Drinking water policies in South Asia

Abstract
In the last two decades drinking water policies and programmes in South Asia were subject to profound changes following the water sector reforms, which relate on principles of cost recovery, decentralization and participation in water governance. The rationale of such reforms is informed by differing points of view, seeing the reforms either as a response to the failure of the welfare state and of top-down technocratic approaches that needed change, or a more critical point of view which sees the reforms as a direct outcome of the pressures of international financial institutions, and of the influence of neoliberalism.  The main goal of water sector reforms is to correct the perceived inability of the government to effectively administer the existing water infrastructure and to provide water in an economically efficient manner to facilitate expansion of the water infrastructure. The main implementation strategies include transferring part of existing governmental prerogatives to users and private actors as well as setting up new bodies (special project vehicles) for infrastructure building.

In the background of the declining financial health of public utilities for drinking water supply, the presentation illustrates the ongoing water sector reforms with an urban sanitation project in Sri Lanka and drinking water projects in the Indian State of Kerala. The common thread is foreign assistance, execution through special project vehicles/consultant companies, black box of imported technology/dependence through maintenance contracts and bloated expenditure/high tariff rates to recover it. Questions of technological appropriateness, economic viability, social acceptance, institutional/political feasibility and thus the larger acceptance and sustainability of the projects are raised. The study informing the presentation also discusses issues of transparency, accountability and participation in the governance of such projects and thus elucidates the larger reform process currently under way in most developing countries.

Biography of the speaker
NC Narayanan is an Associate Professor in CTARA, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) –Bombay and currently visiting the Institute of Geography, University of Lausanne for two months. He has a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands and has taught at the Institute of Rural Management, and worked as the Executive Director of South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs) based in Hyderabad, India, coordinating an interdisciplinary water resources programme between five South Asian universities and the Wageningen University, The Netherlands. 

The presentation is based on his forthcoming edited volume entitled Water Governance in South Asia: Paradigm Shifts and Civil Society Responses (New Delhi: Routledge). He is the author of Against the Grain: The Political Ecology of Land Use in a Kerala Region, India (Maastricht: Shaker Publications, 2003), the co-author of TINA and the Milk: Southern Perspectives on Sustainability in the Netherlands (English and Dutch editions, Utrecht: International Books, 2002) and the editor of Where to go from here? State, Natural Resource Conflits and Challenges to Governance (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2008).