InDepth: World Wide Water Mafia #10: Systemic Failures of Public Water Distribution

IC InDepth Team

Mumbai, 30 August 2019

The breakdown of systemic public water distribution extends beyond individual or institutional corruption. It underscores limitations intrinsic to fundamental political and socio-economic systems, magnified by unequal and inadequate tax collection methods.

These challenges reveal the frailty of social contracts or their absence altogether.

In the short term, choosing not to offer essential public services, like water, to the impoverished can be economically expedient and politically convenient for the state.

This approach tacitly condones and indirectly participates in an illicit market catering to these services.

Long-Term Implications

Yet, this short-sighted strategy can have long-term repercussions, undermining the state’s legitimacy and potency.

Water shortages cease to discriminate, affecting all strata, including the influential and prosperous such as major landholders and industries.

Furthermore, the state wields water as a potent tool for shaping its identity.

It dictates which informal settlements and slums to tolerate, and when to nudge them elsewhere through water access manipulation.

Legalizing such settlements, while advantageous for residents, necessitates the state’s commitment to furnish essential public services.

Complex Consequences of Legalization

The act of legalization also constrains the state’s control over these regions, weakening the authority of state-linked illegitimate entities like water mafias or slumlords.

Granting legal status and land titles to informal settlements inadvertently runs the risk of fueling unchecked urban migration and encroachment.

Simultaneously, permitting illicit urban water markets can drain the resources of surrounding rural areas, thus amplifying the inflow of migrants into urban slums.

Challenges of Privatization in Public Services

The 1990s saw the rise of privatization as a primary policy response, yet it’s a strategy accompanied by its own set of constraints.

External entities, including international firms and experts, sometimes offer plans that don’t align with local realities.

These outsiders often lack a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay of patronage, corruption, and illicit market systems deeply entrenched in local urban dynamics, as witnessed in Lagos during the early 2000s.

Local Players and Complex Dynamics

On the other hand, local private providers possess a better grasp of the intricate web of legal, public, informal, and illegal distribution systems.

However, they too can succumb to collaborating with these distortions, perpetuating deficiencies, and resisting policy enhancements.

For these local actors to be incentivized to break free from the prevailing inadequate systems, they must be capable of seizing a substantial portion of the market share and building political influence by advocating for constructive policy reforms.

Balancing Short-Term Gains with Long-Term Sustainability

Moreover, the objectives of many private operators often center around swift financial gains, potentially jeopardizing water sustainability in the long run.

Their focus on immediate profits may clash with the imperative of ensuring a secure water supply for future generations.

Concluding the Debate on Water Theft and Smuggling

The concepts of water theft and smuggling stir considerable debate. The intricate web of water usage regulations, often intricate and multifaceted, makes it challenging to definitively label certain actions as illegal water appropriation and supply, which I’ve coined as water theft and smuggling.

Notably, legal professionals and water regulators in some regions prefer to avoid employing these terms altogether.

Additionally, the notion that water access is a fundamental right, not contingent on extensive payments, creates discomfort around the notions of water theft and smuggling.

Reconceptualizing Water Theft and Smuggling

This paper contends that if water is procured and provided in contravention of water laws, it is justifiable to consider it as instances of water theft and smuggling.

The response to such violations, however, should take into account factors such as the motives behind the appropriation (survival versus evading payment) and the scale of the transgressions.

Nuances of Water Theft

Water theft can manifest as a manifestation of acute water scarcity, underscored by deficiencies in rule of law, shortcomings in water authority capabilities, or the reluctance of the state to extend legal water provisions to marginalized regions.

Even when stemming from institutional and policy inadequacies, water theft and smuggling give rise to an array of profound risks.

These risks can further impede the formulation and execution of effective policies to ensure the sustainability of water resources for various purposes, including consumption, agriculture, industry, and energy production.

Diverse Realities and Consequences

Paradoxically, many sprawling urban slums and underserved rural areas heavily rely on water obtained through illegal means and smuggling to meet their consumption and agricultural needs.

Paradoxically, impoverished inhabitants of such areas often pay considerably more for illicit water supply than their counterparts connected to the state’s officially sanctioned water distribution system, regardless of the system’s imperfections.

Nevertheless, even the authorized water supplies can harbor inadequacies, resulting in problematic, unsustainable, and ecologically detrimental water consumption and depletion.

In summary, the intricate nature of water governance, coupled with diverse socio-economic contexts, contributes to the complex discourse surrounding water theft and smuggling, necessitating a comprehensive understanding for effective policy formulation.

Next: InDepth: World Wide Water Mafia #11: Magnitude of Water Theft and Smuggling

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