Good civic body move exposes flip side of city water supply

Something to cheer about, you could say; the Thane Municipal Corporation has decided that students and teachers in its 130 schools should get safe drinking water. So, water purifiers were bought and installed at a cost of Rs 14 lakh. Since mostly the poor go to civic schools, it was indeed a nice gesture since poor water can wreck havoc on their lives. So far so good. It shows the sensitivity of the civic body that runs a city of 1.8 million north of Mumbai. There is, however, a flip side. Since the city government believes the water it supplies is not safe and needs purifiers at the delivery end, what when the children and teachers go home? Imagine the switch from safe in the day to not-so-safe rest of the time. There is, it has to be admitted, some honesty about the move because even if only inferential, it is an admission by the civic body that it has failed to provide clean water to its citizens despite charging them for piped water. It recently announced a hike in water charges from Rs 160 to Rs 250 for people like us and from Rs 80 to 120 for those in the shanties but get piped water. [caption id=“attachment_293371” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Even Mumbai, a great city without a great city government, forces its people to depend on water tankers run by what is called the water mafia. Reuters”]  [/caption]Does not inspire confidence, does it, despite the roundabout mea culpa? City governments generally stay mum on this governance deficit because provision of clean and safe drinking water is a basic minimum. Poor quality water impinges on public health, which again is in the civic domain. That is why garbage collection, its disposal, and solid waste management too, are civic responsibilities. Any laxity here is dangerous to public health. Most, perhaps all, cities are guilty of not meeting their own standards despite spending huge sums on acquiring, filtering and conveying water to its citizens. Year on year, Mumbai’s civic body in its annual environmental survey reports the percentage of water samples that are contaminated. So do others, but it remains part of the unread papers statutorily generated, on the shelves. No Indian city can claim that the water flowing out of the kitchen and bathroom taps is what it ought to be. E-coli contamination to some extent or the other, drainage lines seeping into water pipelines is the norm than an exception. Perhaps because people have developed some immunity, it has not spelt grievous urban disasters. Thane has admitted that it cannot be counted on to make water safer. The fear of poor quality water’s impact on life has helped a huge industry of water purifiers being made and sold, estimated to have been worth Rs 1,600 crore in 2011. The purifiers are standard fixtures in most urban homes. It is almost a citizen’s mandatory duty to opt for the second-step purification, a burden imposed because of bad civic governance. Overseas, especially in Europe, bottled water is preferred to tap water for different reasons. One is because of the additives like minerals, and two, because of the portability when on the move though the water from the taps – private or public – is good enough to consume without worry. And in India, even bottled water manufacturers don’t claim it is mineral — because it is not — or even safe; they only say the obvious — it is ‘bottled’. Water purifiers, thus provide an index of people’s level of confidence in their own elected local self-governments, a kind of another WPI – water purifier index. And while citizens remain uncomplaining, the industry is flourishing. The Rs 1,600 crore industry is said to have an annual growth rate of some 20 percent and with cities expanding and civic bodies flailing, their sales can only increase. This civic failure has made possible the industry which already has players like Eureka Forbes, KENT RO. Philips, Tata Chemicals, and Hindustan Lever. Panasonic, Godrej, and LG are said to be eying the sector because they know this is a growth sector. Civic bodies are unlikely to provide acceptable water quality. More the players, more the numbers manufactured, and more users, and lower the index of purity. Some municipalities are worse. They just abdicate the responsibility and force  — as they do in Hyderabad —  the citizen to dig and depend on a borewell which mostly yields hard water, and clean it up by using the reverse osmosis machines at their own expense. Hyderabad has its own tankers to supply water at a charge while the other monthly bills for tap water keep arriving. Even cities, including Mumbai, a great city but without a great city government, too has this inadequacy of water forcing people to depend on water tankers run by what is called the water mafia. No one knows from where they source the water, or whether the tankers are even cleaned. In their desperation to meet a need and overcome a deficit, people just buy it and then depend on their water purifier. Just as they do with the municipal water.