Pre-Colloquium - Day 1: September 22. Curtain Raiser
The delegates and hosts warmed up to the 3-day event with film screenings and field trips for three days prior to the colloquium. So things began early, as if people could not wait for it, on September 22, 2008. A retrospective.
Proceedings at the Pan-Asian Colloquium on Water got
underway smoothly, with a quiet opening on the eve of the
five-day event. An exceptionally well-made documentary
film, Hunting Down Water, was screened at the Media
Resource Centre in the Central Library of IIT Madras. This
was followed up with discussion by way of audience
interaction with Dr. V Suresh (Nanba) and Shri Vibhu Nayar,
IAS (Trimoor). The hour-and-a-half long evening session was
moderated by Dr. Milind Brahme of the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras.
Directed by Sanjay Barnela and Vasant Saberwal in 2003, the
film discusses how India, thanks to myopic water policies,
is facing an unprecedented water crisis that is very much
of its own making. The unrestricted exploitation of
groundwater to meet the needs of cash crops has created a
landscape of thirst. While thousands of women undertake a
daily errand miles away from home to fetch water from a
leaking pipeline, hundreds others in cities enjoy expensive
rain dances in water parks, a testament to the exorbitant
wastage linked with a consumptive lifestyle.
The diversion of rural water to meet urban needs has left
people in these places with no viable option; they must
either migrate or continue bearing the brunt of this
gigantic water crisis. While rich farmers in the country
continue to empty the reserves of ground water that have
accumulated over thousands of years, the poorer ones are
left with no option but to watch their drying fields with
stoned eyes.
The documentary looks into the
politics of water distribution at great depth. It presents
a stark picture of the water resources in rural India – a
problem that has taken on national proportions.
Nanba (Dr. V Suresh) presented a brief introduction to the
Colloquium and supplied the background about how the story
of water in other Asian countries is not very different
from India. Trimoor (Mr. Vibhu Nayar) explained why there
needs to be engagement with the Public Sector, and why
privatisation as a solution is doomed to fail.
More than 90% of water utilities worldwide are owned and
operated by the government, in the global north as well as
the south. While some of these utilities face tremendous
challenges, the fact that many of them perform well
demonstrates that lethargy and inefficiency are neither
intrinsic to nor inevitable within the government sector.
As Trimoor put it so well – Privatisation as a solution is
like selling one’s house, when the problem is leaking sinks
and peeling paint. The need is to repair the sink and to
repaint, not to burn or sell the house.
During the interaction with the audience, many questions
were raised, the first one being – why not privatise if it
increases efficiency? Trimoor shot back saying: why not
increase efficiency in the government sector, when we know
that it is cheaper to do so? Two studies have been
conducted on the efficiency of the public and the private
sector, in 1986 and 2000, the latter among Pacific Rim
island countries. Both studies provide conclusive proof
that the private sector, or public-private partnership
(PPP), are neither of them any more efficient than the
public sector.
The next questioner asked why, if some people are ready to
pay a higher price for better quality and service, they
should not be allowed to. The answer Nanba gave
demonstrated how such a state of affairs would be the
precise opposite of equality when it came to a commons such
as water. It would, in effect, imply that services
essential for life would be provided only if a person could
pay for it, rather than as part of the right to life and
water – an inversion of democracy. The answer ended
emphatically by asking, when talking about ‘better’ quality
of water or access to water, what was meant by ‘better’.
Would one give people who couldn’t pay for high-quality
water, water mixed with mud? Or make poor women walk miles
to fill a clay pot for a few litres of water?