Drinking Water Quality in Indian Water Policies, Laws, and Courtrooms: Understanding the Intersections of Science and Law in Developing Countries

Abstract

Drinking water quality has drawn enormous attention from scientific communities, the industrial sector, and the common public in several countries during the last couple of decades. The scholarship in science and technology studies somehow overlooked this crucial domain. This article attempts to contribute to this gray area by exploring how drinking water quality is understood in Indian water policies, laws, and courtrooms. The article argues that water policies and laws in India were significantly shaped by international treaties and global environmental stewardship. In the courtrooms, the Indian judiciary employed minimum science-based evidence in decision making in the context of drinking water–related cases; rather they used a rights-based approach and minimally engaged with the issue of drinking water quality/standards. Whatever little science used as valid science by the judges in the decision making was entirely expert-based. The reliance of the judges on the scientific expertise of the experts representing regulatory organizations and public institutions was another unique characteristic of the relationship between science and law in India.

Groundwater Constituents and Trace Elements in the Basement Aquifers of Africa and Sedimentary Aquifers of Asia: Medical Hydrogeology of Drinking Water Minerals and Toxicants

“…Arsenic is sporadic in the basement aquifers as the sulphide minerals which hosts are patchy Published in partnership with CECCR at King Abdulaziz University should be noted that the adoption of a national standard is effectively voluntary, as compliance is not enforced. It has limited statutory value as in most cases a consumer cannot make anybody liable for breach of standard limits (Meharg and Raab 2010;Sharma 2017). Higher threshold values assist governments politically by providing theoritically 'safe water' to its citizens.…”