PRESS RELEASE, 5 October 2005

Water Democracy vs. Water Markets:
The People of India vs. The World Bank

The World Bank’s recently released report “India’s Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future” is a direct attack on India’s water democracy, water culture, people’s right to water and sustainability of our water resources. It is also a total denial of the World Bank’s own role in creating the turbulence in India’s water sector.

Blind Commitment to Privatisation and Attack on Community Rights and Commons: Recipe for Hydro-apartheid

The Banks intention is to privatize water by community rights and community management, which are the foundation of water conservation, management of common property and the right to water for all.  As the World Bank report states,

“Here an approach, which begins with acknowledgement of and respect for the private interests of individuals farmers will be for more successful than approaches which resort to command and control, or ones which based on a communitarian ideal” (p9)

 What the Bank refers to as “Command and control” is public services. Its own “command and control” reform process is, however, the real problem for the people of India. The report also clearly states its vision for the future,

“Large members of people will move from the informal, self-providing, water economy into the formal service sector” (p54)

The self-organized community based water systems are the backbone of India’s water democracy and water culture.

The World Bank’s myopic focus on water markets projects the scarcity imposed on the poor as “growth”. Water does not exist in the Bank’s vision, nor do people with inalienable, fundamental rights to water. All that exists is markets. Markets can grow while water resources shrink. Corporate profits can grow, while people’s water rights shrink. Examples of the World Bank’s ontological confusion are its obsession to shift from supply management to demand management and its promotion of limitless consumption of water through 24 x 7 schemes in the context of limited water supplies

and a deepening water crisis. By ignoring the ecological and hydrological limits of water availability and allowing water access and water distribution to be driven by insatiable markets, the Bank is prescribing a deepening of the water crisis and a growing polarization in access the water. The Bank’s future vision is the vision for a hydro-apartheid.

Evading Responsibility: How the World Bank has created the ground water crisis

The World Bank blames indigenous institution both in the public domain managed by communities and the public domain managed by public utilities as being other route of India’s water crisis particularly the ground water crisis. The Bank’s report states, “the major liability is a public water sector.” It falsely identifies the public management as responsible for over exploitation of ground water. However, it is the past lending patterns of the World Bank that have promoted over exploitation of ground water and non-sustainable and equitable utilisation through deep ground water mining. The report published by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in response to the World Bank’s privatisation push shows how the Bank financed and subsidized dependence of deep tube wells and over exploitation of ground water. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra, the Bank financed tube well irrigation. After imposing non-sustainable ground water use, is using the water crisis it has created in India, to destroy all public water system and create water markets controlled by water giants like Suez, Bechtel, Veolia (Vivendi) etc.

Selling failures as successes: The World Bank’s White Elephants

To push its agenda of giant corporations controlling India’s water through gigantic water projects, the Bank transforms its failures into successes. It cites the Sonia Vihar Plant, which has been privatized to the Suez Corporation as a success, which is serving the people of Delhi. However, not a drop of water has reached Delhi citizens from the privatized Sonia Vihar Plant. The Plant has not been functioning because it is based on bringing Ganga water from Tehri Dam, hundreds of kms away. And the dam itself, which has displaced a hundred thousand people, has failed in building up water storage. Further, Uttar Pradesh has refused to divert Ganga Canal water from irrigation for its farmers for corporate water markets in Delhi. The contract for the Sonia Vihar Plant is based on the public utility, Delhi Jal Board, providing free water and electricity to Suez, and paying a fine of Rs. 50,000 a day if bulk supply is not provided. A failed Plant has thus become a money generator for Suez. Failures thus generate corporate profits. And for the World Bank this is a success story.

The story is similar in the case of the Veeranam project, which was to bring water from 235 kms from Chennai, which has totally failed. However, this “White Elephant” too is cited by the World Bank as a success story.

It is not just in India that the World Bank’s mega projects, designed not to serve people or protect water resources but merely to generate super profits for multinational corporations, have systematically failed. From Bolivia to Argentina to South Africa, Philippines and Ghana, World Bank’s privatisation recipes have failed to deliver clean affordable water to the public. Public systems have faired much better than the World Bank’s projects.  

In our report “Financing the Water Crisis: World Bank, International Aid Agencies and Water Privatisation”, we have shown how the Bank has created India’s water crisis and how its water sector reform conditionalities imposing privatisation will leave our water culture in ruins, or water ecology disrupted, and our communities disenfranchised.

We need to build water democracy, not water markets. We need to defend the rights of communities, nor corporations. We need to conserve water, not consume and destroy it. We need to design India’s water future on the basis of people’s vision, not that of the World Bank.

Destroying the Indigenous, the Local and the Decentralized: Promoting the disease of gigantism

In an era when the high ecological and social costs of large dams are well known, the Bank promotes large dams. Its Madhya Pradesh water sector loan is supporting the Ken-Betwa link, the first link in the $200 billion River Linking Project based on large dams, and long distance canals, which reroute rivers from rural areas to urban and industrial centres where water markets can be easily established because of higher purchasing power. The Bank is using fraudulent figures like per capita storage to push its agenda for large dams.

“Whereas arid rich countries (such as U.S. and Australia) have built over 5000 cubic meters of water storage per capita, and middle income countries like South Africa, Mexico, Morocco and China can store about 1000 cubic meters per capita, India’s dams can store only 200 cubic meters per capita. These figures are misleading because they leave out the millions of tanks and ponds managed by communities, which store more water than the dams and serve people in a more decentralized and democratic way. If large dams have displaced 40 million people since independence a twenty five-fold increase in dam storage as targeted by the World Bank will mean the displacement of 1000 million, i.e. the entire population of India.

The mega projects the Bank wants to finance by increasing loans for the water sector for $200 million to $800 million a year implies that every drop of India’s water will be commodified, water will be diverted from rural areas to urban areas, from agriculture to industry, from the poor to the rich. 5 farmers were killed in Tonk when they resisted diversion of water from Bisalpur dam to urban areas in Jaipur and Ajmer. The World Bank’s ideology and policies are sure to create water wars and a turbulent future. For sustainability, justice and peace in the water sector, we need to promote nature and people centred solutions, not the World Bank’s blind commitment to creating water markets.

“World Bank, hands off our water”

“Our water systems are not for sale”

For more information, please contact:
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
A-60, Hauz Khas, New Delhi – 110 016
' : 2653 5422/ 2696 8077/ 2656 1868
Email: vshiva@vsnl.com