Can water users shape their own destiny?

Can distribution of water be in people’s hands—not the government’s?
Roopmati behn was at her tether’s end. It was six months since her husband had paid a tariff connection cost of Rs. 3700/- to the Water Supply Board, officially. The minions in the water department had been paid ‘speed money’ of another Rs. 6000/- over three more months to get the house pipe connection laid.
Roopmati is still to get water in her house. She and her 12-year-old daughter stand at the public tap every alternate morning when there is supply of water. Sometimes it’s at 6 am. Other times it’s anywhere from 8–10 am. There is no certainty of when. And so she stands anywhere from 6 to 10 am waiting for that hollow cough of the pipeline, which will signal the flow of water.
And then there are at least 50 people like her waiting with several baltis that are to meet their needs for the next two days.
Shastri Nagar is a slum of 620 houses in a verdant undulating pocket of the valley town of Dehradun in Uttaranchal. It accounts for about one per cent of the 65,000 households of a city that hosts a half-million people.
The city faces an irony that isn’t so amusing—the last five years has seen average rainfall of over 2200 mm every year (or over 8 feet of rainfall) and yet has seen a water service which provides for only an average of about 6-8 hrs of supply in an entire week!
So what ails Dehradun? The Government’s version has been that there is need for more investment in long-distance sources of water from rivers, which are 60-80 km north of this capital city. The people’s version has been that the impossible power situation that spells availability of no more than 6-8 hrs a day, storage capacities of overhead tanks being not sufficient for holding enough water for uniform distribution of water supply through the hours of a day, and enormous leakages in distribution… have been the major reasons for poor water supply services. So, the people say, it is not about water availability; it is about poor water management.
The water supply board, called the Jal Sansthan, has a tricky problem on its hands: the huge arrears of energy billing that the department owes to the power corporation has meant that power supply to the water network is not given priority by the power utility. Political compulsions also have meant that the water supply board is not able to enforce discipline on payments from water users.
It is a vicious vortex which sends efficiency down a negative spiral, with the water supply board not having adequate funds to upgrade their utility, lenders not too happy giving funds to the board, and further loss of efficiency of services that water users suffer. One of the options to break this logjam is restructuring of the entire system in a manner that there is greater role clarity for the water supply board. The high level of dissatisfaction among water users can be countered by a plan that will ensure the role of water supply board is that of a bulk water supplier with no responsibility directly for collection of money from water users. So what is the revenue model then for the Water Board? Sale of water on a bulk basis to a single authorized agency of the community. This can be a franchise to an authorized local committee of the water users representing an identified zone of water users.
The water supply board will not then have to worry about the servicing of existing infrastructure for distribution and retailing of water. It just has to focus on new infrastructure to make them larger and efficient bulk water suppliers with its revenues coming from these committees of the different zones of water users.
The task of actual distribution of water from the storage tanks into the community’s gridline of pipes, and the collection of money every month to support operation and maintenance, will be handled in such a scenario, by a community formed and managed by the representatives of the community themselves.
There is a catch to this, however. How do we expect managerial skills among lay citizens who are not trained in such skills of operation and general management?
How to Manage Better?
This is where inputs come from voluntary organizations, which will offer [a] professional inputs in review procedures, [b] simple management of funds on a monthly basis, [c] ensuring proper servicing of bulk water supplying cost, [d] ensuring households pay the monthly service cost as well as one-time tariff for any upgradations and improvements made with investments that are initially borrowed, and so on.
The strength of such a system of bulk supply with the retailing of water handled by the communities themselves, is that there will be greater focus and accountability from both stakeholders with, clearly devolved functions for both the water supply board and the users.
And so at Shastri Nagar, if you take this picture of one per cent of Dehradun to a larger scenario of creating such distribution franchises across the town for community sizes varying from a low of 500 households to a high of 2200 households, you will see that the entire city will not need any more than 50-60 such distribution nodes.
This will ensure that the water supply board receives its funds on bulk supply with very little cost of collection: there will be no logistics support that the water supply board has to worry about at the retail end of distribution: the water user benefits since the risks of the distribution are now insulated from the perceived inefficiencies of the water supply board. Such an interface with 50-60 agencies will also create interesting new dynamics of communities seeking traction in performance from the water supply board as a bulk water supplier, while the board will now have just a small set of bulk buyers to deal with for recovery of monthly revenues.
Shift in Mindset
All this requires a fundamental shift in the mindset of officers in the water supply board and the government, apart from a snap to the willingness of the community to take on the role themselves of shaping their own destiny. There is simply no need for either group to be apprehensive of failure—economic viability is clearly possible. It is not as if the government was spending welfare funds beyond what the citizen was willing to pay over all these years. The tariff for new connections that a household has always paid has ensured that there was enough money for implementation of capital works. This has failed over five decades despite the fact that there has been no default in such payment of tariff connection cost by individual households. There have been defaults, of course, in monthly payments, or there have been many instances of non-payment or non-authorized use of water by households. But, this is only to be expected in a scenario that fosters such recalcitrance from consumers and citizens. When there is such rampant failure of delivery of the service, and, worse, when there is failure of intervention for monitoring, people will surely take things into their own hands.
The Can-do Spirit
To insist that such a change is not possible to a system where the user pays regularly, is foolish. There have been many instances across the world particularly in the last 10 years, of cities and colonies, being transformed into water-efficient towns, with efficient management that has ensured deliverables. Phnom Penh in Cambodia is one such outstanding example.
Such a structure of ownership of distribution by communities is not to be mistaken for privatization of water. The idea is not to have an external private agency to ‘profit’ from such a communitized water supply operation. An external agency comes into play only in the initial stages, and if needed, for upscaling the infrastructure to enable such efficiency. The right over the new infrastructure and the right of management vests entirely with the community itself that is empowered well with training.
If there is, slowly and quietly, an effort made by a few catalyst organizations to bring such change with acceptance at both ends—the community and the government, over the next year, there will be at least 50 such towns that will take to this new and healthy regime of sustainable water management in about 50 towns of Karnataka and Uttaranchal.
A battery of professionals are working in close quarters with the government and with a half-dozen town communities apart from local panchayat administration to bring this exciting prospect of efficient water supply to parts of these towns. Towns in Coorg District of Karnataka and two residential pockets of Dehradun and another in Rishikesh, the holy town on the Ganges, are now gearing up for such a shift.
The next step is to see that water supply treatment systems are installed in each of these towns at different points of exit in such a way that the treated water could be reused for a big chunk of water requirement of households. But that is another story….
—Xover team