The tale of Delhi's water mafia

No capital in the world has the kind of water availability like that of Delhi, yet its 15 million people face water scarcity. How come?

Sandeep Yadav Delhi

Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials assure that Delhi has enough water for its residents. The scarcity then is artificial and the result of the theft of public utility supplied water. The leaked water finds itself in commercially bottled drinking water bottles, water tankers and water cans, available round the clock, but of course at a price. There is no estimate of the turnover, but by all reckoning, it is impressive.

Ashish Kundra, additional chief executive officer, DJB says "Tanker supplies are part of supplementing the water scarcity needs. Mostly it is DJB water tan-kers…supplemented by private tankers." But the fact is that powerful nexus of politicians, officials and water traders is actively engaged in profiteering through sale and theft of water. An elected representative from Rohini owns tankers that sport 'Sonia Gandhi zindabad' slogans which imply that they are connected to social welfare and not business. Ram Dev Baliyan, a resident of Rohini declined from revealing the name of the owner who runs the water tankers in the area but said "Netaji ke hain" (They belong to a politician). It is this water mafia who in collaboration with the enforcement cell of the DJB is keeping the government taps dry. The five star hotels in the city are other big guzzlers of water. Some laws to regulate these activities are imperative.

After the Delhi government abandoned its plan to privatise the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), the next step of the Sheila Dixit government has been to set up an expert committee to examine water sector reforms in Delhi. It has invited Right to Water Campaign, an NGO, for suggestions. This NGO had carried a robust campaign against the Delhi government's decision to privatise the DJB. The idea that competition in the market forces the private players to provide quality service and the market decides the price of the product is not possible in case of a public utility monopoly. A private company is driven by profit motives and would always work towards maximising these profits. Arvind Kejriwal, president, Parivartan, an anti-corruption group warns "the privatisation of monopolies can never work. Private sector monopoly can become a great demon and play havoc in the lives of ordinary citizens."

The Delhi water privatisation fiasco holds lessons for the other 20 states and union territories where the privatisation of water boards is in various stages of completion. Water supply in three districts of Karnataka has already been privatised. The experience the world over has proved that water tariffs had taken off wherever water utilities have been handed over to private water companies, be it Manila, Cochabamba (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria) or Valencia (Spain) and the experiment has proved disastrous.

Delhi's problem is not technical. What is needed is mere internal accountability. According to Kundra, Delhi has 670 million gallons per day (MGD) of water supply (which would go up to 810 MGD after the Sonia Vihar project). And if divided by the 150 million people, the population of Delhi, it comes to 220 litres per capita per day (almost 11 buckets). No city has this kind of availability of water. Government says that they lose 50 per cent of water. If so, where is this 335 million gallon of water going? If it goes underground, the water table should rise, which is not happening. If not going under ground this amount of water should flood the roads. Again this is not happening. So where exactly is the water going? Even if we accept the thesis of "genuine" loss of water, we are left with a stock of 110 litres of water per person per day. This is still not an absolute shortage. Where is this water?

The serious lack of accountability is quite evident in case of Delhi Jal Board functioning. Delhi has been divided into 21 water zones, each headed by an executive engineer who is provided with the fixed amount of water and a budget for his zone. Yet, he is not held responsible for the water/money invested in his zone. There is no functioning bulk water metre in the zones. Nobody knows the amount of water a particular zone is receiving. Same is the case of the metre to record the water supply to Delhi. Who can tell who is getting how much?

Not sorting out the issues of governance, accountability and the plugging of water theft by the DJB and the government of Delhi would render the whole exercise of reforms and committees futile.