Why Delhi's Water Sector Needs Structural Reforms

The situation could have been straight out of a black comedy. Political leader A accused a rival party of poisoning the city's river upstream.

- Vandana Bhatnagar

Leader B, in a dramatic rebuttal, took a sip of the river water to prove otherwise. Leader A then claimed his opponent merely put the water in his mouth and spat it out. This spectacle isn't a satire, as most of us would know by now.

Rather, it was the political drama surrounding Delhi's water crisis in the lead-up to the assembly elections. Over the past few months, water became a dominant theme in Delhi's poll discourse of maligning the rival. Apart from river water (Yamuna) pollution, the shortfalls in raw water supply, stranglehold of the water-tanker mafia, monsoon flooding leading to deaths, erratic billing, unreliable supply, financial mismanagement and corruption were part of the water-sector accusations and counters. These are, of course, real issues and need governance and managerial solutions. But, instead, they seem to have been reduced to mere political battlegrounds.