Revision summary
The DM’s options run from lifting the groundwater curb, to a theatrical industry shutdown, to metered priority allocation with reuse. Compatible action is drinking water first, rostered irrigation, industrial reuse and caps, and wages kept during process cuts. Farmers and plants can both live under rules they can see; 2 a.m. secret pumping is the farmers’ allegation made true. Dilemmas include injunctions, mixed political ownership, worker versus farmer, and the unborn aquifer. Integrity in this heat is public numbers, not a speech that the office is pro-poor while the pipe is pro-plant.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Summer has gone beyond ordinary. The district’s water is short. The Collector has stopped reckless groundwater pumping. Farmers say they cannot irrigate while big industries on the river still draw huge volumes. They call the office anti-farmer and corrupt. The industry cannot be shut without throwing workers into the heat. This is Article 21 as water, livelihood, and a commons that will not stretch because a speech stretched.
Body
(a) Options available to the District Magistrate
The DM can lift the groundwater curb to calm the tractor rally, which buys a week and steals the next summer. He can order industry to zero draw overnight, which may be stayed, may dump workers, and may be the right threat if meters are lies. He can do nothing but police the rally, which confirms the corruption story. He can meter everyone: farms, tankers, plants, publish the numbers, and set a drought roster. He can invoke disaster and irrigation law to allocate by priority: drinking and livestock first, standing food crop second, industrial process third, luxury and non-essential last. He can require industry to switch to treated reuse, night draw limits, and tankered-from-elsewhere only with a cap. He can run village tanks, canal rosters, and tanker schedules that farmers can see. He can prosecute illegal borings including a politician’s farm. He can ask the State for a temporary closure of the most water-intense non-essential line without killing the whole payroll. He can set a joint committee of farmer, labour, plant and panchayat that meets twice a week in public. The adult option is the metered, published, priority roster plus industrial reuse, not a theatrical shutdown and not a silent pump.
(b) Mutually compatible actions
Compatibility is not equal unhappiness as a goal; it is enough water for life, enough for a crop that can still be saved, enough for wages. Industry funds immediate village tankers and a reuse plant, cuts non-process luxury (lawns, washing), and accepts a published cap — this is not charity, it is paying for the river they socialised. Farmers accept rostered irrigation, millet and short-duration where the standing paddy is already lost, and no new illegal bore. Labour is kept on rolls during a process cut, with State disaster support if a line must pause. Urban wards face the same tanker honesty. Technical: leak repair, check dams that already exist, night irrigation, real-time river gauge. Ethical frame: commons (Ostrom: rules that users helped write), Gandhi’s face of the thirsty, Mill on harm. A photo-op of closed gates that reopen at 2 a.m. is not compatibility. It is the allegation coming true.
(c) Administrative and ethical dilemmas
Administrative: injunctions, incomplete meters, tanker mafias, an MLA on both the farm and the board, labour union versus farmer union, media that wants a villain, State industry department versus State irrigation, your own groundwater order that looks one-sided if industry pipes are unmetered. Ethical: livelihood of workers versus livelihood of farmers versus drinking water of a ward that has no lobby. Present crop versus aquifer of the unborn. Equality (Article 14) if a plant drinks while a dalit hamlet queues. Integrity when a corrupt story is already in the air — sunlight is the only solvent, not a press ban. Compassion that lifts a curb for a dying orchard versus precedent that kills the rule. Role: DM is not a water minister, yet omission is a choice. Kant: a maxim of industry first in a drought cannot be universal in a thirsty district. Leopold: the river is a member. The dilemma is real because workers are not the plant owner. Ethics is to cut water, not the wage, wherever that split is technically possible, and to record why when it is not.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
Meter and publish every major draw, put drinking water first, and make industry reuse and cap rather than perform a fake shutdown. Farmers get a visible roster, not a whispered exception. The dilemma is worker, farmer and aquifer together; secrecy is what turns it into a corruption story.
Quick related
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Case study. Dr. Srinivasan is a senior scientist working for a reputed biotechnology company. He is heading a research team working on a new drug aimed at treating a rapidly spreading viral infectious disease. There is huge pressure to expedite the trials. Senior team members suggest shortcuts: manipulating data to exclude some negative outcomes, foregoing informed consent, and using compounds already patented by a rival company. Dr. Srinivasan is not comfortable taking such shortcuts, at the same time he realises meeting the targets is impossible without using these means. (a) What would you do in such a situation? (b) Examine your options and consequences in the light of the ethical questions involved. (c) How can data ethics and drug ethics save humanity at large in such a scenario?
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q12). View answer →
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If meters on industry are sabotaged, what then?
Seal, police, and a presumptive high draw until the meter lives. A broken meter is not a bonus for the plant.
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Should farmers get a complete irrigation holiday exemption?
A standing food crop may get a rostered share. A new illegal bore in a banned week should not.
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