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This paper analyses how agricultural policy and science deal with the problem of increasing exploitation of low quality irrigation water and consequent deterioration of water quality in the States of Punjab and Haryana in India. In these cereal growing tracts the policy objective of food security is translated into production technologies, price protection and subsidies. Deterioration of water quality is countered with technocentric solutions. The paper argues that the response of science to the complexities involved in natural resource problems or in the scientific understanding of farmers partial response to technological solutions recommended to improve degraded resources, is due to the existing "administrative rationalism" of natural resource bureaucracies. This administrative rationalism, "the problem-solving discourse which emphasizes the role of the expert rather than the citizen" allows policy and science to maintain their hierarchy in determining policy goals and technological solutions with scant ecological or democratic concerns. Sustainable use of water demands institutional reform in agricultural policy and the agricultural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]