Abstract
The recently planned reforms in the city of Mumbai are emblematic of the ongoing changes in the water supply sector in urban India. Though these changes introduce commercial principles along with social engineering interventions to provide round-the-clock water, the water sector is mostly seen as a sector in need of an institutional fix. Proposals to reform Mumbai’s water supply typically support technological and financial mechanisms to find solutions to social and spatial equity issues. However, in situations where the service is provided via non-institutionalized arrangements, often mediated by the political arena, providing water becomes an object of political debate. In Mumbai, a city rife with political competition between parties with varying political ideologies, this situation leads to a contentious debate on the right to the city of many urban dwellers deprived of urban services. As such, Mumbai highlights the embedded nature of the question of water reform, urban politics, and rights.
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Notes
- 1.
Privatization is understood here, in the wide sense of the term, as including all forms of delegation to the private sector.
- 2.
India’s urban population is estimated to be 31.1 % of the nation’s total population (377 million city dwellers), according to the 2011 Census. In 2011, 53 cities had crossed the one million inhabitants mark, but thousands of small- and medium-sized towns suffer from a serious lack of infrastructure.
- 3.
In this text, Mumbai refers to the municipality of Mumbai, which had an estimated population of 12.5 million inhabitants in 2011. It forms part of an urban agglomeration of 18.4 million inhabitants consisting of several municipalities that are beyond the scope of this chapter. The 2001 Census estimated the slum population at 54.1 %. According to Risbud (2003), 49 % of the slum population uses collective networks, 5 % uses individual ones, and the rest have to resort to various sources for access to water. As for sanitation, 8 % of households do not use toilets.
- 4.
These are called chawls in Mumbai.
- 5.
This cut-off date is important, as it offers the right to rehabilitation programs when housing is demolished due to infrastructure projects. For certain projects, the date was extended to 2000.
- 6.
The Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) promotes public-private partnerships and depends mainly on the World Bank.
- 7.
The 2005 Law on Right to Information (the RTI Act) allows all citizens to request access to files of governmental administrations and institutions (with a few exceptions). Officials have to provide the information requested within 30 days of the application or face sanctions.
- 8.
The idea of prepaid water meters was inspired by the South African model. The meters are operated with cards bearing magnetic strips, and, like phone cards, can be recharged. One pays a certain amount of money, which allows access to a corresponding volume of water. Once the recharge amount is used up, the hand-pump no longer yields water and one’s account has to be recharged.
- 9.
This is clearly stated in the municipal commissioner’s letter dated December 12, 2007, to the executive committee of the municipality.
- 10.
The posts of municipal commissioner and deputy municipal commissioner are assigned to officials from the Indian Administrative Service, the highest administrative service of the Central Government of India.
- 11.
Local elected representatives or parliamentarians have an annual discretionary budget for their constituency.
- 12.
Author’s interview conducted on April 2, 2008.
- 13.
The term “sons of the soil” is a commonly used expression to refer to the local inhabitants and distinguishes them from migrants, who are considered outsiders. In Mumbai, the rhetoric of “sons of the soil” has been one of the identity markers of the Shiv Sena, despite the long history of migration in Mumbai.
- 14.
The NCP is a regional party that formed in 1999 after breaking away from the Indian National Congress.
- 15.
In India, the right to water is not recognized as such, but it follows naturally from the right to life and the right to food (Cullet 2007).
- 16.
In Phiri, a locality in the larger and better-known Soweto neighborhood in Johannesburg, prepaid water meters were installed as part of larger water reforms. The mechanism was highly contested by inhabitants and civil society organizations as being contradictory to the constitutionally upheld right to water in South Africa. It led to a court case that resulted in the disconnections of the prepaid meters.
- 17.
Author’s interview conducted on April 7, 2008.
- 18.
Author’s interview conducted on April 8, 2008.
- 19.
Author’s interview conducted on April 7, 2008.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank H. Coing, V. Dupont, L. Kennedy, and S. Tawa Lama-Rewal for their comments and acknowledge the research by R. de Bercegol and A. Desfeux for their master’s thesis, to which this chapter refers.
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Zérah, MH. (2014). Politics and Governance in the Water Sector: The Case of Mumbai. In: Schneier-Madanes, G. (eds) Globalized Water. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7323-3_14
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