Urban water supply: Contestations and sustainability issues in greater Bangalore

The move towards privatization of public utilities such as water sector in India, particularly in the metropolitan areas, has gone hand in hand with the growing gap between demand and supply of water. With fiscal discipline being the key mantra of successive governments, cost recovery as a policy goal is prioritized over access to water and sanitation. This paper is a critical assessment of Greater Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (GBWASP), which aims to provide piped water to more than twenty lakh residents in Greater Bangalore. The implementation of the Karnataka Groundwater Act, 2011, and the debates around it are also examined in detail. The four main arguments are: huge gap between rhetoric and ground realities when it comes to the implementation of GBWASP and the Groundwater Act; the contestations between the elected representatives and bureaucrats have implications for urban governance; the axes of dispute between the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board and citizens have changed over time; the politics of negotiating access to water also bring questions of sustainability to the fore.