How Is Water Supply And Sewage Provided In India?

In much of India, urban local authorities provide water supply and sewage through water and sewage boards. So, there hasn't been an exceptional improvement in access to quality services in the past 25 years, though the private sector grew rapidly in this period. In 1990, for example, half of the world had “improved sanitation services”. Now about two-thirds of the world has “improved sanitation services”. This is a great improvement, but India's performance is still poor as only two Indian cities have continuous water supplies.

In 1980, rural sanitation coverage was only one per cent. In 2008, this had risen to 21 per cent. This is something, but three is still much room for improvement. India's failure is not because of poverty, because in the same period, access to mobile phones became exceptionally common in India.

When compared to the first world cities, such services are poorly provided in Indian cities. Pritika Hingorani of Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) pointed out in 2011 that even though Indian cities produce 38,254 million litres of sewage every day, only less than 30 per cent of this is treated before being dumped in fresh water bodies or the sea. The developed world had solved the problem using high-energy machines long ago, by sanitising water that people may consume.

Though there are fluctuations, private participation in water and sewage plants had declined from 1995 to 2005 in developing countries. But, private participation in water utilities has risen. After peaking in 1997, private participation in water supply and sewage did not rise beyond $ 10 billion since then, in the 1995-2005 period. 

For much of human history, sewers tend to be connected to water that people drink. Even in ancient times, people did try to separate the sewer from freshwater sources. Such struggles, however, were not successful because it was hard to prevent water from mixing with fresh water sources. Today, fossil-fuel-based energy is used to treat sewage and ensure that all dangerous elements are removed. Sewage is also kept as far as possible from water sources. This would not have happened without industrialisation and a relatively free economy. India is yet to achieve a high degree of economic freedom, and not by coincidence, this is yet to be fully achieved in India. This is a major cause of infant mortality, low body weight, premature death and many other problems. So, private provision of water supply and sewage is not a luxury but a basic necessity. This is not impossible because in the 19th century England and in many parts of the world, water supply and sewage were privately provided, and profitably so.

Urban local authorities play an important role in providing water supply and sewage in India. But, such bodies have weak powers. According to the report of a high-powered committee headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, 70 per cent of the water intake of supplying bodies is either lost in transmission or not accounted for. Only 22 per cent of the water fetches water for the government. As Shreyas Bharadwaj points out in Swarajya, even in countries like Cambodia and Philippines, authorities get back 100 per cent of the cost of maintenance and operations, while it is 35 per cent in India.

It is not that private water supply and sewage does not exist in India. In Gurgaon, many private developers and companies provide private water supply and sewage. But because of the lack of economies of scale and insufficient privatisation, this has not proven to be a good deal for everybody concerned. For example, this has led to groundwater dissipation in Gurgaon because groundwater is extracted at a rate faster than the city is replenished with rainwater. Privately provided sewage often leads to sewage being dumped in public places in Gurgaon. This is because there was no attempt to connect sewer lines to a unified sewer line. The government did not try to achieve such coordination and private companies so far were not able to achieve such coordination on their own.

Water supply from illegal wells on the banks of the Yamuna River sell for Rs 0.75 per gallon in Delhi, though many believe it is overpriced and that the quality of water is dubious. The private sector operates and maintains water supplies on the behalf of urban local bodies, like in Jamshedpur, where the quality of water is among the best in India. In its best forms, such models should spread throughout the country for the quality of water supply and sewage provision to really improve.