People's Democracy

PRIVATISATION OF WATER

Latin America Has Thrown Them Out, Let Us Also Do It

G Mamta

‘GROWING water and sanitation crisis cause nearly two million child deaths every year’ screamed all the mainstream newspapers quoting the 2006 Human Development Report. Reading it, I have alarmingly enquired my maidservant about the sanitation facilities available to her. She said that the government had constructed common toilets for their slum that are not used by them. Trying to evade my questions on the issue she tried to go about her chores. My persistence made her answer and her answers were quite a revelation. She replied by angrily stating that no woman would risk her decency and it is out of compulsion that they are not using the toilets constructed by the government. “Health is important but only when we survive, and for survival we need water to drink. When we do not have water to drink, how do you expect us to pour so much water down the drain? If the government provides us with drinking water and enough water for our minimum needs daily, we would gladly use the toilets,” she said. In a slum that does not have water even to drink, and where they have to walk a long distance to fetch water for their daily chores, the only avenue left is to use the water filled in the tank near the toilets for their other daily needs. This water could be unclean but they have got no other options.

Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict. The report states that each year 1.8 million children die from diarrhoea that could be prevented with access to clean water and a toilet; 443 million school days are lost due to water-related illnesses; and almost 50 percent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by a lack of clean water and sanitation. For many people in our country water is ‘blue gold’ and sanitation is not a ‘grave’ concern to them.

EQUALITY REVERSED 

“Everyone should have at least 20 litres of clean water per day and the poor should get it for free,” says the Report. While a person in the UK or USA sends 50 litres down the drain each day by simply flushing their toilet, many poor people survive on less than five litres of contaminated water per day, according to the Human Development Report.

“Delivering clean water, removing waste water, and providing sanitation are three of the most basic foundations for human progress,” says the 2006 HDR. But 1.1 billion people do not have access to water, and 2.6 billion do not have access to sanitation. Most of the 1.1 billion people categorised as lacking access to clean water use about 5 litres a day — one tenth of the average daily amount used in rich countries to flush toilets. Indeed, HDR 2006 also highlights huge disparities in the prices that people pay for water. People living in urban slums typically pay 5-10 times more per litre than people living in high-income areas. The poorer you are, the more you pay for clean water –– a classic example of ‘equality reversed.’ People pay more for water than corporates do. In many parts of our country soft-drink giants get it almost free. The bottled water brigade got treated and cleaned water in Hyderabad for 25 paise a litre for years. This goes into the bottles each of which cost Rs 12.

One-third of all people without access to water across the world fall below the $1-a-day absolute poverty threshold. Another third live on no more than $2 a day. The poor need ‘water for life’, for drinking, cooking and washing as well as water to grow food and earn a living. The great majority of the world’s malnourished people estimated now at 830 million are small farmers, herders, and farm labourers. In our country about 118 million households - 62 per cent of the total- do not have drinking water at home.

MAN MADE CRISIS

For some, the global water crisis is about absolute shortages of physical supply. The HDR 2006 rejects this view. It argues that the roots of the crisis in water can be traced to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships, as well as flawed water management policies that exacerbate scarcity. On average, people in Europe use more than 200 litres — in the United States more than 400 litres. When a European person flushes a toilet or an American person showers, he or she is using more water than is available to hundreds of millions of individuals living in urban slums or arid areas of the developing world. Dripping taps in rich countries lose more water than is available each day to more than 1 billion people. In Mumbai, per capita water use is 15 times higher in high-income suburbs than in slum areas.

In India even caste plays a role in the distribution of water. Untouchability and caste discrimination bar the dalits from drawing water from common sources in the villages. Caste is an important player in the ‘unequal power relationship’ existing in the distribution of water and a ‘social’ curb on access to water.

In sanitation, the poorest two-fifths of households in the world account for more than half the global deficit, according to the 2006 HDR. These figures are not an evidence of causation — people might lack water and sanitation because they are poor, or they might be poor because they lack water and sanitation, but the numbers do signal a strong two-way relationship between income poverty and deprivation in access to water. 

The 2006 HDR estimates the total cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goal on access to water and sanitation at about $10 billion a year. “The $10 billion price tag seems a large sum — but it has to be put in context. It represents less than five days’ worth of global military spending and less than half of what rich countries spend each year on mineral water,” says the Report. At a minimum, this implies a target of at least 20 litres of clean water a day for every citizen (which is the minimum threshold requirement) and at no cost for those who are too poor to pay.

or young girls the lack of basic water and sanitation services translates into lost opportunities for education and associated opportunities for empowerment. Water and sanitation deficits threaten all children. But young girls and women shoulder a disproportionate share of the costs borne by the household.

While the Report, on the basis of these startling facts argues for free water supply for the poor, the political bosses in our country are thinking otherwise. Reputed journalist P Sainath quotes Veerendra Kumar’s astonishment – who is a member of parliament from Kerala – when he learnt about ‘ the lease or sale to private parties’ of Malapuzha river and dam in his native Kerala by the earlier UDF government. "I did not know you could sell and buy dams and rivers. This had not appeared in any of our local newspapers." He has learnt this from a tender he saw in an American daily while on a trip overseas.

Sainath reports many startling happenings under our very nose. Vidharbha region in Maharastra that has attracted national attention due to a spate of farmers’ suicides does not lack in water-theme amusement parks. “Water-starved Vidharbha has a growing number of water parks and amusement centres. The iron laws of rural life don't apply in the entertainment complexes built right next to the poor. In a region that scarcely receives adequate water to meet people's drinking needs, there is plenty of water for the playgrounds of the rich.” He gives a concrete example of Bazargaon, a scarcity-hit Vidarbha village that has one sarkari well and gets tanker water once in fifteen days is also a host to the giant 'Fun & Food Village’ –– an elite park which offers 18 kinds of water slides and uses millions of litres of water. In the same village the women have to make many daily trips for water and walk up to 15 km in a day to fetch it. It's a story repeated in different ways in many places, across many states. 

A MULTI TRILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY 

Many of the state governments are trying to privatise water. Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are some of the states that earned paeans from the World Bank, the doctor whose prescriptions for privatisation are well known. These prescriptions, as history and experience have amply demonstrated, are not for curing the illness of the patient but for filling up the coffers of the big corporations. In 1998, the World Bank predicted that the global trade in water would soon be a $800 billion industry, and by 2001, this projection had been jacked up to one trillion dollars. These revenues are based on the fact that only five per cent of the world's population are now receiving their water supply from corporations. So as the corporate grip on water tightens, water will become a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the future.

No wonder that the World Bank is keen to change the rules of water distribution in our country. While our government is acting at the behest of World Bank, the Bank is for the corporate interests. The companies that are eyeing the water market in our country have been thrown out from Latin America. Suez, the biggest water MNC and a company that was given the ‘proprietary rights’ over water in Bolivia, is thinking of coming to India and China. And it is this very company against which the present president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and the people of Bolivia have fought their famous water wars and won them. In our struggle for the acquisition of the prized ‘commodity’ land, we have to add water too in the future. And we must get ready to fight privatisation of water and flush out the corporations that are a bane on our water, nay our blood.