UC Irvine

Access to adequate, timely, and reliable supply of good quality water is fundamental to survival and well-being of human beings. However, a large part of the global population, including population of megacities of the world, is denied access to water. Conflict over water-access has been a historical phenomenon in Mumbai, one of the global megacities in India. Such conflict still persists in the city especially over denial of access to the formal water supply network to residents of slum colonies, even though the city has abundant water supply and adequate financial resources.

This doctoral dissertation investigates persistence of this water-access conflict in the city of Mumbai. While accepting the theoretical lens of political ecology, the dissertation adopts the methodological approach that involves eliciting, re-articulating, and analysing narratives around the issue of water-access of key actors who influence water-access policies. Narratives, here, are normative accounts deployed by actors around a contested issue. Such narratives comprise articulation of positions of these actors on the issue and justification of these positions. Often, these also include criticisms of positions of other actors.

The field work for this research involved multi-round and extended semi-structured interviews—conducted over a period of ten months—of sixty-four respondents representing different key actor-groups. The data collected was analysed parallelly using the thematic analysis technique and NVivo, the qualitative data analysis software.

Twelve narratives emerging from data have the following central themes: (i) Human Rights, (ii) Right to City, (iii) Legality of Tenements, (iv) Structure and Spatiality of Tenements, (v) Planning Lacunas, (vi) Technical Barriers (vii) Techno-Fixes, (viii) Economic and Financial Barriers, (ix) Commodification and Privatization, (x) Slum-Dwellers as Free-Riders, (xi) Slum-Dwellers as Thieves, (xii) Mafia, Profiteers, and Nexus. These narratives are divided in four substantive groupings, titled: Rights, Tenements, Technology, and Economics.

Different actor-groups involved in this conflict strategically deploy these narratives in order to protect and promote their respective interests and values. Based on such strategies, these narratives are divided in four strategic groups called Narratives of Claim, of Denial, of Evasion, and of Excuse.

Starting with inequality and the conflict around water-access and using the theoretical lens of political ecology, this dissertation then presents politics, on the plane of narratives, around the water-access conflict. This politics manifests in terms of contestation among values and interests underlying these narratives as well as among strategic positions of different actors. The overall picture that emerges from this politics leads to the finding that the conflict around water-access on the plane of narratives is in the state of gridlock. The lens of political ecology is also used to bring out politics on the ground or on the plane of practice, operating in three different spheres—namely, politics of policy, politics of class, and politics of othering.

Further analysis of politics on both these planes leads to the main finding of the dissertation that persistence of the water-access conflict in Mumbai is rooted in the dynamic gridlock in politics around the conflict on both the planes. This dynamic gridlock is outcome, on the narrative plane, of the persisting clash among contending narratives that continuously learn and evolve, and, on the practice plane, of the enduring tussle among actor-groups deploying diverse strategies such as seeking endorsements from powerful institutions and actors as well as building coalitions and social movements.