Water should be appropriately priced for industry: Montek

"Water should be appropriately priced for the industry to sustain high growth and to ensure its efficient use," Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Tuesday.

"There should not be any reluctance in dealing with water pricing when you are dealing with the industry," he told mediapersons at a Ficci event.

At present, water is highly under-priced for agricultural and industrial use.
He further said, "If we want to sustain high growth the for the next 10 or 20 years, then there is simply no doubt that we can not continue to use water as inefficiently as we are doing".

He indicated that the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17) will lay out different ways of using water efficiently. He said the Centre can do little about water as it is a state subject.

Ahluwalia said he could understand the reluctance to rationalise water pricing for human consumption and agriculture, but there is no point doing the same for industrial use.

"The real test is whether we are willing to rationalise water-pricing for the industry. We need to think hard about how to do that," he said. According Ahluwalia, if water tariff for industry is hiked, it will automatically switch over to recycled water.

"If you do that, industry will be automatically incentivised to try to recycle water because if getting fresh water is more expensive, then it pays industry to use the recycled water," he added.