Water, though commonly occurring in nature, is invaluable!It supports all forms of life in conjunction with air. However, the demand of water for human use has been steadily increasing over the past few decades due to increase in population. In contrast, the total reserve of water cannot increase. Hence each nation, and especially those with rapidly increasing population like India, has to think ahead for future such that there isequitable water for all in the years to come. This is rather difficult to achieve as the water wealth varies widely within a country with vast geographical expanse, like India. Moreover, many rivers originate in India and flow through other nations(Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the demands of water in those counties have to be honored before taking up a project on such a river. Similarly there are rivers which originate form other counties (Nepal, Bhutan and China)and flow through India. All these constraints have led to the formulation of the national water policy which was drafted in 1987 keeping in mind national perspective on water resource planning, development and management. The policy has been revised in 2002, keeping in mind latest objectives. It is important to know the essentials of the national policy as it has significant bearing on the technology or engineering that would be applied in developing and managing water resources projects. This section elucidates the broad guidelines laid own inthe National Water Policy (2002) which should be kept in mind while planning any water resource project in our country.