The unequal water supply of Mumbai : how the social status affects the access to adequate water provision

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Research Master’s Urban Studies

The Unequal Water Supply of Mumbai

How the Social Status Affects the Access to Adequate Water Provision

Jonas Kertscher Supervisor: Dr. Justus Uitermark

Student ID: 11258705 Second reader: Dr. Hebe Verrest

jonas.kertscher@gmail.com Date of submission: July 15th

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This master’s thesis analyzes the uneven water provision in the rapidly urbanizing city of Mum-bai, India, and wants to shed light on the questions: Why are the settlements of Mumbai so differently provided with water, and why are some settlements excluded from the official dis-tribution network, while others have access? By drawing on insights from literature on citizen-ship, discourses surrounding ‘slums’, urban political ecology, and intra-urban comparison the scattered and unequal water supply was studied. A total of 12 settlements across Mumbai were investigated and their state of water provision, demographic composition, and political and le-gal context assessed. The research found that the access and experience of water infrastructure in Mumbai is extremely uneven, unequal, and scattered, leading to a diversity of lived experi-ences. While some settlements are connected to the city’s pipe-network, and receive water of decent quality and quantity fairly regular to a moderate price, other settlements have to make different arrangements as they are not connected to the network, and receive water of poor quality in insufficient amounts on an irregular basis for higher costs. Common reasoning for these differences include the legal state, conflicts of jurisdiction, the presence of a ‘water ma-fia’, and other forms of land contestations. Moreover, settlers have to mobilize and maintain social, personal, and political relations to city councilors to receive (and keep) access to water supply. However, the research found that these are not the sole decisive factors, as they were dependent on the social status of the resident. Especially deprived settlements are often home to to socially disadvantaged minority groups based on class, ethnicity, gender, religion, and caste. Taking this into account, the thesis discovered certain pathways that explain how the social status is mediated through (a lack of) advantageous social, personal, and political rela-tions with councilor and different forms of land marginalization and contestation and results in differently adequate water provision. Due to different constellations various pathways open up that lead to different outcomes regarding the water provision of a settlement. As the social status is not fixed but constantly contested and negotiable, the state of water provision is not fixed, but constantly contested.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Justus Uitermark for helping me to find my topic and make sense out of my data. His constructive feedback and guidance really helped me a lot to develop my argument. Without him this would not have been possible. I am also very grateful to Pradip Kalbar at IITB who helped me during my time in Mumbai by connecting me with helpful people. In this context, I also have to thank Sitaram Shellar and the whole Pani Haq Samiti team that was so kind to take me to the settlements and share their stories and situations with me. Special thanks goes to Kalyani, who helped me immensely by taking me to the field and sharing her opinion with me. I am also deeply grateful to Kishore, Manish, and Ritu who accompanied me, translated for me, and helped me understand everything! Moreover, I would like to thank Ananya and Pallavi for helping me with data collection, Parthasarathy for his advices, Karin Pfeffer for data, and Carmen for motivation. Of course, I also have to thank Julia, Lotte, and Steven for accompanying me to Mumbai, sharing experiences, joy, but also sorrow. Finally, I have to thank Manou for always being there for me and helping me in any possible way.

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Introduction

In the last few decades, water provision for households has been a major issue around the world. Even though a lot of progress has been made world-wide by different actors, the problem re-mains pressing, particularly in rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South. The main focus of organizations such as the UN has been to increase the access to improved, clean water and remarkable progress has been made, but less attention has been given to questions how this water is accessed by the consumers (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2016). In cases where people are not provided by piped potable water, other sources such as street ven-dors, public taps, wells, storage tanks, or illegally tapped pipes ensure the supply (Bakker, 2007; Graham et al., 2013). However, these other sources may be polluted, less reliable, more expen-sive, or require long travel distance and a lot of time to be accessed, and can, therefore, lead to problems of water poverty. This means that serious efforts have to be made by deprived house-holds to ensure the supply of water for daily needs (e.g. drinking, cooking, cleaning), which leads to an impeded possibility to participate equally in society, and has adverse life impacts (Subbaraman et al., 2015). As urban residents are mostly incapable to provide for their own water needs by accessing natural reservoirs, having access to technological systems that provide water of adequate quality and quantity is now one of the most integral parts of the right to a good urban life. This affects especially the large amounts of people living in slums or informal settlements1_{, who are often excluded from official water provision because their claims to space} are regarded as illegitimate (Graham et al., 2013).

Therefore, the primary obstacles to accessing water in settlements are often not solely monetary or technical, but are also legal, institutional, and political in nature. For instance, the Indian state differentiates between slums which are notified or recognized, and slums which are non-notified or unauthorized. In some cities, notified slums are entitled to receive some form of land tenure, which means that its residents cannot be arbitrarily evicted. People living in notified slums are also usually entitled to access city services, including connections to the water supply. In contrast, non-notified slums usually suffer from poorer access to piped water, latrines, electricity, and public transport, and also receive less assistance from the government’s slum improvement schemes (Subbaraman & Murthy, 2015).

In Mumbai, India, which by some estimates has the largest slum population world-wide, with more than half of its residents living in informal settlements or slums (National Sample Survey Office, 2013), until recently, the state government’s policy was not to grant official water supply to those who are residing in non-notified slums. While a court order in 2014 ruled that the state cannot deny water supply to settlers on the basis of a lack of notification anymore, and has to extend access to them (IELRC, 2014), Mumbai’s overall state regarding its water provision remains rather scattered and prone to crisis. Even though copious monsoon rains u-sually fill the reservoirs, and the notional per capita water availability is higher than in London,

1_{The term slum is sometimes contested due to its judgmental and derogatory connotation that carries images and}

ideas (Anand, 2017). Moreover, in the literature, the terms informal settlement and slums are often used inter-changeably, which is, somewhat, misleading. There is a wide variety of slum definitions of which the informality of a settlement is only one element (Nolan, 2015). For instance, the UN define a slum as a contiguous settlement consisting of one or a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area lacking one or more of the following five amenities: 1) Durable housing; 2) Sufficient living area; 3) Access to improved water; 4) Access to improved sanitation facilities; and 5) Secure tenure (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2006). Fur-thermore, the Indian government’s differentiation between notified and non-notified slums implies that notified slums have some degree of formal recognition. Therefore, I will use the term informal settlement in the following only when referring to non-notified slums, whereas the term slum may refer to notified as well as non-notified settlements lacking one or more of the five amenities. However, to avoid pejorative comprehension of the term, I will follow Anand’s (2017) suggestion, and rather use the more neutral term settlement to refer to slums in general, and ‘slum’ when I refer to usage by others such as authorities and state categories.

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the city frequently failed to match the demand of its burgeoning population (Björkman, 2015). Leakages, illegal tapping by water tank providers, the construction industry, and formal and informal settlements, as well as periodic ruptures lead to differing service levels regarding pres-sure and quantity (Graham et al, 2013). As a result, infrastructure deficits, complete bans and rationed quotas shape the everyday experience of the majority of Mumbai’s residents who live in settlements, but are also felt to some extent by the middle classes, who increasingly invest into alternatives (mains water storage tanks, wells, water trucks, packaged water, and rainwater harvesting) as responses to the limited municipal water supply (Button, 2017). Other residents are not officially connected to the pipe network at all, and have to rely on other ways and sources to access water like illegally tapping pipes, water tankers, and bore and ditch wells (Subbaraman & Murthy, 2015; Anand, 2011; Graham et al., 2013). All in all, the polarized social landscape of the city of Mumbai is reflected in a water provision system that struggles to provide all its residents equally, and is repeatedly affected by disruptions and crises (McFar-lane, 2013).

The literature on water supply in Mumbai mostly focusses on legal barriers (Murthy, 2012; Subbaraman et al., 2012; Subbaraman & Murthy, 2015), the intricacies of the pipe-net-work, and questions surrounding citizenship (Anand, 2017), or the larger discourse that frames slums as causers of problems and nuisance that need to be cleared rather than as deprived set-tlements in need of help (Björkman, 2015; Ghertner, 2012; Graham et al., 2013). However, less attention has been paid to the diverging states within and across settlements in Mumbai. The way people access water for their daily needs in Mumbai differs drastically, and can have severe implications for its residents. By looking at different cases within one city rather than between different cities, my research tries to contribute to the understanding of a city as a space of many urban worlds. Hence, my research aims to add to the emerging body of literature of intra-urban comparison as described by McFarlane et al. (2016). Intra-urban comparison generates new perspectives that reveal the manifold ways in which both similarity and difference need to be revised in the context of one city, and its relation to other cities. Thereby, it contributes to the comparative project by specifically illuminating how a city is less of a unitary construction by highlighting radical differences in both the access to and the experience of infrastructure within a city. Moreover, it uncovers differences in urban politics across the city by showing that it is not just the access that varies, but also the political configurations. The city of Mumbai can be seen as a city consisting of several cities within one. The rapidly growing city is often described as a mega-city that is not only large and diverse, but also evinces profound inequalities in its urban experience (McFarlane et al., 2016). Following this line of thought, it can be fruitful to combine insights from urban political ecology, which address unequal urban social power re-lations, and explains how and why water becomes subject to an intense struggle along class, gender, and ethnic divides (Swyngedouw, 2004), with insights from literature on citizenship, discourses surrounding ‘slums’, and the perspectives of intra-urban comparison to analyze Mumbai’s scattered and unequal water supply.

Against this backdrop, my thesis intends to study the uneven water provision in the city of Mumbai, India. It intends to inquire: Why are the settlements of Mumbai so unequally pro-vided with water, and why are some settlements excluded from the official distribution network, while others have access? Furthermore, it aims to shed light on how people access/connect to water (supply), and what are the causes for the diverging states in the different settlements. In order to address these questions, 12 settlements all over Mumbai were analyzed regarding their status, level, and mode of water supply, their official recognition, land designation, and demo-graphic composition. By merging insights from qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and two-level theory, I developed pathways that explain why certain settlements have a more or less adequate water provision, and what causes this.

My research shows that the state and mode of supply varies drastically between the different settlements. Some receive water by official pipes in sufficient quantities, while many

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other settlements have to make different arrangements, and obtain water from tankers, unoffi-cial connections, bore- and ditch-wells, or other sources. Despite the mode of supply, also qual-ity, quantqual-ity, regularqual-ity, and costs differ greatly. There are different reasonings that explain this imbalance. On the one hand, the lack of notification seems to play a role, as non-notified set-tlements tend to be less adequately served with water. However, not all non-notified setset-tlements face water issues, and not all notified settlements are adequately provided. Therefore, notifica-tion is not the decisive factor explaining the diverging states. Besides notificanotifica-tion, the land designation and questions of jurisdiction are of importance. Some settlements are located on land that come under jurisdiction of the Central Government of India. Accordingly, the Munic-ipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC), which is responsible for the distribution of water, has no jurisdiction. This means that without a special permit from the Central Government of India the BMC is theoretically not permitted to provide these settlements with water by pipes. As a result, such settlements are often deprived of official connections and have to rely on other sources like tankers or bore wells. However, settlements are sometimes able to receive connec-tions despite being located on central government land. Some other settlements, in turn, are served by a local ‘mafia’ via tankers or ‘illegal’ pipes who makes large profits of the deprived settlements, and has incentives to maintain the status quo. Moreover, some settlements are lo-cated on contested high-value land, and regarded as nuisance for being in the way of Mumbai’s ambitions to become a ‘world-class city’. While these different forms of contestation and mar-ginalization of land partly contribute to the exclusion from services, they are not the sole deci-sive factor. During my research, it became apparent that the most deprived settlements are often home to socially disadvantaged minority groups. Moreover, access to official services is highly dependent on social, personal, and political relations with the local councilor, who has the power to sanction or deny access. Therefore, the social status that is based on class, ethnicity, gender, religion, and caste, on the one hand, affects the possibility of forming advantageous relations with the councilor, and, on the other hand, determines the access to a place to settle, and is articulated in residential patterns. As a result, the adequacy of water provision is depend-ent on the social status of the residdepend-ents of a settlemdepend-ent, which is mediated through the (lack of) relations with councilors and the contestations and marginalization of the land a settlement is located on. Due to different constellations, then, various pathways open up that lead to different outcomes regarding the water provision of a settlement.

In the following, I will demonstrate how and why this takes place. In order to do so, I will, firstly, introduce my theoretical framework and introduce the case Mumbai. Based on this, I will develop my theoretical model and my research questions. Subsequently, I will present my methodology, by introducing the methods of QCA and two-level theory and describing my data collection and limitations. Following this, I will introduce my cases and describe their diverging states of supply. Finally, I will present the different pathways I could identify, and demonstrate the way the social status influences them. Thereby, I will reveal how certain set-tlements manage to get connection to the official pipe-network, while others remain excluded and have to make different arrangements to cover their demand for water.

Theory

In the following, I will give an overview of literature that discusses intricacies surrounding water provision in general, and Mumbai in particular. This is meant to give an understanding of the common reasoning that are given to explain the inequality of Mumbai’s water supply. These include technical issues like old and leaking infrastructure, legal matters such as juris-diction and notification, discourses framing ‘slums’ as a nuisance and thereby justifying their exclusion, questions surrounding the concept of citizenship, as well as the (low) social status

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and marginalization of certain groups in India. Subsequently, I will present my theoretical model that draws on and intends to contribute to this literature. Based on it, this chapter con-cludes with my research questions.

The issue of water supply

The regular provision of water to urban environments requires tremendous work that is hardly visible to the end consumer, and intensive scientific attention has been given to the process. Foremost, the engineering sciences of hydrology and hydraulics form the basis for the collec-tion and distribucollec-tion of water for everyday human use. Water reservoirs, treatment plants, stor-age tanks, and distribution networks are systems whose set-up requires advanced knowledge in chemistry, biology, and physics for seamless operation. As a result, the supply of water is often seen solely as a technical issue that can only be solved by technical solutions (provided that there are enough financial resources to implement them) (Anand, 2011; Swyngedouw, 2004). However, an emerging body of literature in the social sciences has repeatedly empha-sized the influence of social and cultural factors on the supply of water. Especially the literature on water provision in cities of the Global South2

indicates a variety of reasons that may affect the development of an adequate provision system, and, in that way, can lead to undersupply and water crises. Besides financial shortages, weak governance, informal practices, corruption, deterioration and fragmentation of the existing network, the morphology of the city, and changes in demand and supply, a lack of incentive of the provider to develop as well as the customers to connect to the system are named as aspects that may influence the provision sys-tem, and, thereby, contribute to an unequal system (Bakker, 2007; Hirvi & Whitfield, 2015). Causal factors driving water resource outcomes include the resource system, water demand (human and environmental), governance system, and the access infrastructure. In general, one can summarize that the availability or the lack of water to satisfy human needs is influenced by natural, social, and engineered processes (Srinivasan et al., 2012).

The urban political ecologist Erik Swyngedouw offers a useful understanding of how “the circulation of water - as a physical and social process – brings to light wider political economic, social and ecological processes” (Swyngedouw, 2004: 2) that impact urbanization and the access, control, and distribution of water. In the following paragraphs, I will briefly introduce some of Swyngedouw’s insights that are helpful to understand Mumbai’s water sup-ply.

Urban political ecology of water

In his book “Social Power and the Urbanization of Water – Flows of Power”, Swyngedouw (2004) intends to reveal the connection between the city, nature, and social power, by illustrat-ing the relationship between urban ecology, politics, and the flow of water. Urban political ecology, the theoretical school of thought he is substantially involved in, draws on ideas from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Marxism (Heynen, 2014). Following this line of thought, he understands the world as “historical geographical process of perpetual metabolism in which ‘social’ and ‘natural’ processes combine in a historical geographical production process of so-cio-nature whose outcome […] embodies chemical, physical, social, economic, political, and

2_{Nonetheless, it would be an incomplete and over-simplified view to see controversies around the supply of water}

as a province of cities of the Global South alone. Maria Kaika’s (2006) work on water scarcity in Athens, Greece, and Nikhil Anand’s (2017) excursus on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, USA, for instance, demonstrate the occurrence of water related problems also in so-called ‘developed nations’.

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cultural processes in highly contradictory but inseparable manners” (Swyngedouw, 2004: 17-18). In particular, the ‘Metabolism of Cities’ is dependent on the constant rotation of water into, through, and out of the city. The urbanization process is linked to the urban water circulation and the hydro-social cycle. In contrast to non-arid rural areas where usually water of reasonable quality is sufficiently available, urban water supply and access depend on constant “transfor-mation, mastering, and harnessing of ‘natural’ water” (Swyngedouw, 2004: 1). As a result, the urban water supply is usually organized by “large bureaucratic and engineering control systems, collective intervention and action, and centralized decision-making systems” (ibid.), which al-lows monopoly control and profits. Water like all other goods to sustain human life is produced, and undergoes a process of production through human labor (Kaika, 2005). Therefore, water circulation is also an “integral part of the circulation of money and capital” (Swyngedouw, 2004: 1). Water circulation is part of the political economy that makes the urban fabric struc-tured and coherent. Because water is both a biological necessity and a key economic commodity it becomes the source of cultural and symbolic power. Through economic and political power relations access to, control over, and distribution of water is organized (Swyngedouw, 2009). As a result of positions of social and cultural power, water becomes “subject to an intense struggle along class, gender, and ethnic cleavages” (Swyngedouw, 2004: 2). Also, the circula-tion of water links “political and economic power at the internacircula-tional, nacircula-tional, regional, and local levels with a social and economic struggle for the control over and appropriation of water” (ibid.). In this struggle for the command over water and power, both public and private agents are involved. In short, “the urban ecological conquest of water, the fusion of water circulation with the urbanization process […], its commoditized domestication and related processes of access to and exclusion from [bring] water into the realm of urban social power” (ibid.: 35). Therefore, the aim of urban political ecology is to reveal the processes that generate these une-ven urban environment (Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003).

Mumbai’s water supply

The water supply of Mumbai is a recurring topic for urban researchers. Its overall state is re-peatedly described as scattered and unequal (see Anand, 2017; Björkman, 2015; Graham et al., 2013). The city’s polarized social landscape is reflected in a water provision system that strug-gles to provide all its residents equally (see Map 1), and is repeatedly affected by disruptions and crises (McFarlane, 2013). This is astonishing as Mumbai is the financial capital of India accounting for a substantial part of India’s GDP, foreign trade, and income tax revenue (Mu-nicipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, 2016). Moreover, copious monsoon rains normally fill the seven reservoirs in the neighboring provinces that provide for Mumbai’s water demand. Mumbai’s notional per capita water availability is theoretically higher than London’s.

However, throughout its history, Mumbai has never been able to provide all its citizens equally with water, and continually fails to match the demand of its burgeoning population (Anand, 2011; Björkman, 2015; Graham et al., 2013).3

Except for a few cases, no structure in Mumbai receives water around the clock (Anand, 2017; Graham et al., 2013). Instead, water is delivered according to a water supply schedule. The city is divided into different water supply zones

3_{The current development plan for Mumbai indicates the water supply per capita per day of Mumbai with 268}

liters. It also acknowledges, however, that this number varies widely across the city, with some areas receiving substantially less. Moreover, on average 8 households share one single domestic connection, while in ‘slums’ the number is 15 households, and many slums that have developed post 1995 are not provided with water connections at all. Furthermore, the ageing pipelines causes the risk of water contamination, as water pipelines often run close or parallel to sewers. In 2011, 24.64% of the water samples recorded unfit per standards (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, 2016).

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which define a particular time for each neighborhood to receive water. Due to water scarcity, the water department actively manages the supply by regulating when and how much water is delivered to each neighborhood. Engineers calculate each zone’s demand as a complex function of population, housing type, and commercial/industrial demand, and determine how much time is necessary to deliver each zone’s share of water. This is then balanced with the demands of other zones and the material demands of the network. However, engineers privilege some zones over other, and do not provide for all citizens equally (Anand, 2017).

There is a vast array of explanations as to why Mumbai fails to provide all its residents equally with water. A common reason given for the undersupply is the century old infrastructure that was initially set-up under British colonial rule. Old, leaking, and inadequate pipes, whose exact location is sometimes not known, circulate the water through Mumbai (Björkman, 2015). It was estimated by a World-Bank-sponsored Water Distribution Improvement Project that roughly a third of the city’s water is ‘leaking’ into the ground and to residents drawing water through unauthorized connections, leading to vanishing amounts and falling pressures in the network.4

Government documents show that technically enough water is entering Mumbai to supply all residents sufficiently with water. However, large amounts of water are lost on the way due to leaking infrastructure (Anand, 2017).

Moreover, the insufficiency of Mumbai’s water infrastructure was further exacerbated in the last decades as a result of the liberalization process that took place in India in the early 1990s and relating thereto the marketization of urban development rights. Under the banner to transform Mumbai into a ‘world class city’, the building regulations were relaxed, allowing to develop above and beyond heights and densities determined in the city’s development plan. However, Mumbai’s land-bound water infrastructure did not keep pace and lagged behind the city’s overall growth (Björkman, 2015).

While it is true that Mumbai’s supply infrastructure contributes to water scarcity that is partly also experienced by the middle and upper classes, who increasingly invest into alterna-tives (e.g. mains water storage tanks, wells, water trucks, packaged water, and rainwater har-vesting) as responses to the limited and scheduled municipal water supply (Button, 2017; Anand, 2017), the distribution system is in its very core unequal. The city classifies different housing structures, and calculates a specific demand for each. While residents of ‘authorized structures’ receive amounts up to 240 liters per day per individual connection, the people living in settlements receive officially only 90 liters per capita per day from a group connection.5

The norms were established by the Ministry of Urban Development, which suggests that smaller allocations are required for those living in ‘untoileted structures’. Moreover, engineers do not count all residents in settlements, but instead estimate a number that often does not include ‘floating populations’ like domestic help, construction workers, and illegitimate renters, which often leads to an underestimation of water demand for settlements, which in turn results in an undersupply (Anand, 2017).

However, some households and settlements are not officially connected to the pipe-network at all because they are (or were) not (perceived to be) eligible to apply for water con-nections. Instead, they have to arrange the water for their daily needs differently. For instance, by ‘illegally’ connecting to the pipe-network, water tankers, or bore- and ditch wells (Graham et al., 2013; Subbaraman et al., 2012; Subbaraman et al., 2015).

4_{The BMC itself reports leakage figures of approximately 25%. However, it is unclear how this figure has been}

calculated, as it is difficult to detect and calculate leakage. Also, a substantial amount of Mumbai’s water is not metered because the connections have been approved and granted prior to the implementation of meters, or the meters (60% by some estimates) are not working. This also leads to the situation that people pay for a metered connection, but the water department estimates the consumed quantities for the purpose of billing. Hence, they might be paying for water they never used or received (Anand, 2017).

5_{To receive water in accordance with the municipal rules, five households in settlements have to form a ‘water}

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Map 1. Percentage of households per census ward with access to tab water from treated source and location of water source within premises according to the 2011 Indian Census

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Discourses surrounding ‘slums’

The attitude towards people living in settlements as being less deserving or even undeserving is further expressed in a dominant discourse that promotes Mumbai as an upcoming global city comparable to Shanghai and Singapore, and frames these settlements as parasitic causers of wider water crises affecting the whole city. Instead of being home to entitled citizens that should be provided with basic services, settlements are conceived as in need to be reclaimed and re-constructed because they do not fit the image of the world class city. Moreover, they are often equated with the interests of a powerful ‘water mafia’. Water is a business in Mumbai. The complex world of organized crime, which overlaps with the world of corrupt municipal offi-cials, makes large profits from illegal piped supply and tanker deliveries, focusing especially on the poorest, undersupplied settlements. Their practices also intentionally delay efforts to extend adequate formal piped water supplies to slum communities to maintain their source of profit. By failing to reveal how they are dependent on and negatively affected by these practices, settlers are blamed in the media and by powerful residents’ groups representing affluent areas. They are conceived as the sole origin of water crises in the city, as causers of leaks, falling pressure, and less quantity of water for the more affluent by unofficially accessing the pipe-network (Graham et al., 2013). This depiction of slums connects to neo-Malthusian discourses about resource scarcity and overpopulation, and fosters the widespread belief that shortages in electricity and water supply are caused by overpopulated slums and not rising middle class consumption. It also neglects the reason for the evolvement of slums – the lack of affordable housing in the city. Hence, slums become the source, and not the product, of urban decay. Slums are framed as a nuisance, thereby positing the delegitimization of the urban poor’s land entitlements, and justifying their displacement from the urban imaginary, in order to serve pri-vate interests. Slum demolitions and exclusion from the city services are, thereby, framed as a necessary, ‘positive’ form of violence in order to achieve a ‘world-class city’ status (Ghertner, 2012).

Legal exclusion

While the discourse obscures the origin of the water crises, it also denies the stratification of supply that starves some settlers systematically of water, and masks the fact that because of denial of adequate formal water connections by the BMC, they are forced to rely on informal practices for their daily needs. It also affects everyday speech and is translated into official policy and practice (Graham et al., 2013). Until recently, the state government’s policy was to not grant official water supply to those who are residing in ‘non-notified slums’ on the grounds that the state does not want to encourage the construction of such ‘illegal slums’ and people occupying such ‘illegal slums’. The city of Mumbai differentiates between notified and non-notified slums according to a ‘cut-off’ date (Murthy, 2012). Currently, slum households which can prove they have been living on state or municipal land prior to the year 2000 (formerly 1995) can obtain notified status6

, while others who settled after the year 2000, or are located on

6_{The Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act from 1971 states that the actual}

occupier of a dwelling structure in existence prior to a cut-off date can become a protected occupier by providing certain documents to the authorities proving his/her residency and obtaining a photo pass. As it is not allowed to illegally take possession of land and construct unauthorized structures with the intention to sell or rent it to others (termed ‘slumlord’), it is assumed that the actual occupier remained the same since the cut-off date (Government of Maharashtra, 1971). Hence, the recognition as a notified slum depends on the age of the dwelling, the period of residency of the occupiers, and the ability to prove this. Since there may be dwellings of different age or residents with different residency periods in close proximity to each other, one would conclude that one larger settlement may consist of several slums (as already one household can account as a slum according to the UN definition) with diverging status. Nevertheless, settlements are usually quite homogenous regarding their status, because either

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land owned by the central government remain non-notified (Subbaraman & Murthy, 2015). An addendum of the Maharashtra Slum Areas Act of 1971 states that the city government must extend basic amenities (e.g. water, sanitation) to slum residents who have proof of residency prior to the year 1995 (now 2000). Such residents are also entitled to security of tenure and rehabilitation in formal housing in the event of displacement7

from their homes (Subbaraman et al., 2012).

As a result of years of public interest litigation, the Bombay High Court ruled in De-cember 2014 that the state cannot deny the supply of water to a citizen on the ground that (s)he is residing in a structure which has been ‘illegally’ erected, as the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India includes the right to food and water. Moreover, large parts of the population, including policemen, teachers, and other state employees, reside in these structures because of the city’s inability to provide sufficient affordable housing.8

As a conse-quence, the state cannot withhold water legally anymore to households residing in a non-noti-fied slum and has to extend access to them. But, this does not affect the status of informal settlements which remain non-notified or ‘illegal’, and can hence be removed by the state. Moreover, it is for the municipal authorities to decide in which manner the water can be sup-plied. Hence, the water does not need to be provided via individual home connections or at the same price as elsewhere in the city. Also, non-notified slums on central government land remain excluded, because the Bombay High Court has no jurisdiction over central government land (IELRC, 2014).

Water application process in Mumbai

According to the law, officially, most citizens in Mumbai should now be eligible to apply for a municipal water connection. In order to apply for a municipal connection in a settlement, five households have to form a group, and choose one person amongst them as a secretary of a ‘water committee’ who applies at the municipality, and is responsible for every communication with the municipal corporation. Every member of the group needs to provide two ‘proofs’: a proof of identity issued by government authorities (e.g. passport, voter ID, Aadhaar card, driver’s license) and a proof of residential address (e.g. ration card, electricity bill, or other monthly utilities used that indicate the address). Before 2014, every member was additionally required to prove their notification status. Theoretically, this is not required anymore. These documents have to be submitted to the responsible authority who approves them. Subsequently, the applicants are required to pay a scrutiny fee of Rs. 484 (~6€) to the municipal corporation. Previously, this process happened in person. Nowadays, the applicants have to file an online application which also requires a ‘licensed plumber’, who needs to be approved, before secur-ing an appointment to pay the scrutiny fee. Subsequently, government officials will come to the settlement of the applicants, survey the conditions, and cross-check the documents and the peo-ple living there, and, if everything is fine, issue a permission (known as P-Form) that allows

most or all dwellings were constructed at a similar time, or they received the recognition as a result of a bartering arrangement by voting for a specific party.

7_{Protected occupiers can only be evicted if it is considered as necessary for the larger public interest by the state}

government. Otherwise, no protected occupier shall be evicted (Government of Maharashtra, 1971).

8_{Even the current development plan for Mumbai states that only 9% of the population of Greater Mumbai earns}

more than Rs. 60,000 (~750€) per month and 25% of the households earn less than Rs. 12,500 (160€) per month. The median income is around Rs. 20,000 (~250€). Given that the cost of housing is much higher than the afford-able range of 4-5 times a family’s annual gross income, nearly half of the population is unafford-able to afford to own a house, even of minimum standards in Mumbai (Development plan 2014-34).

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the licensed plumber to start with the work. Because this process requires settlers to provide documentation issued by a variety of agencies, settlers acquire voter id cards, food ration cards, photo-passes, school leaving certificates, water and electricity bills, and political party mem-bership cards to be counted as eligible citizens for different state agencies (Anand, 2017).

Patronage and vote banks

However, to receive an official connection by the municipality, it is said that the applicant needs more than the officially listed required documents. As the rules of the application process in-volves a lot of different state agencies, it is also generative of the power of state officials, which makes the application process rather exploitative. State officials benefit of gifts and bribes at the expense of the poor in exchange for their stamp of approval. Moreover, residents of notified and non-notified settlements enlist councilors and politicians for help. As an unwritten rule that is not required in the city’s formal procedures, “[a]pplications for water connections are gener-ally approved if they are accompanied by a letter of support from the politician ‘requesting’ the engineer’s help” (Anand, 2017: 91). In return for money and/or votes in elections, the counci-lors issue these letters, which are necessary even for settlers living in notified settlements. A ‘system’ has been set up that depends on personal networks of legitimation and endorsement, and provides a platform for patronage relations in settlements. (Anand, 2017).

These relations exceed the financial considerations that accompany them, by entangling politicians with engineers in webs of political obligations that create dependencies (but also friendships and courtesies). Furthermore, they also lay the foundation for so-called ‘vote-bank’ politics. Here, politicians seek to gain the votes of settlers in exchange for electoral promises such as the extension of infrastructure (e.g. water, sanitation, roads, schools, etc.) and the pro-vision and approval of documents (Graham et al, 2013; Sridhar, 2007). However, votes alone may be not sufficient to guarantee a constant supply with water. Even after achieving state recognition and official connection to the pipe-network, the relations with councilors, ‘dadas’ (‘grandfather’, used for hoodlums), and their political parties continue to play a significant role. In order to continue to receive water in sufficient pressure and quantity, settlers have to maintain their relations with councilors. The councilors, in turn, ‘request’ the engineers to do their work, often at the expense of other settlements. Due to the limited water (and pressure in the system) that is reallocated, engineers are compelled to prioritize some localities over others (Anand, 2011). Therefore, “to make themselves durable homes in the city, those living in Mumbai’s settlements need to engage in a series of practices that transgress the boundary of legitimacy on the one hand and liberal government on the other” (Anand, 2017: 92). However, not all settlers in Mumbai are able to mobilize these practices to access reliable water from the city. For these reasons, the western concept of civil society and citizenship that grants and entitles to certain services by state does not fully apply in this context.

The concept of citizenship

Different authors have argued that the western conception of citizenship does not translate in the same way in the Global South. Partha Chatterjee (2004), for instance, argues that the uni-versalistic understanding of civil society does not apply to post-colonial states, which deal with large parts of its people as governed populations. “It is the opposition between the universal ideal of civic nationalism, based on individual freedoms and equal rights irrespective of dis-tinctions of religion, race, language, or culture, and the particular demands of cultural identity, which call for the differential treatment of particular groups on grounds of vulnerability or backwardness or historical injustice, or indeed for numerous other reasons” (Chatterjee, 2004:

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4). Therefore, he differentiates between ‘citizen’ and ‘population’. Citizens are right-bearing subjects who ought to govern themselves, whereas population refers to the large section of inhabitants with disadvantageous location with regard to property relations, or due to their re-ligious minority status, as targets of social, economic, and legal policies, or political mobiliza-tion, and is looked after or controlled by the state. Citizens possess property, have certain rights, pay taxes, and have close links with the state that, in turn, works in their interest. They can deploy civil and institutional forms to access the resources they need to live. Hence, “rights belong to those who have proper legal title to the lands and buildings” (Chatterjee, 2004: 69). In contrast, the population is denied the rights and entitlements of citizenship (e.g. housing, water, electricity) because they are seen as violating the law from the very beginning, as their claims to land, as squatters, are considered illegitimate. As a result, they are treated differently, because if they were to be given any kind of legitimacy by the government authorities in their ‘illegal’ land occupation of private or public land, the whole structure of ‘legally’ held property would be threatened. Instead, the city and its public spaces should be reclaimed for the ‘proper’ citizens. Other, more flexible strategies and policies are implemented by the state to satisfy the needs of the population, for instance, in exchange for votes (Chatterjee, 2004).

While agreeing with Chatterjee that the western concept of citizenship does not apply to Mumbai, Nikhil Anand (2017) criticizes his categories as too rigid. Instead, he suggests to understand Mumbai’s residents better as “dividuals – fractal persons who have several worlds of relationships that are constitutive of the social and political worlds they inhabit” (Anand, 2017: 71). They can be recognized by the state simultaneously as citizens (e.g. in elections), as illegal occupants (e.g. squatting on public land), and as customers (e.g. of the privatized elec-tricity utility). Therefore, the political subject is plural, being “composed of a multiplicity of social, personal, and political relations that make life possible in the city” (Anand, 2017: 71). In order to be seen as deserving subjects by the state, settlers have to mobilize and maintain “personal relationships with city administrators, political representatives, ‘big men’, and social workers, but also mobilize the forms and norms of citizenship - voting, rallying, and protesting” (Anand, 2017: 72). By acting “beyond the registers of civil society” (ibid.) in form of social relations of patronage and friendship, settlers receive access to city services such as water sup-ply. This implies, in turn, the lack of these relations inevitably leads to an exclusion and denial of these services. In the following, I will explain why certain groups are said to face more difficulties in mobilizing these relations than others.

Lines of marginalization

Swyngedouw writes that water becomes subject to an intense struggle along class, gender, and ethnic divides. In India, this statement needs to be expanded with caste and religious divides. Traditionally, the Hindu society (but to some extent also Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and Buddhist communities) is stratified into different castes. While it is controversial what caste actually means (Roy, 2008), it led to a hierarchy in society that justified the discrimination and exclusion of lower castes, in particular the Dalits (‘Untouchables’). Besides Dalits, the indigenous people, also called ‘Adivasi’, were historically discriminated and disadvantaged (Bijoy, 2003). Since India’s independence, various government initiatives were implemented to redress the profound deprivation and discrimination of the ‘scheduled castes and tribes’ as they are labeled by the government (Simpson et al., 2018). Different studies show that discrimination based on caste and tribe remains a problem, particularly in rural areas, but also in urban areas, albeit to a lesser extent. (Girard, 2018; Khubchandani et al., 2018).

Moreover, India is characterized by so-called ‘inter-communal’ conflicts between dif-ferent religious groups (Simpson et al., 2018). Since India’s independence and its subsequent division into the states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there have been tensions, in particular

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between the Muslims and the Hindus.9

From time to time, these tensions manifested as violent clashes between the communities that further reinforced the divide. Mumbai has repeatedly been a location rife with these conflicts. In particular, the 1992-1993 riots between Hindus and Muslims following the demolition of the sixteenth-century mosque Babri Masjid in Ayodha, which was located on a sacred site for Hindus, culminated in tragic bomb attacks on March 12th

, 1993, and disrupted the city long-lastingly. Besides hundreds of deaths, it increased the mistrust and animosity between the communities and led to increased religious segregation where Mus-lims and Hindus left mixed settlements for settlements, where they constituted the majority (Anand, 2012). Furthermore, the riots facilitated the rise of the regional political party ‘Shiv Sena’ that is said to be xenophobic, nativist, Hindu-nationalist, and Marathi-centered, (Appa-durai 2000; Hansen 2001; Graham et al., 2013).10

The party which came into power in 1995 shortly after the riots, in which they were allegedly involved by invoking violence against Mus-lims (Srikrishna Commission, 1998), introduced laws that specifically target MusMus-lims. As a political movement, it is said to be part of a “wider marginalization and disproportionate tar-geting of Muslim groups in the city […], [and the] demolition of or infrastructure denial and removal to Muslim settlements” (Graham et al., 2013: 122). Moreover, it propagated the view that “immigrants in informal settlements are the main reason for Maharashtrians being unem-ployed, and has consistently invoked the figures of the migrant and the Muslim as a source of crime and social disorder” (ibid.), who is not ‘loyal’ to Mumbai. Here this discourse connects with the perceptions that the municipal water shortages faced by many of Mumbai’s middle-class residents are caused by slum dwellers.

As Muslim settlers often tend to live in settlements that are poorly (or not at all) sup-plied, they make ‘illegal’ connections and/or use illegal booster pumps to increase the pressure in order to access water (Anand, 2012).11

This in turn, reinforces the image of the ‘criminal’ Muslim and ‘outsider’ undeserving of city services, and justifies the demolition of unofficial pipes and settlements, which is reflected in the “religious and ethnic biases of Mumbai’s mu-nicipal officials and the police” (Graham et al., 2013: 128). Moreover, the lack of water leads to a less maintained public space in the settlements, which then leads to (or rather reinforces) the perception of them as not behaving as a ‘good public’ and as being ‘dirty’ (Anand, 2011). Thus, settlers are being divided on the basis of “everyday cultural-political understanding of

9_{This does not imply that there were no conflicts prior to independence, or between other religious groups such}

as Hindus and Sikhs or Christians. However, since the division, Muslims are sometimes accused of being loyal to Pakistan, with which India had a series of wars and conflicts, instead of India, and, therefore, do not belong to India.

10_{Initially, in the 1950s, the Shiv Sena started as a movement that campaigned for the creation of a}

Marathi-speaking state with Bombay as its capital out of the Bombay Presidency, and, thereby, invoked resentments against Gujaratis, who, as second major linguistic group in Mumbai (back then Bombay), also claimed Mumbai to become the capital of their new linguistic state. After succeeding, the Shiv Sena constantly urged Mumbai’s Marathi speak-ers to see the city as theirs. Every few years, a new enemy was found among the city’s minorities: South Indians white-collar workers, Sikhs businessmen, and North Indians cab drivers. Finally, as part of a more general ten-dency in India in the 1980 that was most notably represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena adopted a Hindutva (or Hindu-nationalist) stance with new radical anti-Muslim strategies (Appadurai 2000; Han-sen 2001). In particular, Muslims from Northern India were accused of cherishing a pro-Pakistan affinity, and posing a danger to India (Björkman, 2014).

11_{This is not to say that all Muslims are poor and live in undersupplied settlements. Some Muslim communities,}

for instance the Dawoodi Bohra, are said to be well-educated, prosperous, and affluent. Also, some of the most successful Bollywood stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are Muslim. However, on average Muslims tend to be more impoverished, and are disproportionally often imprisoned compared to their amount in society (Shaban, 2008). This might stem from them being disproportionally target, and/or from their high involvement in Mumbai’s underworld. After the 1992-1993 riots, similar to Mumbai’s settlements, the underworld split into Mus-lim and Hindu gangs. Nowadays, one of the biggest and most notorious, the ‘D-Company’, which is accused of being the string puller of the 1993 bomb blasts, is predominantly Muslim (Weinstein, 2008).

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‘native place’, religion, and region” (Anand, 2012: 497) by technocrats in the city. As the “[p]owerful nativist political parties in the city have consistently pointed to Mumbai’s limited resources (especially water)” (Anand, 2017: 58), they advocate for excluding ‘outsiders’ from the city. These are poorer migrant populations that are seen to disrupt the order and infrastruc-ture of the city. “Instead, through laws and policies, water is constituted as an entitlement that is ‘granted’ by the city administration only when a person ‘belongs’ to the city” (ibid.).

As a result, settlers that are Muslim and/or non-Marathi face severe difficulties, or are unable to form relations with and and apply pressure to engineers and councilors in order to receive official connection, or have the existing properly maintained. This is particularly a prob-lem, if the settlement is located in a larger electoral district that is governed by the Shiv Sena, which focusses their attentions on projects in adjacent Marathi-Hindu settlements (Anand, 2011). It is said that supporters of the Shiv Sena have made “significant qualitative improve-ments to their material infrastructures by claiming the services of the state through their elected patron politicians” (Anand, 2012: 491). Other settlers are compelled to make different arrange-ments to satisfy their need for water as a result of the undersupply and exclusion from official water connections (Anand, 2012).

In these cases, it usually is the women (or children) of poorer households that have to fetch the water and/or transport it home. This points to the ways in which “gender and class are interpellated in the everyday work of water collection” (Anand, 2012: 493). The access to water in Mumbai is marked by religion, ethnicity, age, gender, and class differences. The geographies of water provision and access across and within urban settlements in Mumbai need to be un-derstood as “profoundly diverse and contingent on various social, economic, political, institu-tional, technological, and historical processes” (McFarlane & Desai, 2015: 442). Even though certain settlements have the legal rights to services, their sense of entitlement towards these might depend on and be shaped by existing power relations alongside class, ethnicity, religion, caste, and gender. However, these sites of entitlement are not fixed, and are constantly reshaped through interactions between diverse actors (McFarlane & Desai, 2015).

Theoretical model and research questions

Following these explanations, it is possible two distinguish two major strands of reasoning for the inequality of Mumbai’s water supply. Besides the technical issues that affect the system as a whole, and, therefore, do not directly account for the diverging states of water provision, legal exclusion due to an alleged water scarcity and discourses that frame ‘slums’, in general, as a nuisance, criminal, and the causer of water scarcity is one prevalent reasoning in the literature. It is argued that due to a lack of notification and/or disputes over jurisdiction between the central government and the BMC certain settlements are (or historically were) excluded from munici-pal services (Murthy, 2012; Subbaraman et al., 2012; Subbaraman & Murthy, 2015). On the other side, another prevalent reasoning sees the (low) social status and marginalization of cer-tain settlements as the main cause for their exclusion from official provision (Anand, 2012; Graham et al, 2013; Swyngedouw 2004). More than the legal status, the relations with local councilors and other influential persons matter, which are, in turn, dependent on the social sta-tus of the settlers (Anand, 2012; Anand 2017). Against this backdrop, my thesis intends to study the uneven water provision in the city of Mumbai, India. It intends to inquire:

Why are the settlements of Mumbai so unequally provided with water, and why are some set-tlements excluded from the official distribution network, while others have access?

How do people access/connect to water (supply), and what are the causes for the diverging states in the different settlements?

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By answering these question, my research intends to analyze which conditions affect the water provision in Mumbai’s settlements. It wants to contribute to the understanding of what influ-ences the adequacy of water provision. Following Subbaraman et al. (2015) measurements for household water poverty, adequacy of provision is understood in terms of quality, quantity, regularity (reliability), access (distance and travel time to water source), affordability (price), and equity (discrimination with regards to access and price). In order to do this, I look into the role of questions surrounding legal exclusion with regards to land contestation, the social status of settlements, and other factors that might influence the provision with water (see Figure 1). In the following, I will present the methodological framework I applied for doing that.

Figure 1. Theoretical model for adequacy of water provision

Methodology

Taking into account the profound inequalities, the sheer size and diversity of Mumbai12_{, it} makes sense to understand Mumbai as several cities within one city. Consequently, my research wants to contribute to the emerging body of intra-urban comparison. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a method with its underlying ontology is a good fit for intra-urban compari-son and the understanding of Mumbai as a space of many urban worlds. The initial plan was to employ a QCA to research Mumbai’s scattered and unequal water supply. However, it proved itself less straight forward to implement a ‘standard’ QCA due to the interrelation of the iden-tified conditions. Instead, I employed two-level theory, a concept that corresponds with the

12_{According to the 2011 census, Mumbai’s metropolitan area had a population of 18,394,912, while a more recent}

estimation quantifies it with 22,046,000 (World Population Review, 2018). The biggest ethnic/lingual group is Marathi (~42%), % followed by Gujarati (~19%), while people from other areas of India such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab in North India, and Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka in South India account for the rest. About 66% profess to be Hindu, 21% Muslim, 5% Buddhist, 4 % Jain, 3% Christian, and less than 1% Parsis (Zoroas-trian), Sikhs, Jews, and atheists (Population Census, 2011).

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basic assumptions of QCA, and has the same origins, but conceptualizes causalities over dif-ferent levels (or pathways). This way, it was possible to take the interrelation of conditions into account by conceptualizing them on different levels, and develop pathways that explain the adequacy of water provision. In this chapter, I will, therefore, briefly introduce the idea of intra-urban comparison, the approach and assumptions of QCA, which it shares with two level the-ory, outline my data collection and the limitations I faced. Finally, I will introduce two level theory as a concept that is helpful to detect pathways.

Intra-urban comparison

In recent times, the field of urban studies has advocated to include more cities within one re-search project to get a more plural and nuanced understanding of urbanism. Indeed, a lot can be gained by comparing different cities with each other by examining how “relations to multiple ‘elsewheres’ impact urban political economies, governance, and culture” (McFarlane et al., 2016: 2), in order to contribute to the “attempts to build a more global understanding of cities” (ibid.). Nevertheless, my research focuses on one city by doing an intra-urban comparison of different settlements within Mumbai. Intra-urban comparisons can generate “new perspectives in which both similarity and difference need to be reworked within the context of one city, and its componentary relationality to other cities” (ibid.). Hence, intra-urban comparison provides a “complementary, rather than oppositional, effort to inter-urban comparison” (ibid.: 3). Thereby, it contributes to the comparative project by specifically “illuminating how a city is less of a unitary construction and more a space of many urban worlds” (ibid.: 2). Intra-urban comparison reveals “radical differences in both the access to and the experience of infrastruc-ture within a city” (ibid. 3), by emphasizing “the ways infrastrucinfrastruc-tures and resulting politics are shaped through the diversity of lived experiences, neighborhood and city histories, cultural practices, power constellations, and socio-environmental conditions” (ibid. 20). In that way, it can expose “different kinds of urban politics across the city” (ibid. 3). This means that not only the access differs, but the political configurations themselves may be extremely diverse. Thus, intra-urban comparison can reveal that “despite the apparent commonalities shared by similar neighborhoods, very different worlds and associated politics exist” (ibid. 21), and “highlight the plurality of life experiences of groups that are too often lumped into slum life and assumed to face similar problems, interventions, and futures” (ibid.)

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was initially developed by Charles Ragin (1987) as a hybrid method to link qualitative and quantitative research by combining the detailed richness of intensive case studies with the large number of variable oriented methods that allow gener-alization. Since its emergence, it has been subject to continuous development and upgrading, leading to different variants of QCA (Wagemann & Schneider, 2013). In its essence, QCA fuses Boolean (or fuzzy) algebra and minimization algorithms with the aim to “systematically com-pare cases and derive solutions consisting of one or more patterns of conditions that when pre-sent or abpre-sent are uniquely associated with the presence or absence of an outcome” (Cragun et al., 2016: 251-252). It provides the ability to better understand “the configurational pathways needed for reaching an outcome” (Chari et al., 2016: 5495). Therefore, it follows a set-theoretic approach based on the idea that attributes of cases can be evaluated by “set membership that is assigned whether or to what degree a case satisfies criteria for a specific outcome or condition” (Cragun et al., 2016: 252). In contrast to traditional quantitative regression analysis, QCA con-ceives causality as complex. Relationships of conditions and outcome can be asymmetric and

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non-linear. This means that “the explanation of the presence of a phenomenon […] does not imply that the inverted explanation automatically accounts for the absence of the same phe-nomenon” (Wagemann & Schneider, 2012: 385). That is why, “the presence and the absence of a phenomenon are examined in two different analyses” (ibid.). Furthermore, it comprises the possibility of equifinality, “whereby different combinations of conditions [in different cases] can lead to the same outcome” (Cragun et al., 2016: 252). Connected to the idea of equifinality is conjunctural causation. Sometimes, “a condition exerts its effect not alone, but only in bination with one or more other conditions” (Wagemann & Schneider, 2010: 384). These com-binations of conditions are either sufficient (only in certain cases they are associated with an outcome) or necessary (in all cases associated with an outcome; or where we find Y we also find X) (Wagemann & Schneider, 2010). Necessary conditions can also be sufficient (the com-bination alone is always associated with an outcome) or insufficient (the comcom-bination requires additional conditions to be associated with an outcome) (Cragun et al., 2016).

Initial research plan

Following this understanding, the initial plan of the research project was to identify conditions that are associated with a specific outcome regarding water provision in Mumbai’s settlements. These conditions and outcomes were intended to be used for a QCA on water provision. As QCA aims to identify conditions that cause the absence or presence of a specific outcome, in this case an adequate, safe, affordable, and reliable water provision by the municipal water corporation, the research intended to draw on data that describes the situation and development concerning water provision in settlements in Mumbai. From this data, conditions and specific outcomes should be derived and processed, so they could eventually be organized in a truth table to perform a QCA. Accordingly, the plan was to use data on Mumbai’s settlements that is readily available, in order to determine if specific conditions and outcomes are present in certain cases. However, the data on settlement level required for this was not accessible.13

Instead, after consulting with other researchers who research similar topics in Mumbai, I decided to go in person to selected settlements in Mumbai, and assess their states and composition on-site.

Data collection

Between November 2017 and January 2018, a total of 12 settlements in the Municipal Corpo-ration of Greater Mumbai (BMC) were visited, and their states (level and mode of water supply,

13_{Every 10 years, the Indian government conducts an extensive country-wide census (the last was 2011) that}

includes questions on the main source of water supply, material of the house, and religious, scheduled caste and tribe background of the residents amongst other variables. Therefore, fine-grained data on settlement-level should be, theoretically, available. Unfortunately, the census bureau only releases the accumulated data on district, city, and ward level, and refuses to give more detailed data on particular neighborhoods. Hence, the only official data readily available for the city of Mumbai is on a ward level. In a city like Mumbai with a population of over 18 million, according to the last census, a ward can have up to 1 million residents. This means that a ward is usually composed of very different neighborhoods from slums, to middle class residencies, up to upper-class societies, which are often located in close proximity to each other (Anand, 2017). Accordingly, this data can only inform about a general trend within a ward, but does not allow a close-up look on specific pockets, as this research intends (see Map 1). Furthermore, the data does not indicate the amount of households that are notified or not, but only the ownership status of the house (owner, rented, or other) and its size. Apparently, there is no public list indicating the notification status of a settlement, as, theoretically, the notification happens on the household level. Moreover, settlers in notified settlements sometimes let out portions of their homes to new renters to provide themselves with an additional source of income. As a result, Mumbai’s settlements, even those that are recognized, simultaneously contain many diverse times and spaces of legality that are difficult to map or know (Anand, 2017).

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overall impression based on appearance and architecture, notification according to government regulations, age, location) and compositions (with regard to religion, caste, ethnic background, political support/voting behavior) were assessed. For this, following the insights from the liter-ature, I developed a list of conditions to assess the settlements (see Appendix 2). Nevertheless, I tried to stay open to other factors that I did not foresee but were of relevance as well. The settlements were selected on the basis of accessibility and assumed diversity in their fabric due to significant differences in condition, official recognition, religion, ethnicity, caste, and water supply. I sampled, in particular, cases with diverging notification and states of water provision. Access to the field was made possible through the help of a local water rights movement called ‘Pani Haq Samiti’ (‘water rights campaign’) that is active in certain settlements, as well as fellow researchers that were conducting research in settlements. The 12 settlements that were studied are located in different parts all over the city (see Map 2).

These were:

• Ambojwadi in Malad West

• Chuna Pada in Sanjay Gandhi Nationals Park

• Coal Bunder (Bombay Port Trust Authority) in Mazgaon • Ganpat Patil Nagar in Dahisar West

• Geeta Nagar in Colaba • Jyotiba Phule Nagar in Powai • Kranti Nagar in Kandiwali East • Mandala in Mankhurd

• Railway Transit Camp in Mankhurd

• Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar in Bandhup West • Siddhard Nagar in Andheri West

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The unequal water supply of Mumbai : how the social status affects the access to adequate water provision

Research Master’s Urban Studies

The Unequal Water Supply of Mumbai

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