Water access disparity in Mumbai, India: Using spatial and structural attributes as formal conditionalities

ABSTRACT

In order to investigate the role of spatiality in disparities in urban water access in the Indian city of Mumbai, this article uses the dual conceptual lens of “access-as-right” and “access-as-ability” based on the theory of access. The “access-as-right” lens allows for a focus on the role of formal policy and institutional regimes in determining disparity in water entitlements. This article argues that the spatial and structural conditionalities encoded in formal policy instruments in India, as well as the spatial and structural rationales underlying these conditionalities, are used to declare informal dwellings as spatially and structurally deficient. This “deficiency” leads to ineligibility of these dwellings for full water entitlement, creating access disparity that gravely impacts Mumbai’s vulnerable urban populations. This article relies on data from formal documents and semi-structured interviews of municipal engineers, experts, academics from related fields, and activists working on urban water access issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatiality
• urban inequality
• theory of access
• water access
• informality

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Richard Matthew for his invaluable guidance in this research process. I also thank Dr. Kavita Philip for extended discussions and feedback on drafts of this paper. I wish to acknowledge the cooperation from all respondents who shared their opinions, perceptions, insights, and documentary sources with me. Additionally, I thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Based on available data in this regard, ALANKAR (2013) concluded that 100 LPCD is the quantum of water “needed to maintain a decent and healthy level of living” (p. 49), while Mukherjee et al. (2020) go by the argument made by Chenoweth et al. (2013) for accepting “85 liter per capita per day as minimum requirement for basic domestic water usage (mainly drinking, cooking and washing) at the household level” (p. 5).

2. In the past, MCGM used to provide individual water connections even in informal settlements. However, this researcher was informed by municipal engineers in 2019 that the practice had been discontinued and such connections do not feature in rules promulgated by MCGM in 2015.

3. In both the cases, a single dwelling is envisaged to house five individuals.

4. The author is aware that the formal procedure described in this section for securing a connection also involves negotiation, politics, and exchange of favors. A variety of actors participate, including, architects, consulting engineers, professional middlemen called licensed plumbers, local politicians, and municipal engineers. This applies to applications by both these categories, though the details may differ. These aspects have been covered in literature in detail (Anand, 2015; Björkman, 2018) but are not considered in this discussion, following the “access-as-a right” approach accepted for this paper, which is focused on the formal policy and institutional regime.

5. The new policy to be issued by MCGM in May 2022, in pursuance of the court order upholding human right to water, promises to remove this requirement for all the slum-dwellings in the city (PTI (Press Trust of India), 2022).

6. This explanation was suggested by an anonymous reviewer of an earlier draft of this paper.

7. It must be mentioned here that the description of the water supply system and its elements as well as the rationales presented in the subsequent paragraphs are based on interviews of state actors mainly the retired or serving municipal engineers from the hydraulic (i.e., water) department of MCGM. The actual situations on ground in different informal settlements could be different, depending on the interventions and innovations made by a variety of actors. As some activists reported, even for the old informal settlements, the local distribution network was not strengthened though a large number of new connections were given on the same pipelines. However, the branches of the distribution network supplying water to adjoining buildings were strengthened when new water connections were given on the same pipelines.

8. In recent years, in some areas, MCGM has used pumps to increase pressure in the local distribution networks. However, the pressure created by these pumps did not help much in improving the situation because of the increasing number of connections on the same pipe lines (as per the activists) or because of use of the booster pumps by consumers to pull water to their connections (as per the municipal engineers).

9. Though municipal engineers rarely agree, the water sector activists complain that the local network of pipes are so designed that the slum colonies are either located at tail-ends of the networks or are supplied water through networks with inadequate capacity.

10. As per the national standards, the ferrule water pressure (i.e., the water pressure at the point where a connection is given to a dwelling) should be at least of seven meters (CPHEEO [Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organization], 1999). This standard pressure is not achieved in most areas in the city, and rarely in the case of slum colonies (Interviews with Water Technology Academic and Retired Senior Municipal Engineer).

11. This researcher in the field observed and it has been mentioned in the literature that, in reality, many slum dwellings are provided with make-shift underground storage tanks—often located under the very dwelling—as well as with overhead plastic tanks supported by wooden poles or steel bars. However, these nonstandard features and arrangements do not satisfy the spatial and structural conditionalities mentioned in the formal procedure for granting of the house-service type connections.

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Notes on contributors

Paroma Wagle

Paroma Wagle is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, jointly appointed by the Department of Geography and the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Paroma is an urban researcher working in the fields of public policy, urban planning, urban history, political ecology, and systems thinking. Her research focuses on cities and water access, regional watershed management, and urban climate justice.