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Will the Water Revolution Be Centralized? Investigating the “Downscale” and “Upscale” Challenges of Urban Rainwater Harvesting
Abstract
In 2003, the Centre for Science and Environment—one of India’s most prominent environmental organizations—published a text urging city dwellers to take up the socially responsible act of catching rain where it falls, which is otherwise known as rainwater harvesting. The text argued that unless people are involved in urban rainwater harvesting at the household level, it would be “very difficult to meet the looming water crisis” that India confronts. Just how viable however are individual and household efforts for addressing the water crises on the horizon? This chapter takes up that question by looking at the progression in debates over urban rainwater harvesting, as well as the uptake in rainwater harvesting practices, that have taken place since the publication of the aforementioned manual. Drawing from a selection of documents and interviews, this chapter argues that several disincentives persist that either deter people from taking up the clarion call of household-level rainwater harvesting, or that prevent them from doing it altogether. This content shifts the onus of responsibility onto the centralized water system, and onto the municipal agencies charged with water management. Using a political ecology analysis that focuses on the scalar disparities of the water-power nexus, this chapter ultimately argues that urban rainwater harvesting requires enhanced centralized cooperation and capacitation to foster a viable integrated water resource management approach. At stake in this discussion is the fate of water self-sufficient Indian cities, and the viability of sustainable urban water management.
... Finally, the introduction of RwH in contexts of water scarcity has also been analysed from politicalecological perspectives. In New Delhi, the capital of India, where residents can be been penalised by the local water authority for failing to install RwH facilities, it has been discussed how such an alternative might be promoted with 'good intentions' but no intention to alter the power structures in place (Drew, 2021). In the southern city of Chennai, on the other hand, where the adoption of RwH for groundwater infiltration proliferated during a water crisis in 2003, the movement supporting this alternative has been suggested as a case of 'bourgeois environmentalism' since it diverted attention away from addressing the city's unequal water consumption, which actually benefitted the middle classes supporting RwH (Arabindoo, 2011). ...
... Certainly, many stakeholders, like the founders of Isla Urbana, believe that RwH can also be helpful in engaging citizens in the water management of the city. However, as it has been documented in other cities that have deployed household RwH infrastructure, like Chennai or Delhi in India, this strategy transfers responsibilities to ordinary residents rather than questioning the privileges of wealthy populations and their highly intensive water consumption habits (Arabindoo, 2011;Drew, 2021). ...
... As discussed in the previous section, it must be acknowledged that further radical transformations are urgently needed. According to Drew (2021), only enacting solutions that allow the power structures to remain lets ineffective water delivery configurations continue without significant overhaul. ...
Modern infrastructure networks make cities work by providing essential services such as water, sanitation and energy. However, across the urban Global South, universal and reliable services remain unachieved. What prevails instead is an ‘incomplete modernity’ expressed in unequal, segregated and often decaying networks. In this context, the present thesis addresses the emergence of rainwater harvesting (RwH) as an alternative infrastructure for household water supply in Mexico City, where the shortcomings of the local network have been catalogued as signs of a longstanding ‘water crisis’. In order to understand how new social and technological configurations are incorporated into contexts of incomplete modernity, data was collected through primary and secondary research (interviews, observations and documentary research) and analysed from a qualitative methodological approach. The results indicate that RwH has become a palliative niche for a dysfunctional socio-technical regime that systematically relegates marginalised populations from accessing adequate water services. The development of innovative RwH systems specifically designed for the needs of these populations has matched with concurrent narratives related to sustainability and social justice, contributing to the momentum of a niche space that is now being supported by the state through new policies and regulations. While these developments will not break the structural power arrangements behind the differential access to water in Mexico City, RwH has proven useful as a decentralised infrastructure that enables underserviced populations to improve their autonomy by reducing the time, effort and stress that implies getting water in conditions of disadvantage. The findings of this case study provide a fine-grained account of a contingent socio-technical change process happening in a Latin American megacity, adding to the emerging literature on urban transitions and transitions in the Global South.
Hydraulic City explores the politics of Mumbai's water infrastructure to demonstrate how citizenship emerges through the continuous efforts to control, maintain, and manage the city's water. The book demonstrates how Mumbai's water flows, not through a static collection of pipes and valves, but through a dynamic infrastructure built on the relations between residents, plumbers, politicians, engineers, and the 3,000 miles of pipe that bind them. In addition to distributing water, the public water network often reinforces social identities and the exclusion of marginalized groups, as only those actively recognized by city agencies receive legitimate water services. This form of recognition—what Anand calls "hydraulic citizenship"—is incremental, intermittent, and reversible. It provides residents an important access point through which they can make demands on the state for other public services such as sanitation and education. Tying the ways Mumbai's poorer residents are seen by the state to their historic, political, and material relations with water pipes, the book highlights the critical role infrastructures play in consolidating civic and social belonging in the city.
In this age of global inequality, how people talk of corruption matters. This article examines the role of corruption narratives in struggles against land enclosures (“land grabs”) in two Indian cities. Drawing on ethnographic research on land grabs in Mumbai and Bangalore and critical corruption and geography literatures, we argue that corruption talk by slum-based and lower middle-class residents and activists advances an ethical critique of contemporary capitalism. In our cases, corruption discourse upends mainstream development agendas that narrowly equate corruption with individual acts of bribery and the long-standing notion in India that corruption manifests mainly among the poor and lower rungs of the state. Instead, we find that “corruption” serves as a cultural, semantic, and moral rubric that expresses and shapes a sense of structural injustice in this moment of sharpening urban inequality. Specifically, corruption talk is leveraged to identify and challenge the mechanisms underlying elite land grabs and the hypocritical policing of the poor. Corruption discourse also provides a meaningful framework to voice discontent over the betrayal of the “public interest”—defined here as housing and economic dispossession. Taking care not to unequivocally celebrate its progressive potential, we find that corruption discourse can be and has been repurposed in disruptive ways. We therefore posit the need to examine how corruption politics are expanding—rather than disappearing—from geographies of advanced capitalism.
Urban conservation faces challenges in cities that have multiple spatial centers over time, such as Delhi, India, which had seven to seventeen capitals depending on how one counts them. These multicentered cities were partially networked through their waterworks, roads, and related infrastructure in ways that can offer insights into urban history and conservation. The first part of this paper presents the challenges of multicentered cities, and the benefits of taking a historical geographic approach to them. Later sections develop this argument through a case study of Delhi. They proceed from brief consideration of physiographic factors and intangible water heritage to an extended treatment of Delhi’s historical geography. The historical geographic narrative begins with Sultanate waterworks of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries that collected hillslope runoff into tanks (hauz, kund), supplemented by shallow groundwater from wells and stepwells (baolis). A fascinating spatial and technological shift then occurred during the late Sultanate and Mughal period (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries) when the city centers and their waterworks relocated from hillside catchments to the Yamuna riverfront. This process culminated in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad where canal networks augmented local well water supplies. The concluding section revisits the challenges of conserving this evolving urban landscape, underscoring the conceptual and methodological contributions of a historical geographic approach.
This article traces the shifting visibility of the river Yamuna in the social and ecological imagination of Delhi. It delineates how the riverbed has changed from being a neglected "non-place" to prized real estate for private and public corporations. It argues that the transformation of an urban commons into a commodity is not only embedded in processes of political economy, but is also driven by aesthetic sensibilities that shape how ecological landscapes are valued. However, the commodification of the riverbed must confront the fact that the Yamuna is an ecological entity with dynamics that can defy attempts at domestication.
The lessons and opportunities of integrated water resource management in Ontario are described by focusing attention on conservation authorities: watershed-based agencies formed between 1946 and 1979. Six foundational principles of the programme are explained: the watershed as the management unit; local initiative; provincial–municipal partnership; a healthy environment for a healthy economy; a comprehensive approach; and cooperation and coordination. Illustrative examples from the Grand River and Halton Region conservation authorities provide the basis for conclusions. The six principles have served the integrated water resource management programme well. In addition, the ability to make difficult budgetary decisions and adapt to changing public need has contributed to the conservation authorities' success.
e-mail: erik.swyngedouw@geog.ox.ac.uk Telephone: 44-(0)1865-271901 Mobile: 44-(0)7956-879213 Fax: 44-(0)1865-271929 July 2004.
Urban and regional demand for freshwater in National Capital Territory of Delhi has grown significantly over the last few
decades. The National Capital Territory, Delhi is one of the most rapidly growing urban centers of the world, with a population
of about 15 million people, a high rate of immigration and numerous illegal settlements. In order to meet the increasing water
demand, the government is focused almost exclusively on supply management and engineering solutions, which have resulted in
investments of hundreds of millions of Rupees. Environmental, economic and social policies associated with water management
are largely inadequate and insufficient, which is resulting in increasing deterioration in the environment, health and socio-economic
conditions of a population living in one of the largest urban agglomerations of the world. Surprisingly, however, no long-term
strategies on demand-management, reuse, conservation, and improved water-management practices have been developed so far.
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the urban water use with a view to enhance the understanding of the factors
influencing urban water demand for residential, commercial and industrial sectors in National Capital Territory of Delhi.
The analysis indicates an urgent need to radically improve the current water supply and wastewater management practices to
become sustainable. Other measures such as public education and information/awareness will be necessary to achieve desired
rationalization in water consumption, especially in the residential and commercial sectors.
KeywordsGroundwater–India–Population growth–Surface water–Water demand–Water price
In the context of criticism that the definition and scope of integrated water resources management have not been clearly defined, experience in South Australia from the early 1970s to 2014 related to a holistic and integrated approach to water and natural resources management is examined. Three different approaches have been used in South Australia, each striving to be more holistic and integrated than its predecessor. A key challenge for managers is to achieve efficient and effective implementation of related policies, programmes and plans as more aspects become incorporated into a holistic and integrated approach. A main conclusion is that to successfully implement a holistic and integrated approach it is essential to be clear what ‘integrated’ and ‘holistic’ mean, because they are not the same or interchangeable. Furthermore, integrated and focused approaches are not mutually exclusive, and can be pursued simultaneously. This conclusion questions the argument that an integrated approach inevitably leads to so many variables being considered that it becomes so complex, unwieldy and cumbersome that it leads to non-actionable initiatives.
Food and water shortages are two of the greatest challenges facing humans in the coming century. While our theoretical understanding of how humans become vulnerable to and cope with hunger is relatively well developed, anthropological research on parallel problems in the water domain is limited. By carefully considering well-established propositions derived from the food literature against what is known about water, our goal in this essay is to advance identifying, theorizing, and testing a broader anthropology of resource insecurity. Our analysis focuses on (1) the causes of resource insecurity at the community level, (2) “coping” responses to resource insecurity at the household level, and (3) the effect of insecurity on emotional well-being and mental health at the individual level. Based on our findings, we argue that human experiences of food and water insecurity are sufficiently similar to facilitate a broader theory of resource insecurity, including in how households and individuals cope. There are also important differences between food and water insecurity, including the role of structural factors (such as markets) in creating community-level vulnerabilities. These suggest food and water insecurity may also produce household struggles and individual suffering along independent pathways.
In 2003–2004, as the Indian city of Chennai faced an unprecedented water crisis, a debate ensued about finding longer-term sustainable solutions, ranging from expensive desalination plants to modest rainwater harvesting schemes. The latter was enforced by an authoritative state and promoted enthusiastically by environmentalists to raise awareness about the city's much-destroyed hydrological ecosystem. In contrast to the state's interpretation reducing it to a compulsory hydraulic installation in individual buildings, environmental NGOs made a concerted effort to develop a more comprehensive intervention in the wider public domain. However, as a dizzying array of socio-political actors came together, concerns emerged about the ability of such a mobilisation to generate a uniform material understanding of rainwater harvesting as a common moral goal. Examining in detail one specific case study of a community-led effort – Puduvellam – this article looks at how, as a grass-roots organisation involved in the restoration of a prominent temple tank in southern Chennai, it rallied support amongst the local (mainly middle-class) residents to create a new topology of ecological consciousness. Its success, however, was only partial and highlights the futility of romanticising rainwater harvesting as an indigenous alternative. More importantly and ironically, its ineffectiveness was enhanced by the crisis itself as it triggered a process of privatisation and commodification of water, with rainwater harvesting eventually being absorbed by the agenda of ‘bourgeois environmentalism’.
This article demonstrates how a feminist political ecology (FPE) framework can be utilized to expand scholarly conceptualizations of water inequality in Delhi, India. I argue that FPE is well positioned to complement and deepen urban political ecology work through attending to everyday practices and micropolitics within communities. Specifically, I examine the embodied consequences of sanitation and ‘water compensation’ practices and how patterns of criminality are tied to the experience of water inequality. An FPE framework helps illuminate water inequalities forged on the body and within particular urban spaces, such as households, communities, streets, open spaces and places of work. Applying FPE approaches to the study of urban water is particularly useful in analyzing inequalities associated with processes of social differentiation and their consequences for everyday life and rights in the city. An examination of the ways in which water practices are productive of particular urban subjectivities and spaces complicates approaches that find differences in distribution and access to be the primary lens for viewing how water is tied to power and inequality.
New strategies for analyzing water security have the potential to improve coordination and generate synergies between researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners.
This paper is an attempt to provide an organizing framework for understanding geographic (and related) research that deals with modern social control. The basic panoptic logic of what Foucault termed disciplinary power can be understood to operate at a variety of scales, from that of buildings to that of national territories. But the particular way in which disciplinary power plays out, the way in which the logic of visibility interacts with other forms of power, varies systematically with scale and context. Thus I offer a more scale- and context-sensitive typology of “disciplines”, and the bulk of the essay is devoted to explaining the categories of this typology with reference to existing research. The larger purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of how modern social control is bound up with larger socio-spatial relations.
From Page 1: "This paper focuses on decentralization of central state control over natural resources, especially forests. The subject is important for at least three reasons. The lives of millions of households are affected by how governments manage forests and their willingness to admit local claims. Two, the factors that lead to durable decentralization of forests may be relevant in other arenas in which attempts at decentralization are being analyzed. And finally, decentralized decision making can be seen as an inherently important concern of democratic life."
The city of Mumbai is undergoing a complex social, economic, and political transition into an increasingly fragmentary and polarized metropolitan space. The tortuous flow of water through contemporary Mumbai presents one of the most striking indicators of persistent social inequalities within the postcolonial metropolis. We find that the city’s dysfunctional water infrastructure has its roots within the colonial era but these incipient weaknesses have been exacerbated in recent years by rapid urban growth, authoritarian forms of political mobilization, and the dominance of middle-class interests within a denuded public realm. It is argued that the water and sanitation crisis facing Mumbai needs to be understood in relation to the particularities of capitalist urbanization and state formation in an Indian context.
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