at the grass-roots, as well as at the highest echelons of government.
Registration required. To register, please visit: https://umanitoba.zoom.us/meeting/register/vQ5TwAaPSqSLBdFBweM0rQ
About the Speaker
From 2009 to 2014, Dr Mihir Shah was a Member of the Planning Commission, Government of India, holding the portfolios of Water Resources, Rural Development, and Panchayati Raj. He is the youngest ever Member of the Planning Commission.
Dr Shah was chiefly responsible for drafting the paradigm shift in the management of water resources enunciated in the 12th Five Year Plan. He also initiated a makeover of MGNREGA, the largest employment program in human history, with a renewed emphasis on rural livelihoods based on construction of productive assets. From 2019 to 2021, he chaired the Government of India’s Committee to draft the new National Water Policy. This is the first time ever that a person from outside government was asked to chair this committee.
Dr Shah graduated in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, (where he won the prestigious KC Nag Economics Prize) and did his postgraduation from the Delhi School of Economics (where he was Merit Scholar) in the 1970s, before going on to complete a much-acclaimed doctoral dissertation at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala. After teaching for some years at the Centre, he resigned to explore fresh terrains beyond the ivory towers of conventional academia, which culminated in 1990 in the formation of Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS). Inspired by the life and work of Baba Amte, SPS is today one of the largest grass-roots initiatives for water and livelihood security, working with its partners on a million acres of land across 72 of India’s most backward districts. Dr Shah spent nearly three decades living and working in central tribal India, forging a new paradigm of inclusive and sustainable development.
Dr Shah was the first President of the Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation (2013-19), which supports innovative civil society action in close partnership with state governments. He was the first Chair of the Revitalising Rainfed Areas (RRA) Network (2014-18) and the National Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF) (2021-25). He is a Founding Signatory of the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security, 2017. He was a Member of the International Steering Committee of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) from 2012 to 2018.
His research has been published extensively in pre-eminent journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, Current Science, Ambio, Hydrogeology Journal, Journal of Hydrology, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Review of Development and Change, International Journal of Rural Management, Seminar and Indian Journal of Labour Economics.
Dr. Shah has addressed audiences on his life’s work all over the world from Stanford University to the World Bank in Washington, the OECD in Paris, the Arctic Circle in Iceland, Chatham House and University College, London and University of Cambridge, England, UNESCO-IHE, Delft, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, the EAT Forum, Stockholm, Rachel Carson Centre, Munich, Himalayan University Consortium, Chengdu, China, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, the Asian Development Bank, Manila, the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok and the Singapore Water Week. He was the Keynote Speaker at the Global Water Summit at Rome in 2012 and the International EcoSummit Congress at Montpellier in 2016.
