Water in Towns : Communitize or Commodify?

Water is not about water. Water is about building people’s institutions and their power to take control over decisions.

When we began this effort at Dehradun on a Rapid Action Analysis of the existing water supply systems in this ancient valley town that we chose under the 24×7 Urban Water Supplies – New Innovations for Meeting MDGs in South Asia, we didn’t quite realize that this was a town that was as ripe as it is for a change to a full-service 24×7 system.

We approach the study as part of an innovative process of feasibility assessments and transformation of towns (ranked in 4 tiers from 1 million to less than 100,000) to usher in a nation-wide template for full service continuous water supply