Mumbai has numerous dams at about 100 km from the municipal boundaries of the city. Yet many in the city do not have access to water. If you look closely at who cannot use this water, it is mostly people living in informal settlements and bastis.
In 2012, we at Pani Haq Samiti filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court, demanding water for all in Mumbai, as per Article 21 of the Constitution, which highlights the right to dignity and the right to life.
The HC verdict directed the BMC to create a “Water for All” Policy. However, even after the HC order, numerous complications delayed the implementation and people’s access to legal water for years. Here’s an overview of what we learned through the PIL, the drafting of the policy, and its implementation.
Access to water in Mumbai
Access to water is rooted in whether a settlement is notified or non-notified.
According to figures accessed through government departments, we know that around 13000 families don’t have water in the bastis on railway lands. On forest lands, around 14,000 families don’t have water access. Around 14,000 families living on Bombay Port Trust lands don’t get water. In the salt pans, thousands of families do not have water. Moreover, a large number of pavement dwellers in Mumbai do not have access to water.
In 2000, the Maharashtra government conducted a survey after regularising informal settlement from 1995 till 2000. According to that survey, around 5,74, 000 families were living in non-notified informal settlements.
Almost 14 years since that survey, around 20 lakh people remain non-notified, without legal water connections.
Read more: BMC’s ‘Water For All’ policy promises greater access to water. Can it deliver?
Getting water without legal connections
Often, people depend on wells and dug wells where the water is brown. They take their water from pipeline leaks, pressure valve leakages, and even streams, where the water might look clean. They then use this water for drinking and other purposes.
Politicians often form alliances with informal water suppliers, who sell water for high prices to those without legal connections.
If the people take water from intermediate water suppliers, there is a layered impact on them. The first is an economic impact. Per month, families pay up to Rs. 700 for 1000 litres of water. The corporation water supply is only Rs. 5 per 1000 litres. So, if you live in a high rise in Mumbai, you potentially pay only Rs. 5 for 1000 litres of water whereas if you lived in a basti, you pay Rs. 700 for the same.
Another challenge is the risk of exploitation due to dependency. Once these families rely on the intermediate suppliers, who work with politicians, they are often asked to vote for a candidate named by the water supplier. If they don’t, their water supply is withheld.
There is also a psychological impact. When we went around to bastis for our fieldwork, people were saying, “Why should we get water? We are illegal.” They seemed to internalise this gaze of the state.
We have also observed impact on health of people when they drink untreated water from streams and dug wells. Drinking and bathing with this water often leads to skin and waterborne diseases. To treat these, you need to spend money on medicines and doctor’s appointments. And once again you do not have money for your daily life, leading to a vicious circle of poverty.
What is “water for all” policy?
When the High Court decided on our petition in 2014, it noted that the Right to Water is the means to achieve the right to dignity. The HC also said that the BMC and urban local governments are responsible for delivering water to all the citizens within their boundaries. It directed the BMC to formulate a ‘water for all’ policy in three months and then implement it. It also observed that water should be delivered to all, but those living in unauthorised settlements would have to pay a tariff added to the existing amount.
Three years after the judgement, the policy was released. However it had multiple gaps. For example, for those living on Central government land, Railway lands, salt lands, forest lands, and MbPT land, the applicant had to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the landowning body before acquiring a connection. This gives a lot of the authority to these bodies to decide when water is given. In real-time, it delayed people’s applications for water connections significantly.
During COVID-19, we conducted a study on how the pandemic has affected those without water access. It was picked up by the media and this put pressure on the government again. The BMC then invited us based on this research, to talk and find a solution.
After a lot of dialogue and presentations, the BMC revised the policy in 2022.
Harsh realities of getting water
Although the revised policy addressed the issue of the NOC, it introduced a 21-day timeline to respond to application for an NOC to respective authorities. And if they did not respond in this given time, BMC will initiate the water connections without NOC.
After presenting the policy to communities post-2017, we discovered a surprising lack of awareness regarding its existence. Many of them seemed sceptical about their right to water, labelling themselves as “illegal.” This sentiment seems to have stemmed from years of being told that they are criminals and encroachers and that they belong to Muslim and Dalit communities and therefore were undeserving of easy access to water.
During our work, we also encountered illegal water connections being sold in exchange of bribes. On the other hand, when people tried to get connections officially, numerous hurdles slowed down the process. In Siddharth Nagar, we faced technical hurdles after the pipeline was laid; the only obstacle remaining was securing the connection. The corporation cited lack of drainage maintenance (by BMC) as a reason for the delay.
In another case, a resident living near railway lands was trying to acquire a legal connection. Initially, the BMC stated that the connection belongs to the Railways and so they had to obtain an NOC from them. When we approached the Railway Department, they informed us that they could not issue an NOC. We then researched further about the land ownership of the place and found out that the land belongs to Maharashtra Government, which does not require an NOC. We then approached the BMC and finally acquired the water supply after 12 years of follow up.
Read more: How Mumbai gets its water: A discussion
For over 20 years, Panchsheel Nagar, a settlement in the eastern part of Mumbai’s Govandi area has been struggling with inadequate water access. In 2022, after many years of struggle, the community reached out to us for helping them to submit a total of 20 applications for water connections to the BMC.
After persistent follow-ups for over six months, the community received three legal water connections, which would provide around 15 families with access to legal water.
The relief was short-lived. One morning, municipal authorities arrived and demolished hundreds of homes, leaving families with no time to salvage their belongings. The once-thriving community was reduced to flat land. In the scorching heat, residents struggled to rebuild their homes.
The situation grew more complex in the aftermath. While one department conducted demolitions, another hesitated to provide water connections. The delays were exacerbated by election season, which saw key water department officials diverted to their election duties, leaving the Panchsheel Nagar residents in limbo.
After three months of relentless follow-ups, the municipal authorities finally declared that Panchsheel Nagar would not receive water.
Official apathy and water access
Our engagement with officials revealed a troubling pattern of denial regarding the existence of the water policy. For instance, in F North ward, we spent two months interacting with a junior engineer who was aware of a legal metre connection in a basti but chose to withhold this information.
When we eventually visited the basti, we confirmed the presence of a lawful water connection, which raised questions about the engineer’s motivations. He falsely claimed that the land was categorised as MMRA and mangrove land, which should have exempted it from having water connections.
Officials seem to believe that water should not be easily accessible. They prefer a system where residents must struggle for their rights rather than receive water as a fundamental entitlement.
There is also a pervasive fear among officials that providing water connections to one basti might encourage more people to settle in the area, exacerbating issues of urban density. Ironically, this concern does not extend to illegal buildings.
Currently, we are still working on acquiring connections for communities in the city, but the road ahead is a challenging one. What we do know so far is that the state’s mentality often stands in the way of ensuring water for all. Despite legal mechanisms in place, it is this mentality that prevents real time implementation.