In Delhi, 80 percent of the households depend on at least two sources of water. The number of sources is very low (one source for 176 households) and far from the standards defined by the Urban Basic Services to the Poor programme (one public tap for 30 households or one hand pump for 20 households). An approximation of the aggregated cost of unreliability shows that on an average these families spend between Rs.100 to Rs.135 per month (Zérah and Lorente 1999).

Shripad Dharmadhikary of the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, an eloquent and forceful opponent of water privatization, puts it this way, “First it was PSP: Private Sector Partnership. That was not acceptable so they made it PPP: Public Private Partnership. Somebody said, ‘what about the people?’ so they made it PPCP: Public Private Community Partnership, or, to make it sound better, PPPP: Public Private People Partnership. Then they made it even better, PPPPP: Public Private People Partnership for the Poor! Most unfortunately, this is only a convergence of language, not a meeting of minds. The same thing is being said in different words, that’s all. We must first and foremost realize that the private sector is motivated only by profits.”

Water supplies remain in the public domain with reasonable user fees the case in most countries of the world. France and the UK are the only exceptions.

In the US, 81 percent of the population is presently served by public utilities, after private ownership for delivery of water was reversed in the 19th century over the issues of water quality and public hygiene.

In France, cost plus pricing, non-transparent accounting, and padding of bills results in higher user charges for consumers. In the infamous Grenoble corruption case, it was shown that by distributing their costs in a non-transparent way across all the municipalities they work for, companies could even give kickbacks to political parties.

In the Grenoble contract, conservation was discouraged by increasing the price if the consumption fell below a contracted amount.

In Paraguay, niche domestic informal firms or SSPs, lay pipes from wells they dig, pay taxes, and are regulated by the government for water quality. They have proved themselves to be more efficient, competitive, and cheaper in serving sections of the population left uncovered by large water utilities.

In Ho Chi Minh City, privatization of urban water supplies sent rates up by seven times.

In Cochabamba, privatized supply saw rates shoot up so that the average worker was required to shell out 25 percent of his or her salary in water charges. An uprising of protest demonstrations led to the imposition of martial law.

In Metro Manila, where the company Mynilad was given concession under the condition that they provided water at Peso 4.96 per cubic meter, the company hiked the prices to 15.46 pesos and then was asking for 30. When this was not granted, it walked out of the concessions.

In Guinea, where prices rose by 650 percent, taking them even higher than rates in London and Paris, non-payment resulted in disconnection of about 10,000 connections, roughly one-third of the total clientele. In South Africa, millions of people are reported to be affected by disconnections due to non-payment.

Water and Sanitation: The Link the World Endures but Forgets

Are we to decide the importance of issues by asking how fashionable or glamorous they are? Or by asking how seriously they affect how many? - Nelson Mandela

Can water, a basic need that can be equated to a fundamental right, be bought and sold like a commodity? All ancient civilizations speak with compassion about quenching the thirst of even the enemy, for the absence of water is worse than the most terrible curse.

This need for water is frequently assessed in terms of parched throats. But equally worth considering are fevered bodies and dying children. At any one time, more than half the poor of the developing world are ill from causes related to hygiene, sanitation, and water supply. Diarrheal disease alone kills 6,000 children every day. The majority of illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.

A billion people live without safe, plentiful water. Two and a half billion people live a life without a clean, private place to defecate and urinate. Instead, they use fields, streams, rivers, railway lines, canal banks, roadsides, plastic bags, wastepaper, or squalid, foul-smelling, disease-breeding buckets, and unsanitary latrines.

In most developing countries only about 1-2 percent of the government spending goes to low cost water and sanitation. More is spent on high-cost services for few than on low-cost services for many.

Sanitation involves waste disposal systems, water supply, sewerage networks, and preserving ecology. On all these counts, most countries are very deficient. Availability of water is a key element in the standard of sanitation. Indian cities and towns are among the dirtiest in the world. At the time of the 1991 Census, it was found that more than 76 percent of the people in this country had no toilet facility. Nearly 46 percent of the urban population have water sealed toilets, but only 28 percent are connected to the public sewerage system. There is, thus, a major lacuna in the provision of water and sanitation services.

In most of the urban areas in India, even on the streets where sewers have been laid, houses have not been connected in spite of municipal laws making such connections compulsory.

Loss in working days due to sanitation related diseases works out to millions every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that basic sanitation facilities reduce the burden of disease by up to 77 percent. Carefully designed programs which combine water quality with good sanitation and hygiene education have the potential to make enormous differences to the quality of life.

Toilet Talk, a publication of the National Slum Dwellers Federation Mahila Milan and Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) in India said, “Indian slums are littered with broken-down, badly-planned, ill-sited, un-maintained toilets which even dogs won’t go near, much less people. Many people in slums have never even seen or used a decent toilet. On the other hand, many state officials who make big decisions about sanitation in informal settlements have never seen a viable, community-managed toilet themselves. With all these poorly-stocked imaginations, it’s no wonder things are so slow to change. There is a poverty of examples, of models for how to make toilets that are affordable, replicable and work”.

For example, samples from P.L.Lokhande Marg in Chembur, Masjid, Parel-Dadar, Mulund, and Jogeshwari touched 1600 fc per 100 ml of water (the Bureau of Indian Standards Safety Norms require 10 fecal coliform (fc) per 100 ml.). The WHO says that there should be no fecal coliform in drinking water. The SoCleen study said the contamination was largely due to unhygienic conditions in specific localities because sewerage had infiltrated into water mains. Damaged water lines that lie parallel to sewage pipes often run through dirty pools of water, noted the study.

In many cases, overhead and underground tanks are poorly maintained. Nagpada, Mohammed Ali Road, Byculla were noted as ‘high-risk’ due to widely prevalent microbial contamination. Chembur and Trombay had 61 percent un-potable samples, Nagpada, Mohammed Ali Road and Byculla had 40 percent of the same while Ghatkopar stood at 30 percent. The study implicated the localities of Bandra, Khar and Santa Cruz and Parel-Dadar too. The affected cut across all class lines— Chembur’s P.L.Lokhande Marg’s middle-class housing societies had the worst water quality at 70 percent un-potable samples.

Instead of looking to the heavens, Tamil Nadu (TN) became the first state in India to make Rain Water Harvesting mandatory in all existing and new water supply structures. The J.Jayalalithaa government also set an unprecedented August 31st deadline in 2003, to urge citizens to take some responsibility for their water supplies in a water-scarce state largely dependent on ground water sources.

The TN Municipality Building Rules Act of 1972 was amended on 11th October, 2002 to make Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) mandatory. A later ordinance stipulated the compulsory deadline with penal clauses. Harvesting rain water is estimated to be the only ecologically sustainable way to avert water scarcity. Using simple technologies that are easily and affordably incorporated, the ground water source is recharged by capturing and channeling all the runoff from roofs and cemented areas.

Chennai also has a Rain Center, a first-of-its-kind endeavor that acts as a one-stop knowledge center for information related to RWH. The administration has also barred the extraction of groundwater for leisure (non-sports) swimming pools, and non-potable use in industrial units. Granting or refusing groundwater licenses has been made stringent. Metrowater has neither issued nor renewed licenses since 1997. These changes add to the existing ground water legislation and extend beyond Chennai city to 360 villages in 59 districts stretching across Kancheepuram and Thiruvallur.

Other than these rules, there are also specifications for the disposal of liquid waste. The changes in the Chennai Metropolitan Groundwater (Regulation) Act of 1987 required Presidential approval. The modifications involved the Code of Criminal Procedure as well.

The politics of vested interests also prevail. In Chennai city, the gap between demand and supply of water is a huge 200 million liters/day. Many ‘entrepreneurs’ profit by filling the difference. The tanker and bottled water lobbies are powerful. To meet Chennai’s insatiable demand, farmers from neighboring villages indiscriminately pump water from their wells either lured by money or ‘pressured’ by the government. Selling water has become more lucrative than engaging in agriculture. Unemployment and migration of agricultural laborers is on the rise in these areas.

A three month study of 20 villages in a 30 kilometer radius around the city, by the Madras Institute of Development Studies, showed that wells have gone dry in many places and villagers did not have water to meet their local needs. Farmers felt that if they did not sell water, their neighbors would anyway and in that case, water would be depleted. They preferred to profit from the process too.

An estimated 20,000 tanker loads of water is drawn from wells in these areas. A farmer earns Rs.40 for every load of 12,000 liters or Rs.70 for every 20,000 liters. Other than this, an estimated 40 million liters of water is being pumped round the clock from the Palar river bed every day. Illegal sand mining has also resulted in the drying up of spring channels and tanks.

Contrary to popular belief, Chennai receives an annual rainfall of 1290 mm every year, which is higher than the national average. Almost 95 percent of the rainfall is lost due to surface runoff and evaporation.

PartI>>>

** Lalitha Sridhar is a New Delhi based development journalist and consulting editor. Your emails will be forwarded to her by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net