Jal swaraj case studies in community empowerment

Jal Swaraj
Case Studies in Community Empow erment

Meeta is with the Indian Administrative Service. She has considerable
experience in rural and tribal development administration. Currently she is
Controller at the Semi Conductor Laboratory, Mohali, Punjab. She can be
contacted at

Rajivlochan teaches and researches Contemporary Indian History at the
Panjab University. He lectures on themes from Contemporary Indian History
at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.
He has published on development issues and community action. He has also
been active in various movements for the empowerment of people. He can be
contacted at



Jal Swaraj
Case Stud ies in C ommu nity Emp ower me nt

M EETA and R AJI VLO

CHAN

YASHWANTRAO CHAVAN ACADEMY OF DEVELOPMENT
ADMINISTRATION

Rajbhavan Complex
Baner Road
Pune 411007

2009


© YASHWANTRAO CHAVAN ACADEMY OF DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION, 2009
www.yashada.org

YASHADA is an autonomous Administrative Training Institute funded by the
Government of Maharashtra and the Government of India. It trains administrators,
conducts research and runs a publishing programme.

First published 2009

Keywords
Jal Swaraj, drinking water, community empowerment, Maharashtra

The moral rights of the authors to be known as the creators of this work have been
asserted

No part of this book may be reproduced or circulated, except for the purpose of ‘fair
use,’ in any form whatsoever without the consent of the publisher.

ISBN 978-81-89871-07-9

The contents of this book reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the organisations for which they work


Detailed Table of Contents
List of Tables

9

List of Maps

9

Foreword

12

Plan of this book

14

Methodology
CHAPTER 1
Managing water: For the people by the people
Involving the community
Objective of this study
The five year plans
The example of Tamilnadu
Water availability in the 1950s
Minimum Needs Programme
Breakdowns and problems
Trying out compulsory democratisation
Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission
National Agenda for governance
Strong points of community led management
Herculean task and bureaucratic solutions
Conundrums

The state of Maharashtra
Legislating the use of water
Jal Swaraj: the international initiative
CHAPTER 2
Government Initiative at Work in the Jalgaon Regional Water Supply
Scheme
Cost norms and practicalities
The institutional context
Expenditure on water scarcity
Tackling scarcity
Zillah Parishad and tariffs
Scheme Design
Lowering engineering specifications
General points re. Scheme design

16
18
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
27
28
29
31
33

34
35
39
40
46
46
46
47
49
51
52
54
56
59


Scheme design and capital costs
Operation and maintenance mechanisms
The Economics of the Scheme
Chapter 3
A self reliant community in Ratnagiri
Closeness to Mumbai
Individual initiative
Working Towards a Shared Goal
Finding resources
Getting the technical details right
Contributory labour and slow steps
Replicating the Model
Contribution from the Agriculture University
Learning from others

Raising funds
Contributing labour
Benefactors from Mumbai
Creating institutional structures
Finances of the schemes
Dealing with high electricity and maintenance costs
Social homogeneity
Religio-moral undercurrent
Self reliance
Chapter 4
Effective financial management in Sangli
A water short but prosperous region
A service provider created by the people
Individual initiatives
Making use of government assistance
The technical details
Setting up a society for management
Removing political competition
Establishing a reasonable tariff
Operations
Chapter 5
Working on a small scale among the poor in Parbhani
Sakartala
Social Environment

60
60
66
76
76

76
77
78
79
85
86
86
88
89
89
90
91
92
94
95
98
99
100
102
102
103
104
105
106
107
107
108
109
116
120

120
121
121


Earlier experience of drinking water management
Garnering Support
Community management
Operation & Maintenance
Sanitation and Waste Management
Empowering Women
Future Tasks
Kehadtanda
Social Environment
The physical infrastructure
Community Management
Planning the Drinking water supply scheme
Operation & Maintenance
Sanitation
Waste Management
Empowering Women
Future Plans
Conclusion
Learning Points
Involving stakeholders
Communicative Action
Enabling features
Consensus building
Divorcing politics from management
Technical expertise

Sound scheme design
Need for government subsidies
An ethical issue

122
122
123
124
126
127
128
128
129
129
130
132
133
134
135
135
136
137
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144

145
146

Glossary

148

Sources

151

Index

153

Acknowledgements

156


List of Tables
Table 1: Allocation under the Calamity Relief Fund and the National
Contingency Calamity Fund for 2001 to 2005
38
Table 2: Expenditure on supplying water to the villages of the 80-village
scheme
50
Table 3: Operating staff establishment costs (1997-98)
63
Table 4: Operating Expenses of Jalgaon 80 Village Water Supply Utility 67

Table 5: Operating Revenues of Jalgaon 80 Village Water Supply Utility 68
Table 6: Operating Revenues of Jalgaon 80 Village Water Supply Utility:
change over previous year
70
Table 7: Percentage break up of Operating Costs of Jalgaon water supply
utility
74
Table 8: Profile of Devke and Chikhalgaon villages in Ratnagiri district
81
Table 9: Rate of self-imposed Water Tax per household in wadi-specific
water supply schemes
94
Table 10: Expenditure on the Ganeshwadi-Saiwadi Water Supply Scheme 96
Table 11: Monthly maintenance costs
96
Table 12: Caste composition: Devke and Chikhalgaon
99
Table 13: Pattern of landholding, Devke and Chikhalgaon
99
Table 14: Tax assessment: panchayat wise in the Madgole scheme
110
Table 15: Profile of water supply scheme: wadis consistently in deficit 112
Table 16: Profile of water supply scheme: wadis reporting a surplus in some
years
113
Table 17: Ratio of standpost connections and household connections
115
Table 18: Operating Costs of the Madgole Regional Water Supply Society
117
Table 19: Operating Revenues of the Madgole scheme

118
Table 20: Operating Profits of Madgole PWS Taluka Atpadi, Dist Sangli 119

List of Maps
Map 1: India: states
Map 2: Maharashtra districts
Map 3: Case study locations
Map 4 Drought prone region in Maharashtra
Map 5: Schematic map of the 80 v scheme

9

10
11
15
36
55


Map 1: India: states


Map 2: Maharashtra
districts


Foreword

Foreword
Provision of drinking water is one of the primary responsibilities of any system

of governance. And yet, no task has seemed more formidable in the past sixty
years of independent India’s existence. In fact, the issue seems to resemble the
story of “The Myth of Sisyphus”. Just when one feels one is close to one’s
objective of providing clean, safe drinking water to all, natural and man-made
factors conspire to bring one’s dreams crashing down to earth. Where then does
the solution lie?
There is need to focus on the overall management of surface and ground water
from both the demand and supply aspects in meeting the challenge of providing
drinking water. The primary need is to realize that water is a finite resource
that needs to be conserved and given time to replenish its store in a given
location. Else, we are faced with the prospect of delivering water to habitations
from greater and greater distances, the consequences of which we are
increasingly facing today. Controlling depletion of this limited but invaluable
resource is as important as meeting current human needs for water. In fact, it
is probably “need” rather than “greed” which should drive policy perspectives
(to paraphrase the words of Mahatma Gandhi in another context). It is here that
the present book provides useful instances of effective (and not so effective)
management of drinking water resources in the area of rural water supply.
The actual examples of initiatives from different geographical locations in
Maharashtra bring home certain basic truths that are critical in ensuring steady
and sustainable water supply to human habitations:
first, the importance of sound design and efficient techno-economic
processes. Too many schemes have met their untimely demise through
use of suboptimal designs aimed at meeting what were probably
unrealistic cost norms;
second, the need for effective management of such schemes, both from
the operational and financial viewpoints. In particular, it appears
necessary for one or more individuals in the community to assume a
management role in the effective running of the scheme;
third, the imperative to keep politics at a healthy distance from

management. Issues ranging from project design and scope to

12


management and revenue realization can be adversely impacted when
local political rivalries rear their head;
fourth, a broad consensus in the community on the need for such a
scheme and a willingness to contribute financial and human resources
for achieving the objective. This community will is especially important
when it comes to collection of service charges and imposition of
sanctions on defaulters.
I trust and hope that the lessons which the case studies in the book bring out
will be taken into account by administrators and policy planners in planning
for and implementing future water supply schemes.
There is also the critical issue of the availability of water, as evidenced by the
number of handpumps and piped water supply schemes which have gone dry
over the past two to three decades. With deforestation and consequent erratic
rainfall scenarios, ill-advised cropping patterns and overall rapidly increasing
demand, the pressure on water as a resource has gone up tremendously in the
past couple of decades. Water conservation and management issues have, in
the recent past, occupied a greater share of public discourse; the pity is that,
barring excellent individual initiatives, the need for concerted, widespread
action on this front has still not sunk into the consciousness of either policy
framers or the general public.
Meeta and Rajivlochan need to be commended on bringing out this book,
which is a worthy successor to their earlier effort which handled the sensitive
issue of farmers’ suicides. I look forward to more such contributions from them
in the near future.

V. Ramani, IAS
Director General,
YASHADA
Pune

13


Plan of this book

Plan of this book
In this book, case studies highlighting different paradigms are
discussed. Some cases pertain to water management by local self
governing bodies within the overall institutional framework of the
government; others to purely informal community level set-ups
and still others to more formal systems set up by local
communities in response to their drinking water needs. Each case
has some feature which makes it unique and which displays an
entirely different aspect of the functioning of such schemes. The
one common thread to all the case studies is that they were all
successful, although to a greater or lesser extent. In this manner
we have tried to identify the various factors that contribute to
making a water supply scheme successful.
The first chapter concerns itself with the manner in which the
issue of drinking water was handled in the years since
independence and how perspectives on how to reach water to the
people changed over time. During the first 30 years of
independence the story of drinking water is the story of the efforts
made by state agencies to reach water to the people. This yielded
considerable learning experience.

14


Plan of this book

Map 3: Case study locations

In the second chapter we narrate the case of a public utility spread
over many villages and covering a population of over one lakh
people set up by a local self governing body at the level of the
district, block and village. This is the case of the Jalgaon public
utility from the Khandesh area of the state of Maharashtra. What
makes this case study unique is the fact that this is one of the very
few instances of a successful public service utility run entirely by
the government and its representatives.
In the third chapter we go to the other end of the spectrum and
discuss the case of water supply systems set up at their own
initiative entirely by very small communities, sometimes
numbering as few as a hundred people, from the Ratnagiri area of
the Konkan region. This case is unique in that all funds for the
water supply system including the initial capital cost, were
mobilised entirely by the local population. No government
assistance was received or even sought in either the initial setting
up or the operation and maintenance of this scheme.

15


Plan of this book

In the fourth chapter we narrate the case of a more formal water
supply authority from the district of Sangli in Pune region. While
the setting up of the authority was prompted by the government,
the initiative and the leadership came entirely from the villages
concerned. This case is unique in that this is the only scheme
which not only meets its maintenance costs but has also been able
to garner a small reserve fund for meeting contingencies.
In the fifth chapter we proceed to narrate two cases of village
communities which were the recipients of government grant and
funds under the Jal Swaraj project; a joint effort of the World
Bank and the Government of Maharashtra which attempts to
formalise the concept of stakeholder participation in drinking
water management.
In the process of narrating the above case studies we try to unpack
different aspects of drinking water management: those pertaining
to scheme design, to social ethics, to politics and popular
participation and to economics. We do not suggest that any one
business model is any more or less efficient than the other. In the
final analysis, what works for any specific community, must be
considered as ideal for that community. At the same time, some
general lessons for the whole issue of drinking water management
do emerge in the narratives; these we discuss in the last chapter.
While we have tried to devote equal space to various aspects of
drinking water management, one question that does concern us
deeply is the issue of stakeholder participation and the related
subject of the extent to which drinking water supply systems are
self-regulating at the level of the community.

Methodology
The Rapid Rural Appraisal method was adopted in the conduct of

these case studies. Another team from Yashada was already
conducting an impact assessment study of the Jal Swaraj scheme
16


Plan of this book

in tribal villages using the Participatory Rural Appraisal method
(Dhote 2006 and 2007). Our study followed that exercise closely
but chose villages that were quite diverse from each other. The
villages were chosen for their geographical location as also the
fact that they were all reasonably successful in their appointed
task. In the context of the strong democratic traditions in
Maharashtra and a vibrant Panchayati Raj system, geographical
location involves, inter alia, a dramatic difference in the broad
political culture which permeates the region. Our earlier
experiences suggested that the local political culture had a
significant impact on how people came together, collectively, to
perform specific social and economic tasks. So for purpose of
study we spread our case studies across the diverse political
cultures that mark the society of Maharashtra. Our study area
encompassed the émigré enriched Konkan, the rich sugar belt of
the sugar producing western Maharashtra region, the drought
prone region of Khandesh in north Maharashtra and the relatively
impoverished Marathawada.

17


Methodology

CHAPTER 1
Managing water: For the people by the people
Making drinking water available to the people has been an
important component of the social agenda of the government in
India since independence. In a society rife with inequity of all
kinds, lack of access to drinking water was one of the most visible
signs of social discrimination. Assumption of responsibility by
the state for providing drinking water to all and in a more
equitable manner was part and parcel of the state taking over for
itself the larger role of being the arbiter of equity and social justice
for the rest of society. It was only much later that the magnitude
and complexity of the task became clear to the agencies of the
state. As the numbers of villages provided with potable drinking
water kept on increasing, so also did the list of habitations which
did not have this facility. The mathematics of drinking water
never did add up. Nevertheless government agencies continued to
follow up in their self-appointed task with vim and vigour and
reaching drinking water to all habitations continued to figure in
government programs across the country. And it seemed that the
people who till independence, had been largely responsible for
18


Involving the community

creating and maintaining their own water supplies, were content
for the state to take up such a role and to exercise a pre-eminent
domain in drinking water supply. It was in the mid 1990s that a
reassessment of the entire perspective on the drinking water

policy began in the government of India. Two major factors were
responsible for this; one that financial crisis hit the government
so that it was forced to rethink and downsize the role of the state
in welfare programs and two that the alternate source of funds for
such programs, i.e. the international funding agencies, clearly
insisted that the government hand over the task of managing local
resources either to the community itself or to some third party
fully devoted to managing such utilities. These funding agencies
also insisted that where drinking water programs were concerned,
these needed to be self sustaining at the level of the community
and that water being an economic good, users needed to pay for
using it. The central and state governments in India went along
with this presumption but wherever possible, given the political
sensitivity of the issue of drinking water, they continued to
subsidise the supply of drinking water in bits and pieces
(Vaidyanathan, 2007).
Involving the community
Within the demand to hand over management of drinking water
programs to the community, was implicit the assumption that
local user groups were far better equipped than remote
government agencies to managing the supply of drinking water
and that given the freedom to do so, they would perform this task
in a far more effective manner. Also implicit was the assumption
that involving user groups would automatically address the major
problems both in creating and maintaining supply of potable
water to the people and that the state would merely be left to
provide some support for setting up capital assets in the drinking
water sector. This was in line with a broad shift towards
democratisation in the management of public programs
worldwide. Much of the problem in managing water was

19


Objective of this study

attributed to failure to involve user groups in the decision making
processes. Once international funding agencies came to
understand the importance of democratisation they began to insist
on what we call “compulsory democratisation” in the 1990s.
Accordingly, aid for developing drinking water resources now
came to be tied down to creation of democratic institutions for
managing the resources. A new phrase— user group— came into
popular usage in the late 1990s and continues to be an important
catch phrase even today. User groups were supposed to be the
managers of water supply schemes. In consonance with the
existing principles of democratic representation they were
elected, all adult residents forming the Electoral College. Seats
were reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe
members and also for women. This was in line with the 1990’s
notions of providing effective representation to all groups.
Elections implied, in the kind of democratic context that exists in
Maharashtra, political competition between political parties. The
aggressive Panchayati Raj system in place since the 1970s
ensured that there was a substantive people’s participation even
though not fully in accordance with the norms. There is a large
body of literature that investigates the inter-linkages between
collective action, management of common property resources and
the arena of formal political competition.
Objective of this study
However, there is little information in the public domain on how

exactly local communities manage their drinking water supplies.
Exceptions in this regard are the feed back studies specifically
commissioned by funding agencies to evaluate the impact of their
aid. By their very nature these studies are limited to answering the
question: were the objectives of the funding agencies met? Could
there have been a better way of circumscribing the aid with
conditions that could enable the objectives to be met more fully?
Answers to such questions may be of considerable value to the
funding agency, but they provide little insight into the manner in
20


The five year plans

which various communities respond to the challenge of managing
their drinking water supply.
The one thing these studies almost invariably said was that it was
crucial to the success of the scheme that social mobilisation
happen in the community and that there be popular participation
in the management of the scheme. Social mobilisation was also
deemed very important to the understanding and internalisation
of the accompanying messages of sanitation, hygiene, safe
drinking water and such like. At the same time, all these reports,
official and non-official alike, contained curiously little
information about what was actually happening in the community
and how exactly they went about implementing the project. After
all the task of managing their own resources was being taken up
once again after a long hiatus in which it was the government
which had done this for them.
It is this gap that this book tries to fill. In this book we present a

series of case studies documenting the conception of water supply
schemes and their management over a span of more than a decade.
The idea that local user groups are far better equipped to manage
such resources than are government agencies, is also, inter alia,
examined. It is hoped that the successes and failures of these
schemes would provide us with insight into what mechanisms
and/or agencies, are the most effective in managing water supply
systems in rural India.
The five year plans
While the state had assumed the role of manager of social services
such as drinking water supply in India in the decades after
independence, the magnitude of this responsibility was not
immediately recognised. Moreover, so far as the drinking water
needs of society were concerned, greater attention was paid to
providing water to the urban areas. Rural areas, it was believed
during the first half of the twentieth century, could fend for
21


The example of Tamilnadu

themselves. This was quite evident in the first five year plan
(1951-56). This plan made provision for providing safe drinking
water under the head of public health. It allocated Rs. 11.37 crores
over the plan period to provide safe drinking water to rural areas
and Rs. 12.12 crores for urban areas even when more than 80% of
the population lived in rural areas. Madras and Bombay
accounted for a major share of the programme. The presumption
here was that the community development plans which the
government had initiated would bring about an all round

improvement in rural areas and no specific attention need be paid
towards the development of drinking water supplies.
The example of Tamilnadu
In rural areas in the first five year plan, States aimed at providing
simple types of safe water supply for almost all villages within a
certain period. In Madras (as Tamilnadu was known then), for
example, a special fund with an initial contribution of Rs. one
crore for the development of rural water supply had been
constituted. The fund was supplemented by a grant of Rs. 15 lakhs
annually. In the five year plan of the central government there was
a provision of Rs. 30.00 crores for local development loans for
assisting local authorities. About Rs. 10.0 crores out of this might
be assumed to be available for water supplies. Contribution by the
people by way of voluntary labour or money would enable the
provision to go a long way in the improvement of water supplies,
so the plan assumed.
So much so that the plan did not even make any special provision
for the creation of systems for the supply of drinking water. This
absence suggests that there was no problem perceived in
accessing drinking water. Supply of drinking water was deemed
to be a part of what the planners in those days preferred to call
“community development and rural extension”. Here they were
content to count the number of wells sunk for the supply of water
for irrigation and drinking purposes. Whether this water was safe
22


Water availability in the 1950s

was not a question that had begun to become bothersome as yet.

The first five year plan, in its concern with tribal areas noted that
the accumulation of decaying leaves in water sources in the tribal
areas sometimes resulted in the water becoming unfit for
drinking. “Bad water” was considered an important issue in tribal
areas. But beyond that the planners seemed to think that there was
no issue.
Water availability in the 1950s
By the time the second five year plan was put into place, a little
more was known about drinking water supply in rural areas. In
1950, the government set up the National Sample Survey as a
nation-wide, large-scale, continuous survey operation conducted
in the form of successive rounds. It was established on the basis
of a proposal from P.C. Mahalanobis to fill up data gaps for socioeconomic planning and policy-making through sample surveys.
In its seventh round (October 1953 to March 1954) the National
Sample Survey found that 70% of villages depended on wells,
13% on tanks and ponds, 12% on natural sources like lakes,
springs and rivers, 3 percent on tube-wells, less than 1.5 per cent
had access to tap water supply and about 1.5 per cent on other
sources.
It was only by the third five year plan that the matter of the supply
of drinking water attracted separate attention. “In view of the
overwhelming importance of providing satisfactory facilities for
drinking water in the villages, it is proposed that there should be
a concentration of effort on the village water supply programme”
noted the plan document. The supply of water was accorded
special status among the services that the government sought to
provide to the people and the plan document went on to say that
the other rural amenities should be taken care of through the
community development programmes and through other rural
works programmes.

23


Minimum Needs Programme

Rather optimistically it was said that as far as possible, the
objective of the third five year plan would be to ensure that
“supplies of good drinking water should become available in most
villages by the end of the Plan Period (1960 to 1965).” The
explicit efforts of the government to reach drinking water to the
villages was in keeping with the increased focus on social services
and the now current belief that the development of social services
was important for ensuring a fair balance between economic and
social development and the need to improve living conditions.
The plan document in its chapter on health also talked of the
importance of having a focus on health and the need to provide
safe drinking water as an important prerequisite to achieve good
health. A sum of Rs. 35 crores was assigned for the creation of
systems of safe drinking water supply in all the villages of the
country. The third five year plan noted that “experience during
the first and second plans has shown that great care is needed in
preparing technical designs and estimates of rural water supply
schemes and in keeping down their cost.” In subsequent years the
efforts to supply safe drinking water to rural areas would undergo
many adjustments in the hope that more people in the rural areas
would have access to safe drinking water. The idea that the
development of social services is an important concomitant of the
developmental process would continue to dominate the public
discourse till the 1990s when major economic changes happened
in the country and focus shifted on providing social services

through “public private partnership”, which most of the time was
an euphemism for the withdrawal of the public sector in favour of
private agencies either on a profit making basis or hopefully, no
profit, no loss basis.
Minimum Needs Programme
To resume our narrative, in 1972, an assessment survey by the
Planning Commission identified 1.53 lakh villages as ‘problem
villages’. To help these villages the government introduced the
Accelerated Rural Water Supply Scheme in 1972-73. It was
24


Breakdowns and problems

carried forward with greater zeal during the period of the fifth five
year plan (1974-79) after it became an integral part of the
Minimum Needs Programme that was initiated during the fifth
plan. The concept of the MNP emerged and crystallized out of the
experience of the previous plans that neither growth nor social
consumption can be sustained, much less accelerated, without
being mutually supportive. During this period it was believed that
the provision of free or subsidized services through public
agencies would improve the consumption levels of those living
below the poverty line and thereby improve the productive
efficiency in society. It was also realized that the objective of
providing social services was quite huge and that it would not be
possible to achieve all that was needed within five years. So it
was proposed, in the fifth plan itself that the Minimum Needs
Programme would continue during the period of the sixth plan
too. The Minimum Needs Programme set 1985 as the target year

for providing all villages with safe drinking water. For this
purpose a sum of Rs. 2007 crores was allocated including both the
state outlay of Rs. 1407 crores and central plan outlay of Rs. 600
crores. When the state governments showed some difficulties in
implementing the water supply programmes the central
government, in 1977-78 allocated a sum of Rs. 38.2 crores to the
state governments under the cent per cent grant assistance.
Reports from the field indicated that most of the benefits of the
cent per cent grant were being cornered by the well off (Planning
Commission of India, 1980). Water supplies that were run by the
Panchayati Raj Institutions, about a quarter of those studied, were
found to be slightly better run and maintained than those under
the control of the Public Health Engineering Department and
other government agencies.
Breakdowns and problems
Over a decade later, in January to March 1996, another study
reported that in one percent of the villages the water supply
25