Policy proposes privatising water

In a transparent attempt to offload the responsibility of providing drinking and potable water to the people, the Ministry of Water Resources has said privatisation of water supply is the way forward.

In its draft National Water Policy of 2012 released on Tuesday, the ministry has proposed that the State shift its onus of being a ‘service provider’ to being a ‘facilitator’ for supply of water to citizens.

While there has been a painstaking effort to avoid the term ‘privatisation’ in the policy, ministry sources said the move to become a ‘facilitator’ was taken keeping private water management companies in mind. “We are looking at shifting the burden off the State’s shoulders to provide safe drinking water to the citizens,” an official said.

According to officials, the move will also look at encouraging ‘public sector units’, mostly water boards, across the country in bidding for the projects. “This will increase competition in providing quality 24x7 water supply to  citizens,” they said.

Activists have criticised the Centre’s draft policy, charging it with trying to ‘persuade’ urban local bodies by luring them with incentives, and destroying the cultural importance of water in the country.

“The move is born out of well-planned thinking put in place by the State. Promising 24x7 water supply, the Centre has put forth an attractive proposition to the growing middle class in the country that privatisation will be the easiest way to achieve 100 percent coverage of water supply,” said Dr Kshitij Urs, convenor for the Peoples Campaign for Right to Water, an activist resisting privatisation of water.

In its draft policy, the ministry has said water should be valued as an economic good in an effort to maximise the value of water and its conservation and efficient use. However, Urs and his colleagues term the proposal has the effect of degenerating the value of water in the culture of the country.

“The government is trying to erode the cultural ethos of water by portraying it as a economic commodity and forgetting the significance it has in our tradition,” he said.

He and officers in the BWSSB who prefer to remain unnamed, say the privatisation push by the government might sound the death knell for public water boards that are already buried in losses, and may push them further to “the brink of extinction”.