The Niti Aayog will soon start a process to sensitise states towards preparing a Water Management Index (WMI) which will ultimately lead the Centre's think-tank to rank them on the basis of their efforts in efficient management of water resources.
The states' performance will be judged on the basis of 28 key indicators.
It will cover:
Water use efficiency
Irrigation status
Groundwater recharge
Availability of drinking water for both rural and urban areas
Watershed development
Other sustainable practices in water-related sectors.
The Niti Aayog has, in fact, developed a composite WMI as a tool to assess and further improve the performance in efficient management of water resources.
Different weightage is allocated to identified performance indicators to arrive at the composite index.
The final scorecard of a particular state will carry both quantitative and qualitative aspects of indicators during 2016-17.
The WMI is one of the six indices which the Niti Aayog has introduced for ranking states. The others include:
