Sewerage and Sanitation services
ACCCRN India: Synthesis Report – Volume I
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The cost is not computed or understood when cities map out the current and future water scenario. In most
cases as evident from the city development plans submitted to JNNURM for funding, cities emphasize
the need to augment supply, without estimating what it will cost, in physical and inancial terms. Data suggests
that most cities spend anywhere between 30-50 percent of their water supply accounts for electricity
to pump water. As the distance increases, the cost of building and then maintaining the water pipeline and its
distribution network also increases.
Since most of the distribution infrastructure is old and decrepit and also not maintained, water losses
also increase. The end result is that the cost of water increases and the state may not able to subsidize the
water supply. The situation is worse in the case of the poor who often have to spend a great deal of time and
money to obtain water since they do not have house connections. Worse, as the city municipal water system
collapses under the weight of under-recoveries, the rich move to private water sources like bottled water.
The poor suffer the cost of poor health.
Coping measures: The coping measures include, increasing household level storage capacity to
overcome water supply uncertainties, use of household iltration equipment and reliance on bottled water for
drinking and cooking. Almost all middle and upper class households have invested on these “mini-utilities”
to overcome intermittent water supply and water quality issues. Also, since the new housing and other
development projects have to internalize these costs, the additional costs have to be borne by the prospective
buyers of houses. While the household level coping measures alleviate some of the issues, at city scale they
often aggravate the problems due to elite capture.
Improving the quality of services under the urban growth scenarios is the greatest challenge today
and will continues over next several decades. If not addressed, these issues can lead to violent protests and
law and order problems especially during peak scarcity periods. Such semi-organized protests have become
common in cities facing water scarcity. Indore is one of the best examples where the city is facing water
scarcities and organized protests leading to violence during every summer.
The public is willing to pay, provided reasonable services are made available to them and conidence
building measures to overcome historic poor performance is taken up and reasons for the water
charges increases explained to them. For example, many ULBs have been able to simultaneously improve
services and increase the water tariffs without protests by the residents. The production costs in cities
depending on distant sources are quite high and cross subsidies are given to enable domestic users to pay
less than OM costs. This system leads to commercial and industrial users shifting to other sources like
groundwater, resulting in overall insuficient revenue to pay for the production costs.
Beside these challenges, cities are also facing threat from climate change. Increasing temperature, changing
rainfall patterns, reducing natural resources, sea level rise and urban loods are imposing threat to
infrastructure and livelihood of the urban citizens in India.