any
governments across the world have failed to supply water to their
people. The Indian Constitution declares access to water to be a
fundamental right but millions of people lack safe access to it. In
relation to a specific region, for example, Bangalore in southern India,
the surrounding areas of this IT city lack a public system of water
supply. The issue is not whether there is a problem or whether
governments have to shape up. There is and they do—that much is
clear—but the issue is how best to equitably reform the water supply.
There exist many examples of equitable, efficient and effective supply
water supplies around the world, from Norway to Bolivia; however,
privatisation is the policy favoured by numerous policy makers around
the world.
To ensure efficiency, every
reform needs to be backed by examples of its practice more than those
who merely advocate its utility. In this aspect, companies have failed
to live up to the promises made by them and on their behalf. This has
led to price hikes, disconnections, ill health and social unrest. There
have been many high profile cases of popular resistance causing
companies to give up lucrative contracts, although given the companies’
determination not to go without a fight and take recourse to sympathetic
international courts, any liberation has usually proved to be either
short lived or very expensive.
In today’s times, the policy to
spread water privatisation seems to be carrying on well enough and it
remains the cynosure to which many governments turn, or are turning to.
India has found itself in the water privatisation limelight, given its
commitment to the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation agenda
since 1991.
A wide range of people and
organisations, united by either a belief in market-based economics or a
financial stake in the water business or both, are convinced that water
should be primarily be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold so
that all water services can cover their costs. To this end, they
advocate private ownership of water supply with the underlying objective
of profit generation.
If water companies find India
as a whole interesting, Bangalore must look like a dream come true. A
well-entrenched multinational corporate lobby, enriched by and
perpetuating the vision of Bangalore as a ‘world class’ corporate city,
a system of governance dominated by unelected and unaccountable
parastatal bodies, and a substantial middle class, all combine to
provide the backing for private involvement and the profit potential. A
crumbling infrastructure, unable to keep up with the rapid growth of the
city and the consequent painfully inadequate water supply system serves
as a justification: hitherto the government has not succeeded;
therefore, companies need to be involved.
According to the authors,
Resisting Reforms? Water Profits and Democracy has been written
keeping in mind three purposes. The first is to debunk the arguments
that are used to justify water ’reforms’, as they are called, that have
been btought in as a result of official policy. Water privatisation is
the worst of the lot, but certainly not the only one. The second is to
understand the manner in which these reforms have entered government
policies. The third purpose is to shed light on how these so-called
reforms have been resisted.
The way we determine the supply of water—as
something that is absolutely fundamental to life—seems an apposite way
of assessing the relationship of any society, be it global, national or
just human society and the principles and goals it has set itself.