Dr Rinan Shah

Profile

I am Dr. Rinan Shah, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London.  I am also an associate at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (LMSAI) at Harvard University.

My current project, MOUNTAINWATERS, investigates access to water amidst climate change across the rural-urban continuum in the Himalayan region of India. This project aims to overcome conceptual barriers in existing water security approaches that limit understanding of montane environments, focusing on the intersection of water, urbanisation, and mountain springs. It develops a new, empirically grounded conceptualisation of water security by adopting a rights-based approach to natural resources. My work expands on my research into water access and marginalisation in the Himalaya, complemented by nearly a decade of interdisciplinary experience in environment, development, climate change, and sustainability studies.

Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies at Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence. As part of the Non-Resident Fellowship, I conducted assessments and published the legal and institutional frameworks governing springs at the national level, along with a state-level assessment of the 13 Himalayan states and Union Territories of India. Further, I developed my work on the extremes of water experiences in Darjeeling town – on the one end, I explored the segregated water access, and on the other, shared water and water rights. I also worked on commentaries which introduced issues of long-term interest or concern to the Himalaya. These included centring springs for water security, water provisioning infrastructure, urbanisation, extreme rainfall and disaster risk, and communities navigating hydropower.

For my project as a Mittal India Institute Fellow at LMSAI, Harvard University, my research centred around rethinking the territorialities of water management and conducted a seminar titled “Rethinking Territorialities of Water Governance in a Water-Scarce World”. For this, I delved into the boundaries of spaces, their definitions, laws, and everyday practices, and into the creation of inequality through a gendered framework. 

My PhD focused on disentangling the drivers of domestic water scarcity in the Eastern Himalayan Region (EHR). The Eastern Himalayan region receives much higher rainfall than other regions of India, yet its communities face severe water scarcity during both the summer and the monsoon. Previous studies focused on scarcity as a pre-existing condition, resulting in a depoliticized analysis that addressed only symptoms. My thesis examined the causes of this scarcity using Lyla Mehta's (2006) framework, which encompasses biophysical, political, institutional, and household factors that often overlap. The analysis ranged from macro-regional to household levels, with the community level in between. Darjeeling was the primary study site. It is a densely populated hill station in the EHR region. 

I am the co-founder of Reading Himalaya – an all-women-led research and policy organisation. I am an interdisciplinary researcher with 10 years of experience in environmental, development, and sustainability studies. I study water, mountains, governance, policy, institutions and urban issues with a rights-based approach.  

I am from Bijanbari valley, a village-town in the Darjeeling district of the Eastern Himalayan Region.

Research

Research Interests:

My research interests encompass water studies in mountainous landscapes, engaging with institutions, urban governance, households, spatiality, and connectivity. In recent years, I have engaged with the concept of territoriality to reassess water governance, and spring governance in particular. To do this, I engaged with formal and informal rights, infrastructure, hydraulic citizenship, and community rights. To better understand spring governance, I have assessed water rights in conjunction with the legal landscape.

My current project, MOUNTAINWATERS, further expands into the rural-urban spectrum of the right to water, women’s participation in water security, and appraises current and future scenarios of climate change impacts on water security. As the name suggests, the work will focus on the Himalaya, particularly the Eastern Himalayan region. MOUNTAINWATERS is funded under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

I received funding, along with two collaborators, to carry out a Writing and Discussion workshop on Deconstructing Water Insecurity in Himalayan Mountain Towns and Cities from Household Water Insecurity Experiences through the Research Coordination Network's Collaborator Accelerator Award 2021.

My PhD work was funded by the National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS) under the Government of India, and by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) institutional fellowship.

Publications

Refereed Articles

• N R, Lakshmikantha, Shah, Rinan, Srinivasan, Veena & Mukherji, Aditi. Hits and Misses: Water-Based Climate Change Adaptation Interventions for Agriculture in South Asia. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 30, 19 (2025). doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-025-10206-z
• Shah, Rinan. 2024. Ways of Storing and Using Water – Experiences of Water Scarcity in a Water Rich Region. Grassroots – Journal of Political Ecology, 31(1), 831-846. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5436
• Shah, Rinan. 2022. Marginality and Informality in Domestic Water Scarcity: Case of a Self-Service Mountain Town. In: ICAS Conference Proceedings, 630-639. Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789048557820/ICAS.2022.073
• Shah, Rinan. (2022). Laying bare : Determinants of informal water vendors for domestic water supply in Himalayan mountain towns. HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 41 (1), 74–90. http://journals.ed.ac.uk/himalaya/article/view/7047/9307
• Shah, Rinan, & Badiger, Shrinivas. (2018). Conundrum or paradox: Deconstructing the spurious case of water scarcity in the Himalayan region through an institutional economics narrative. Water Policy, 22 (S1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2018.115
• Shah, Rinan. Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas. Conservation and Society 21(2): p 150-151, Apr–Jun 2023. | DOI: 10.4103/cs.cs_133_22
• Shah, Rinan, & Gamble, Ruth. Contested Commons and Private Regimes: Governance of Springs in the Indian Himalaya. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. [Under Review]
• Shah, Rinan, & Badiger, Shrinivas. Adequacy and Robustness of Ancillary Infrastructure to Alleviate Domestic Water Scarcity in Water-Rich Eastern Himalaya. International Planning Studies. [Under Review]
• Moktan, Abriti, Scott, Christopher, Khaling, Sarala, Srinivasan, Veena and Shah, Rinan. Springshed Management and Rural Water Security: Seen and Unseen Infrastructure in the Eastern Himalaya. Water Security [Under Review]

Special Issue Editor

• Historical Injustice in Natural Resource Governance in the Indian Context. Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History. Co-Editor | Upcoming

Reports, Commentaries & Policy Recommendations

• Contributing author, Sixth Assessment Report Working Group II, Chapter 4: Water, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) | 2022
• Issue Brief: Divided by Design: Segregated Municipal Water Access in Darjeeling Town. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2026
• Commentary: Urbanisation, Extreme Rainfall, and Disaster Risk in the Himalaya. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Commentary: Quiet Struggles of Communities Navigating Hydropower in the Himalayan Region. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Issue Brief: Mapping the Legal Landscape of Himalayan Springs: Where Indian States Stand and How to Move Forward. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Commentary: Hard and Soft Infrastructure of State Water Provisioning in Urban Mountain Towns. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Issue Brief: Administration of Springs in India: Legal and Institutional Frameworks. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Commentary: Centring Springs for Water Security in the Himalaya. Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence | 2025
• Policy Analysis #2, Women, Labour & Social Security in Sikkim, India. Reading Himalaya. Co-Author | 2024
• Policy Analysis #1, Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023. Reading Himalaya. Co-Author | 2024
• State of the Youth Report 2022, Eastern Himalayan Foundation. Co-Author | 2023
• Composite Water Resource Management Plan: Shivamogga District, Karnataka. Co-Author. 2021
• Effectiveness of Water Adaptation Responses in Reducing Climate-Related Risks: A Meta-Review. Co-Author | 2021
• Composite Water Resource Management Plan: Abbalagere Gram Panchayat Shivamogga District, Karnataka. Co-Author | 2020
• NWP 2020: How is India’s youth reimagining its water future? Submitted to the National Water Policy Working Committee. Co-Author | 2020