The Hindu Business Line : Failure to provide safe drinking water — Infrastructure report raps Chennai Metrowater

AN article in the recently published `India Infrastructure Report 2004' has criticised Chennai Metrowater for its failure to provide safe drinking water to the city's residents.

The article, written by Mr Joel Ruet, is on `Water in Urban India: The scenario, energy linkage and private participation'.

It says: "As a response to water scarcity situation, the Chennai Metrowater Supply and Sewerage Board has de facto given up on satisfying and supplying a part of the population, or a segment of the consumption."

It added: "As a matter of fact, providing full sanitation, in spite of a tax collected for the purpose, is not looked upon as a compulsion."

The only kudos for Chennai Metrowater in the article is where it says that the board has had the "courage" to promote a decentralised organisational structure that is "worth being replicated".

The article has tried to arrive at a "value" for a kilolitre (1,000 litres) of water, and has come up with a range of values. It says that the cost of supply for Metrowater works out to Rs 15.11 per kl, but the actual recovery from the users is just 14 paise.

On the other hand, what does the private sector do? "From buying water at a Rs 3.15 per kl from farmers, it sells it at Rs 33 per kl in bulk, after little (if any) treatment."

This tariff, the report says, partly reflects the huge costs of transportation, which are socially inefficient (not including the congestion and pollution costs in the city), but also taking into account the private profit unaffordable to most of the Chennai residents.

This way of using the private sector simply cannot be a long-term general solution.

The India Infrastructure Report 2004 has been published by the 3i Network - Infrastructure Development Finance Company; Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The theme of this year's report, the fourth in the series, is "Ensuring value for money."

The article also quotes a research report produced in 2002 and says that the "unofficial bribing costs for access to so-called freely distributed water during scarcity periods" work out to Rs 67 per kl.

So, there is a range of values for water, ranging from 14 paise to Rs 67 per kl, not taking into account the price at which bottled water is sold. (At Rs 10 a litre, bottled water would cost Rs 10,000 a kl.)

"Our main line of argument is that the sector offers scope for product as well as consumer differentiation, and calls for a rethinking of the entire technical-cum managerial organisation of the sector," the article says.

It is also critical of the tripartite agreement between the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, the farmers and the board.

Quoting from a report (Gambiez Lacour, 2003), it says that the agreement for water extraction in rural areas for an urban use "may lead to higher social segregation in concerned villages, as well as endanger the resource, ultimately bringing a halt to the local rural economy.

"When the public sector fails to keep in view these externalities, it is all the more unlikely that private lorries will be the better solution."

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