Experiments and Counter-Experiments in the Urban Laboratory of Water- Supply Partnerships in India

Govind Gopakumar

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2014, vol. 38, issue 2, 393-412

Abstract: Karen Bakker has characterized the scattered islands of networked water supply that are common in the cities of the global South as ‘archipelagos’. Those living outside of archipelagos utilize a variety of interventions, collectively referred to here as tendrils, to access water by informal means. Neoliberal imperatives driving infrastructure transformation aim to alter the paradigm of water-supply provision to diminish its plural composition and effectively transform tendrils into archipelagos. In this article, developing a conceptual and methodological synthesis between Science and Technology Studies (STS) and political ecology, I study the emergence of public-private partnerships in India as laboratories in the marketization of water-supply provision. These partnerships, initiated at local scales, aim to enroll informal water users into standardized modes of water-supply provision and effectively expand the archipelagos of modernity. I draw upon empirical research of a water-supply partnership in the city of Bengaluru, describing some of the characteristics of the experimental processes, and argue that they simultaneously forward the marketization of water-supply services while inadvertently providing opportunities for residents, local associations and activists to form networks of counter-experimentation. The description of these political acts, this article concludes, provokes re-examination of the efficacy of an instrumental understanding of water partnerships, but requires closer policy engagement with ‘governance failures’ that are rife in water-supply provision.

Date: 2014
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