Action towards Water: Ensuring better access to the right to water
Even though the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000 has set the year 2015 for halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, Bangalore is far from achieving such an important goal. The CDP of Bangalore prepared under JNNURM states that the percentage of slums having adequate water and sanitation is meagre. Growing dependence on tube-wells results in falling water table leading to poor quality of drinking water and related health effects. Karnataka’s State of the Environment Report estimates that poor quality & inadequate quantity of water accounts for 10% of disease burden in state.
While declared slums are to be provided with all basic amenities by the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board, even undeclared slums are to be supplied with essential water supply and sewerage by BBMP, as water is a human right. Yet there is no requirement under BBMP’s budget or the JNNURM to make water supply in slums the foremost priority in the use of the funds. Considering the importance of this to the attainment of MDGs, there is no requirement to first achieve 100% water supply in slums before embarking on other projects with BBMP’s or JNNURM funds.
Studies have shown that though it costs the BWSSB, the para-statal supplying water to Bangalore, Rs. 18/- per kilo litre to draw water from the Cauvery river and supply it to Bangalore. However, the people, even the affluent, are paying only Rs. 6/- for the first kilo litre. But the poor who are supposed to be getting free water through public stand-posts have to spend long hours at these taps where the supply is mostly unreliable. They end up paying as much as Rs. 3/- to Rs. 5/- for a 10-15 litre pot of water whose price may go up to Rs. 8 per pot for potable water. The poor, effectively, end up paying more for water than the rich.
Yet, one is witnessing a trend in Karnataka and Bangalore that is rapidly taking away water rights from communities and placing it in the hands of MNCs that place a commercial value on water. Water, a fundamental human right, is now being traded in markets across the world, and those who can afford it have it, and those that cannot, lose out. The Campaign Against Water Privatisation – Karnataka is rejecting the commercialization of water and stating that human rights cannot be traded and markets cannot and must not decide who has access to water. It is feared that more and more communities will be left without water, while private companies make profit from selling and trading water. The Karnataka Urban Water & Sanitation Policy does not make a clear commitment to provide a “free” lifeline supply to the urban poor while it talks of recovering the full cost of providing water from communities. The GBWAS Project for supplying water to the newly-added peri-urban areas of BBMP talks of closing down existing local supply systems based on ground water or tanks and imposes expensive solutions of providing Cauvery water to all. Studies have shown that these expensive solutions often deprive the poor of access while the affluent will corner the benefits (CIVIC-CASUMM study, 2008). Communities in India and globally are fighting back against the wave of privatization and asserting the primary rights of communities over water. One needs to demand community-centred solutions to the water crises and insist that communities must have primary rights over water.
Even though the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000 has set the year 2015 for halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, Bangalore is far from achieving such an important goal. The CDP of Bangalore prepared under JNNURM states that the percentage of slums having adequate water and sanitation is meagre. Growing dependence on tube-wells results in falling water table leading to poor quality of drinking water and related health effects. Karnataka’s State of the Environment Report estimates that poor quality & inadequate quantity of water accounts for 10% of disease burden in state.
While declared slums are to be provided with all basic amenities by the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board, even undeclared slums are to be supplied with essential water supply and sewerage by BBMP, as water is a human right. Yet there is no requirement under BBMP’s budget or the JNNURM to make water supply in slums the foremost priority in the use of the funds. Considering the importance of this to the attainment of MDGs, there is no requirement to first achieve 100% water supply in slums before embarking on other projects with BBMP’s or JNNURM funds.
Studies have shown that though it costs the BWSSB, the para-statal supplying water to Bangalore, Rs. 18/- per kilo litre to draw water from the Cauvery river and supply it to Bangalore. However, the people, even the affluent, are paying only Rs. 6/- for the first kilo litre. But the poor who are supposed to be getting free water through public stand-posts have to spend long hours at these taps where the supply is mostly unreliable. They end up paying as much as Rs. 3/- to Rs. 5/- for a 10-15 litre pot of water whose price may go up to Rs. 8 per pot for potable water. The poor, effectively, end up paying more for water than the rich.
Yet, one is witnessing a trend in Karnataka and Bangalore that is rapidly taking away water rights from communities and placing it in the hands of MNCs that place a commercial value on water. Water, a fundamental human right, is now being traded in markets across the world, and those who can afford it have it, and those that cannot, lose out. The Campaign Against Water Privatisation – Karnataka is rejecting the commercialization of water and stating that human rights cannot be traded and markets cannot and must not decide who has access to water. It is feared that more and more communities will be left without water, while private companies make profit from selling and trading water. The Karnataka Urban Water & Sanitation Policy does not make a clear commitment to provide a “free” lifeline supply to the urban poor while it talks of recovering the full cost of providing water from communities. The GBWAS Project for supplying water to the newly-added peri-urban areas of BBMP talks of closing down existing local supply systems based on ground water or tanks and imposes expensive solutions of providing Cauvery water to all. Studies have shown that these expensive solutions often deprive the poor of access while the affluent will corner the benefits (CIVIC-CASUMM study, 2008). Communities in India and globally are fighting back against the wave of privatization and asserting the primary rights of communities over water. One needs to demand community-centred solutions to the water crises and insist that communities must have primary rights over water.
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