The report looks at water governance in the Man basin, a medium sized sub-basin of the Narmada river basin in tribal dominated western Madhya Pradesh. It deals with problematic issues of water governance in the basin and generates insights and guidelines that are important for both grassroots and policy level interventions in future.

It attempts to present a methodology to study the relationship between water availability and water use to see if it is sustainable and suggest measures for improvement. It also presents an analysis of the use of agricultural water and energy in the basin.

It begins by discussing the relevance of the new concept of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) for water governance in river basins. It then sets out the reasons for the choice of the basin, its characteristics, the problems encountered with computation of water balance, the revised methodology for estimation of water use developed to suit the present study and the results of applying this methodology. It then presents a political economy analysis of the prevailing water use in the basin.

The results of an experiment to make water resource utilization for agriculture more sustainable in the basin is described followed by a review of the performance of the Man dam and an analysis of the interface between the government, community and market. Finally the report sets out a roadmap for the future.

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