The draft National Water Policy 2012, as well as the approach paper of the Planning Commission of India for the ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-17) are recommending for policies favouring privatisation of drinking water supply and other services for urban areas.
The privatisation of water supply directly means higher prices being paid by all consumers for the essential life-sustaining natural resource (water) and particularly alienation of poorer households from accessing the services in case they fail to pay these prices. Amd it may be just the beginning of a larger game of the privatisation and control of the larger water resources by the corporate entities in India.
Given the not-so-encouraging examples of the extremely adverse effects of the privatisation of water on the poor populations from almost all the developing countries and the subsequent withdrawal of corporate control in Argentina, Bolivia and other countries after widespread people’s movement against privatisation of water supply services, the citizens of India need to guard against the upcoming government policies and plans influenced by the multilateral donors.
It is a well known fact that privatisation of water is a hidden mandate of the World Bank loans and gradually policies favouring such steps are put forward by the debt-ridden countries. India is the largest recipient of the World Bank loans with over $9 billion worth assistance provided till the fiscal ending June 2010. This World Bank support goes into some of the largest river water management projects like the Kosi river flood recovery project, a Tehri hydel project in upper Ganga and a project for cleaning up of the river Ganga.
It should be no surprise in future if some big overseas corporations are brought in for managing the water of these two large rivers that are the lifeline to some of the most populous and underdeveloped agricultural states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal. One-third of India’s 1.2 billion people live along the banks of the river Ganga alone. In this scenario, the rising clout of the players encouraging the privatization of water services might result in severe artificial water crisis and further exploitation of the poor communities and the deepening of the ever-rising income gap among the Indian population.
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These corporates are visionary and they have the vision of earning money from all the very basic needs of life like land,water, air...and so you first need to create destitutes.
ReplyDeleteand our policy makers...subhanallah!
There is a video by arvind kejariwal, who spoke about World bank policy with regards to water and its mgmt in delhi. Go through that, u'll find it on NDTV archives. Interesting one.
ReplyDeletehey interesting but the flip side is that actual delivery of water to many of the marginalised sections of soceity are controlled by private parties only either by virtue of supply or by virtue of controlling the municipal tap or municipal supply and charge for access.. so the true issues is what difference is made to the existing system with these changes in policy .. maybe they impact the middle class more than the poor in the way envisaged..
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