DHARMA has been designed for individuals and organisations at Dam, State and Central level. Owing to the large number of dams, several thousand individuals are expected to use the software; they will be assigned to seven main user roles across three tiers, as presented above.

The highest tier 'Licensors' includes the 'Central Admin' and 'Central Super Admin' roles - these are based in the Central Dam Safety Organisation (in Central Water Commission) and are responsible for administrative control and distribution of the DHARMA software at a national level. ‘Licensors’ alors include the ‘State Admin’ role - the ‘State Admin’ are based in each State Capital and are responsible for administrative control and distribution of the DHARMA software at a State level. One of the responsibilities of the 'Licensors' is to grant licenses to the second 'Licensees' tier which includes the 'Licensee Admin' and 'Licensee Super Admin' roles.

These are typically members of Central or State dam owning organisations (eg. State Water Resources Departments). Licensees, in turn, can add three types of 'Application Users' namely 'Dams Data Manager', 'Dam Health Engineer' and 'General User' who are responsible for managing and updating the data in DHARMA.

Below is the list of licensees under DHARMA: