The Citizens Front for Water Democracy

More than 150 water warriors from the trade union of public utility and womens movements had gathered at the gate of the World Bank office in New Delhi, timed with the visit of Paul Wolfowitz's visit to India, to reiterate their commitment to keep water in public hands and to fight World Bank's privatisation project to the end.

Wolfowitz met with the delegation of the Citizens Front for Water Democracy (S.A. Naqvi of the Water Workers Alliance, Amarjeet Kaur of National Federation of Indian Women and Vandana Shiva, Director, Research Foundation of Science, Technology and Ecology).

The delegation submitted a memorandum from the Citizens Front of Water Democarcy. On receiving it Wolfowitz admitted he knows nothing about water issues. Dr Shiva suggested that that is even more reason why the World Bank should keep its hands off water. The World Bank is clearly in defensive in Delhi as a result of the three years of building the movement against water privatisation.

Memorandum to Paul Wolfowitz, The President of the World Bank

Dear Mr. Wolfowitz,

You arrive in Delhi in the midst of the controversy over the privatization of Delhi’s water supply and water services.

Over the past four decades, the World Bank gave loans to India to build large dams and drill deep tubewells, running our rivers and aquifers dry. The World Bank is now using the water scarcity and water crisis it has created by financing non-sustainable use to privatize and commodify water under the slogan of “water sector reforms” and “private sector participation”. All water projects of the World Bank are driving water privatization.

Firstly, the World Bank is using its loans as conditionality for privatisation. Secondly, it is reducing the universal access system of public utilities to a privileged access to industry and 24x7 supply for rich urban areas. Thirdly, it is diverting limited and scarce water from rural areas to urban areas, thus undermining the Millennium Development Goal(7) to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water”. Fourthly, the World Bank is forcing governments and public utilities to increase water tariffs, and to commodify water, undermining people’s fundamental right to water as part of the right to life. Fifthly, since its projects are based on non-sustainable water use, World Bank projects are failing as is clear in the case of the Sonia Vihar plant in Delhi and the Veeranam project in Tamil Nadu.

World Bank loans are failing to bring water to people. They are successful only in guaranteeing contracts and profits for water corporations like Suez, Vivendi, Bechtel and consultancy firms PWC.

World Bank loan conditionalities have many paradigm shifts built into them – the shift from “water for life” to “water for profits”, the shift from “water democracy” to “water apartheid”, from “some for all” to “all for some”.

Privatisation Of Water Services Is Still Water Privatisation

As the debate on privatisation has intensified, the semantics of privatization has changed, but the World Bank driven processes of privatization unfold unheeded. “Privatization” was launched as a core of the globalization and trade liberalisation paradigm, based on the crude ideology that public is bad, private is good, domestic is bad, multinational is good. As movements emerged against water privatisation, the World Bank rhetoric shifted to “private sector participation” and an attempt was made to define privatization of services and management contracts as not being privatisation. The World Bank Director Michael Carter has stated, “Neither under the proposed project, not any advisory work is the Bank proposing privatization of nay part of Delhi Jal Board, nor is there a time table for any privatization. As a matter of fact, at this time, the World Bank would definitely not recommend privatization.”

However, whenever private corporations take over public services, it is privatization. Semantic play does not change the reality.

The World Bank loan of $ 2.5 million to Delhi was used to privatize the Sonia Vihar Project to Suez Degremont, it was used to privatize the project preparation study to Price Water House. The World Bank loan was even being used to privatize law making by having PWC draft the “Delhi Water and Waste Water Reforms Bill, 2003”, thus, by passing our elected representatives. All World Bank water reform loans have changes in laws built into them. This subverts our constitution in which only elected representatives can be lawmakers. By financing global corporations to write India’s water legislation, the World Bank is not just privatizing water, it is privatizing governance, and subverting democracy.

The alternatives we have proposed in the form of public –public partnership show that water privatisation is neither necessary nor desirable. Affordable water for all can only be provided when water is managed as a public good, with strong public utilities and vital public participation. This is the agenda of water democracy, which we are committed to building, as an alternative to the water dictatorship that the World Bank is trying to establish through its loan conditionalities imposing corrupt, greedy, unaccountable water corporations on Indian citizens.

The 24x7 Scam : From “Some For All” To “All For Some”

The 24x7 scheme being funded by the World Bank for two South Delhi zones is also a privatization scheme since the contract is to be awarded to global corporations like Vivendi, Suez, Saur.

The Statement by Michael Carter, Country Director of the World Bank in India, made at the peak of the debate on World bank driven privatisation in Delhi has stated that the World Bank funds, will be used to “award management contracts to professional operators” in two zones of Delhi. The implication is that the water workers and the engineers of the Delhi Jal Board are not “professional”. There is also the implication that the other zones in Delhi can be denied reliable water supply, as all financial and management focus is limited to two zones. This is a recipe of water apartheid, not improving urban water supply. The free water provided to the poor is being stopped by stopping water provisioning through public taps and tankers to slums. While referring to the poor in the 24x7 schemes, the Bank is hiding the fact that even the poor will have to pay for water. If supplying water to two zones with 14 lakh population will cost $ 250 million, then on the World Bank model, Delhi’s 13 million will need $ 2.5 billion. This is a recipe for financial non-sustainability and permanent indebtedness. When the World Bank’s past lending has left our rivers and ground water aquifers dry, the tacky consumerist slogan of 24x7 can only bring water twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, to privileged enclaves by diverting it from other users – the rural and urban poor. 24x7 projects are in effect 24x7 drying up of our rivers, 24x7 denial of water to the economically underprivileged, politically marginalized communities; 24x7 guaranteed super profits for MNC’s.

The Great Water Robberty

The myth of private sector participation is that MNC’s “inject large scale investment capital into the sector”. However, all privatization projects in india are based on World Bank loans. Corporations do not bring investments they take out profits.

The public thus pays six times over.

Firstly, through interest payments on World Bank loans

Secondly, through increased tariffs

Thirdly, through costs of providing water and energy for free to the private company

Fourthly, through guarantees, which ensure corporations get paid even if the contract is abandoned and they fail to provide water

Fifthly, through unemployment created by private corporations shedding employees in water utilities

Sixthly, through depletion and diversion of limited water resources for privatization projects.

The alternative to private sector participation and private-public partnership is public-public partnership as we have evolved in a proposal drawn up by the RFSTE and Water Workers Alliance.

Our Commitment to Water Democracy

As citizens of a free society, we have a right to our water, and to decisions of how our water will be utilized and managed. We strongly object to the World Bank using its financial muscle to hand over our water supply and water services to global corporations.

Our commitment to building water democracy is deep. This is an issue of ownership, of our rights, of our participation in decision-making – not just a issue of “transparency” of bids for privatization.

We will resist the privatization and “out sourcing” of our water services and commodification of our water resources. We have the capacity, and the right to provide water, without getting trapped in World Bank debt, without subjecting ourselves to World Bank conditionalities, which help global corporations to hijack our water.

WE have just one message to you as President of the World Bank “Hands Off Our Precious Water”.

Yours sincerely,