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Water access and citizens’ movements

G. Ananthakrishnan

— Photo: N. Sridharan

A common sight in many urban areas. The scene on a Chennai street.

It has been called the “build-neglect-rebuild” sector. Water supply is politically a priority area and records massive public expenditures year after year, but services remain unsatisfactory in terms of quality, quantity, and equity at the delivery end. The poor state of municipal water and sanitation facilities is an incongruity in a rapidly urbanising phase of development. Massive private investments are taking place in cities but civic services have not kept pace. The deficits are real and felt the most by the less affluent.

A recent study of water supply in seven cities published by Economic and Political Weekly shows that on an average, only about 18 per cent of households have access to water on tap round the clock, while the majority get water for a few hours once or twice in a day, or only once in two days. For instance, 77 per cent of households in Madurai and 88.9 per cent in Hyderabad get water only once in two days.

Some social scientists propose that the continuing water deficit is the result of middle-class disinterest in building infrastructure for clean, safe, and adequate drinking water and scientific sewage disposal. This is partly attributable to the way it has insulated itself from the twin problems of water shortage and water-borne disease. Private bottled supplies, invariably obtained through borewells and often extracted from peri-urban village areas, make up for the shortfall. For disease, the availability of vaccines and drugs provides protection and general sanitation therefore appears unimportant except in an aesthetic context.

This represents a virtual secession of the middle class from the municipal supply system when it comes to drinking water. Quality water access in urban areas has not expanded and, as some critics see it, there is a bizarre emphasis on expensive and superficial beautification schemes.

Yet water and sanitation have long been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a basic right and as key extensions of the concept of the right to health. The accepted definition that guides the WHO is that the highest attainable standard of health (Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) is a human right.

However, despite expansion of water supply coverage in a statistical sense, there are serious issues of quality and access. In many cases, researchers think less influential urban residents have come to accept even below par supplies as adequate because that is all that they can expect. The WHO prescribes a supply of at least 50 litres per capita daily (lpcd) through a tap in the premises for basic hygiene but even this is elusive for a significant percentage of residents. It is worth recalling here that the Bureau of Indian Standards (IS 1172-1993) favours a minimum supply of 200 lpcd in bigger cities with full flushing systems and 135 lpcd in smaller towns.

Such standards are obviously impossible to meet for governments and local bodies that are not accountable and lack professional management. Financial support for agencies run by the government, often linked to international loans, has not improved the situation.

This absence of conceptual clarity, political commitment, and technical expertise has strengthened the role of the citizen sector in water advocacy and activism. Non-governmental organisations bring positive pressure on politics and the bureaucracy for change through analysis, advocacy, and even direct intervention.

Public charitable NGOs with suitable scale of funding and expertise can play a useful role in water. Bangalore-based Arghyam is one such agency working to come up with an actionable framework that will provide data analysis and best practice documentation. It has supported projects in hydrology research and data collection, rainwater harvesting, and integrated water supply in several States. At its second annual conference held recently, the agency resolved to scale up its involvement in the cities; it brought together technical and research experts to work with community representatives on creating an actionable framework for urban water and sanitation; a core group would pursue the agenda.

This approach is consistent with the WHO’s vision for a role for the community and for NGOs in advancing the water and sanitation agenda. Arghyam would qualify both as a local NGO and an international agency by WHO norms, given its significant resource base and capacity to integrate the activities of smaller groups. Arghyam’s conference on the theme “Urban Water 360 — Envisioning Appropriate Models for Indian Cities” brought many such groups and activists under one platform and helped prioritise key issues.

Among the most demanding tasks ahead for the citizen sector is the identification of the best and worst urban water supply practices. The problem areas should not be hard to find in the data on water and sanitation available in the Census, National Sample Surveys, and individual studies. Arghyam laid the foundation for data sharing through its India Water Portal ( www.indiawaterportal.org) launched not long ago.

But Arghyam and other such organisations would have to first build a consensus on the status of water as a good. The WHO considers water to be a limited natural resource and a public good, and also a human right. This implies that a certain amount of good water must be available free to all and also that profligate use must involve high costs. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) thinks water cannot be treated as a free social good and wants it to be priced. Even if the WHO standard of intermediate level access — 50 lpcd — were to be taken as a base level, it may still not meet all household requirements.

This is a key factor because there is a recognised linkage between water, sanitation, and public health. The reduction of maternal and infant mortality is a major national goal linked to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. But progress depends in great measure on improving water availability and quality and better sanitation.

Water-related targets can benefit from community and NGO involvement and oversight, supplementing slow political processes. Bangalore, where Arghyam is based, is a classic example of rampant urbanisation ruining already weak water sources. The Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has recorded the devastation of most of the wetlands in the city due to encroachment, construction and pollution by industrial wastes and sewage.

Researchers at the IISC have determined that from 51 lakes in Bangalore city in 1973, the number has plummeted to 17 this year, of which only 14 can be considered to be alive. Greater Bangalore had 76 water bodies three decades ago and this has fallen to 41. The impact on groundwater has been sharp: it has descended to almost 1,000 feet in some places from an average of about 90 feet a couple of decades earlier. In the area of sanitation, India’s most-cited Infotech city has an even worse record. It routinely discharges millions of litres of untreated sewage into peri-urban water bodies leading to ecosystem collapse; treatment plants currently being built will not cater to all the sewage generated. The story is not unique to Bangalore, however, and many other Indian cities do not fare much better.

A pro-active role in safeguarding the available surface water resources is an imperative for Arghyam and other NGOs. Focussing on better rain harvesting mechanisms could help improve India’s per capita storage record, estimated at a poor 200 cubic metres, against 1,000 cubic metres per person in South Africa or China (World Bank figures). This can be achieved not by building large disruptive dams but by developing smaller community harvesting structures. These wetlands can be created within urban and peri-urban areas by enlarging existing ones, salvaging those usurped by encroachers enjoying political support, or even forming new water bodies. There is a role for industry too. Many corporates realise the value of freshwater and have started developing wetlands on their premises.

NGOs such as Arghyam have considerable financial and advocacy resources to influence policy and intervene directly in the area of water. The chairperson of the organisation, Rohini Nilekani, expressed its commitment to funding important initiatives for greater equity and access in water. Indeed, water and sanitation research can greatly benefit from such support. For the worst affected communities direct intervention by NGOs offers hope in the short term. The predicted disruptions to the water cycle over the subcontinent in the coming years as a result of climate change makes citizen sector advocacy and intervention even more of a necessity.

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