Privatise water management

The next world war, predicted a cheerful soul some years ago, will be fought over water. That may or may not turn out true but local skirmishing has certainly started in India.

The immediate context is the move by 14 state governments in 19 or 20 projects to hand over bits and pieces of urban water supply management (whether distribution or treatment, or both) to the private sector.

Mostly, the contracts have been going to international companies, but some Indian firms are also entering the business. The unions are protesting even though there seems to be no threat to jobs, either now or in the future.

Supporters of public-private initiatives say that the real threat is to the illegal incomes enjoyed, under the current regime, by many water supply employees.

The opponents, who are the usual suspects, say that this is just a red herring and that there is in fact a global conspiracy, led by some MNCs, to capture India's water.

A leading newsmagazine with Left leanings has even said that the "the question of privatising the Ganga, a holy river for the Hindus, making it a corporate commodity through the Sonia Vihar water treatment plant, has angered the public". Clearly, no holds are going to be barred.

As usual, there is a great deal of honest confusion as well as dishonest mis-information. The honest confusion is because the water boards have not bothered to inform the public about what precisely is being privatised.

This has allowed the dishonest to put out mis- as well as dis-information. The fact is that no water source or body is being privatised.

The only such instance was in Chhattisgarh, where the Jogi government gave a concession for a 40-kilometre stretch on the local river to a private company.

Nowhere else is this being done or even envisaged. What is being done, instead, is to ask private firms to manage the water supply system. It is hoped that this will eliminate the corruption and theft that is so rampant in the public provision of such services.

Tariffs are an issue, to be sure, but the price to be charged will not be left entirely to the entity holding the management contract. No politician would risk that. Prices will be decided periodically and after consultation.

This model has worked in other countries, where the ownership is not transferred but the management is, for a fee that is paid against properly benchmarked levels of service.

So the key lies in proper benchmarking and, equally critically, ensuring thereafter that no hanky-panky takes place when the achievement of those benchmarks is certified.

The crucial question to be asked, which no one is asking, is whether urban water supply will improve as a result of private management of distribution.

Even if 24-hour water supply is not possible, longer hours of supply, simply by stopping theft and waste, will come as a huge relief to the middle class, as will the removal of mafia control of piped water supply to the poor, who also depend heavily on erratically trucked water.

These mafias are controlled by local politicians acting in collusion with the water board employees. In the end the way to judge should be simply four words: who gains, who loses? If the consumer gains and if the rascals lose, why protest?