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Kerala’s move to turn water over to the private sector promises to complicate the scarcity problem

Over 15 years as a journalist in Kerala, I have heard many tales of how the Tamil Nadu government has spent large sums of money over its never-ending Mullaperiyar dam water dispute with Kerala. There have been unconfirmed stories of budget allocations of crores under heads like ‘arbitration’ to bribe Kerala’s bureaucrats. But these were always in the realm of gossip. Recently, something unusual happened that provided a confirmation of sorts. Kerala’s director of intelligence, Additional Director General of Police TP Senkumar reported that a Malayalee named Unnikrishnan had been involved in spying for Tamil Nadu. His report said that this man, an officer in the Tamil government’s public relations department, was ‘highly influential’ and had access to confidential files on water sharing in the state secretariat. One had heard of espionage between countries, but this was probably the first time that two states of the Indian Union were trading such allegations.

Tamil Nadu’s motivations may be understood in the context of its acute water scarcity. It is drought-hit and these stories indicate its desperate efforts to address a basic need. Kerala, which is on its way to a similar scarcity, has taken an entirely different approach in trying to resolve its water crisis. In a significant policy shift, it recently made a move to privatise the state’s water supply system. This is likely to make it considerably more costly for consumers at large. They are worried. Water is currently under the Kerala Water Authority, a statutory body of the government. But a December 2012 government order said that a private company would now have the exclusive power to set its tariff.

That order left open the question of how anybody could be authorised to charge for something that is produced by nobody. “It is not a commodity to be purchased,” says NK Premachandran, who was minister for water resources under Kerala’s previous LDF government. “We had taken measures to strengthen the Kerala Water Authority and expand its outreach. This government is trying to gradually abolish it.”

Tamil Nadu’s WATER scarcity is not hard to comprehend because its main source of water is the northeast monsoon. Kerala’s shortage, however, is difficult to fathom. Given its natural resources, it should be a water-surplus state. It has 44 rivers, a long coastline, and gets an average 300 cm of rainfall per year. Yet, its per capita water availability is less than that of Rajasthan. Residents of Kerala’s coastal belt, especially, have been facing a chronic water shortage. In summer, many families survive on as little as two or three pots of water a day. If handpumps fail, they resort to tanker deliveries. They use saline water to bathe, and to wash clothes they often make weekly visits to relatives who are better supplied with water.

Pushpa Shaji, a mother of two schoolgoing children, lives at Nayarambalam, a village close to the sea as well as Kochi’s backwaters. She gets up every hour at night to check if the public handpump has water. “I have even slept on the street near the handpump. I was not scared because I was not the only one,” she says. “We take baths in the sea and then use a pot of clean water to wash away the salt.”

Born and brought up in a village where there was no water crisis, Pushpa came to Nayarambalam after her marriage. A graduate in physics, she was working at a private company at the time. She gave up her job because she had to spend most of her time near a public tap waiting for water. “There are many women like me who gave up their careers for this reason.” Take the daily routine of Ajitha Somraj, a bank employee living in Vypin, an island in the backwaters: she gets up at three in the morning, collects water and finishes all her household work before seven, and then, “I have to rush to the bus stop to reach my office on time.”

Manual handpumps are the only source of water in most of Kerala’s coastal villages. Digging a well is of no use because of high water salinity. The flow of water through handpumps is limited to five or six hours a day. In the rural backwaters of Kochi, an average of 35 families depend on each handpump.

Privatisation is not a move they welcome. “We don’t get sufficient water even from the government. How can we expect a private investor to do better?” asks Sheeja Venugopal of Vypin Panchayat. She believes that a private company will be motivated by profit rather than the people’s interest. Says NA Jain, a member of Nayarambalam panchayat, “There had been proposals by private companies to establish desalination plants in our locality earlier, but the cost of water purification is 39 paise per litre. This is not feasible. The fishermen community in the village cannot afford it.”

Not everyone is averse to privatisation. Says Bindu Vergheese, an LIC agent at Njarakkal, a panchayat adjacent to Vypin: “Now we don’t get water at all. If we are sure we will get it if we pay, then what is wrong in it?” People in rural areas and coastal villages have a valid point when they say that the government discriminates against them. “There is uninterrupted water supply to flats in the city,” says Jain, “Only we have to bear the brunt of water shortage in the rivers.”

The Kerala Water Authority is able to meet the water needs of 70 per cent of the state’s urban population and 40 per cent of its rural. It claims to have provided 1.2 million piped water connections to households across the state so far. Still, wells remain the major source of water in the state; there are 250 of them for every square kilometre. “Water is not something that can be sold. The Water Authority does not charge for the water being supplied, but we impose a very nominal fee for processing water. It is less than the actual cost of the purification and distribution process,” says Mohan Kumar, secretary of the Water Authority Employees Union and convener of a recently formed Committee for Protection of Water Resources.

The state’s average monthly household consumption of water is 10,000 litres. The Authority charges Rs 42 for 10,000 litres of water supplied to Above Poverty Line families; there is hardly any levy on BPL families. Privatisation, many fear, will change that.

The Government order on privatisation, dated 31 December 2012, asked for the formation of a company on the model of Cochin International Airport Ltd. The government would hold 49 per cent of its shares and the rest would be privately held. This ‘public-private partnership’ firm was to be entrusted with the state’s water distribution system—in effect eclipsing the Kerala Water Authority. The order said: ‘The Company will function as a single nodal agency for constructing, developing, maintaining and operating community based drinking water supply plants across the state.’ All panchayats, municipalities and corporations were to be covered under this scheme by 2016.

As soon as people realised the implications of the order, there were state-wide protests, even within the ruling party. “I came to know about it from the media, it was a very dangerous move,” says VD Satheeshan, Congress MLA. He has registered his dissent openly. “I told the Chief Minister that the government has no authority to make water a saleable commodity.” Within the ruling Congress party, many others have taken a similar line. The Water Authority Employees Union has also launched a state-wide stir.

In the face of such resistance, a revised order was issued on 15 April, diluting the provisions. The new one also asks for the setting up of a company, but now it will have control over only those resources that are not used by the Kerala Water Authority. The company will also bottle and distribute bottled drinking water, drawing water from abandoned quarries, ponds, brackish sources and so on. The opposition calls it an eyewash.

“What is the need of a new private company to collect water from such sources and bottle it? A bottling plant with a capacity of 7,500 litres per hour was under construction at Aruvikkara in Thiruvananthapuram by the Kerala Water Authority. It had similar schemes at all district headquarters,” says Mohan Kumar.

Kerala’s Chief Minister Oommen Chandy recently told the media that consumers will have to pay 25 paise per litre under the new company. “That means Rs 2,500 for 10,000 litres. How can the government justify such [high] pricing of drinking water?” asks Kumar. Dr MK Prasad, environmental activist and chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Drinking Water, says the example of Delhi—which has involved private companies in water supply processes—shows how it will affect consumers. “The Delhi Jal Board has already imposed a hike in tariff,” he says, “Even BPL families have to pay a high price for water in Delhi.”

Environmentalists in Kerala do not buy the argument that the new company would only use sources that the Authority does not. Purushan Eloor, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Periyar, says, “There is only one source for groundwater.

How can we make such clear distinctions of the source? The new company may not take water from the Periyar, which is a source used by the Water Authority, but what is the difference if the company draws water from another source near the river?”

Similar attempts to commercialise water have been made in the past too. In 2002, the UDF government showcased a ‘river for sale’ project at a Global Investors Meet in Kochi. It invited private investors to start commercial drinking water projects and offered to sell the Periyar’s water. The project was shelved after criticism came in from all over. The recently issued government orders suggest that privatisation is still on the agenda. The government has already asked the managing director of the Kerala Water Authority to submit Articles of Association and Memorandum of Association for the proposed company in a fortnight. Around 11 companies from Israel have submitted proposals to establish desalination and distribution plants in Kerala.

Kerala’s water future looks terribly uncertain. Annual rainfall has been showing a sharply declining trend and ground water depletion is alarmingly high. Wetlands are also fast diminishing under the state’s population pressure. Absence of waste water management schemes, the death of paddy fields, deforestation, contamination of ground water and over-exploitation of rivers by the sand industry—both legal and illegal—are other factors that environmentalists think will soon leave Kerala drier than ever thought possible. What would be the impact of a profit-oriented private enterprise in such a scenario? An MLA of the ruling party puts it bluntly: “God’s Own Country is expediting its journey to hell.”

About The Author

Shahina KK