The struggles of the aam aadmi in ensuring a few hours of reliable quality water supply every day to meet basic requirements needs no introduction. The recent war cries around water and its new-found tag of being the next ?oil? doesn?t seem to have catapulted water to centrestage, yet. Other natural resources, like spectrum and coal mines, occupy the top slot and hog the headlines. But for how much longer?

Fundamental to the issue is understanding what drives water shortage in our cities and towns. Reasons abound, and most of them, self inflicted. Water governance, or rather the absence of it, would, without doubt, lead the pack. Irrational tariff structures, capacity issues and non-existence of a regulatory framework all play their part in contributing to the now well-clich?d ?vicious cycle of poor service and poor finances?. To top it all, is the focus on doing more projects, with service outcomes taking a backstage.

Pockets of success are emerging. And increasingly more and more of them. Examples of public sector water utilities innovating to deliver better services are surfacing. The private sector has also begun to show interest, with about 20 PPPs in the water sector operational on the ground, and PPP contracts covering over 50 lakh people in urban areas, up from about 5 lakh in 2004. These initial successes indicate that people are more interested in ?what you deliver? and not ?who delivers it?. The debate on whether continuous water supply is indeed needed for supposedly ?water scare? cities and towns appears to be easing off, with most projects now being taken up in a 24×7 mode.

Even with these success stories throwing interesting pointers on water delivery, it will be a long drawn-out effort to transform the water scenario in India. There is increasing realisation that the big-bang water concessionaire-type contracts used internationally in the 1990s might not be the way to go in India. The challenges are so complex and localised that it would be worthwhile to grab the low-hanging fruits that could very well deliver better bang for the buck?lower capital investment, quicker results and relative ease of implementation. These successes must then be placed within a more holistic view of water management. Two locally driven initiatives and two macro-policy directions could be considered.

Among the local initiatives, first focus on asset management. Often lost in the glamour of eye-catching new projects, the merits of improving the state of existing assets are not on the radar of decisionmakers. How many cities and towns have an inventory of their assets that are delivering water services? Are they being used optimally? A recent paper highlights that JNNURM funding for water in some cities is between 15-50 times its revenue for 2009-10, raising questions on how to recover the high investments upfront for long-term projects and, more importantly, link these investments with the desired service outcomes. In most cases, citizens have no role in water planning. Identifying assets, ascertaining their efficiency levels, reviving them and placing them within the overall scheme of water delivery, with active citizen participation, should be pursued.

Surat, for example, put in place a number of internal initiatives, like standardised procedures, quality control systems, online monitoring systems, an emergency response centre and dedicated teams for predictive and preventive measures. Nagpur has undertaken the rehabilitation of its sewage treatment plants in a PPP mode. Likewise, water distribution improvement projects offer greater impact than projects that create extra new freshwater supply for the city, where metering, and hours of supply increase significantly as a result of reduced non-revenue water (NRW). Many Indian cities operate at NRW levels of about 40-50% as against the standard of 20% (the public sector water utility in Phnom Phen, Cambodia?s capital, operates with an NRW of about 6%). Addressing these leakages can perhaps be the biggest win for the urban water sector (though may not be the easiest to implement). Creating an ecosystem for innovations can bring in local entrepreneurs to contribute to water management in cities. Provided adequate attention is given, asset management offers opportunities for both frugal engineering and micro-solutions that can be very handy for resource strapped ULBs.

Second, drive demand-side management (DSM) initiatives. Singapore, using a number of instruments like water pricing, a dedicated water conservation unit, the use of water efficient devices, labeling of devices based on water efficiency, and public education and communication, has reduced per capital domestic water consumption from 165 liters per day in 2003 to the current 153 litres, with a target to lower it to 140 litres by 2030. What is important to note is that it took Singapore over two decades to achieve the kind of results that makes it a pioneer in water conservation today. DSM initiatives cannot be initiated by the mere availability of capital; it requires an intense period of educating and communicating with the public. Only if we start serious efforts on demand side management now, will the results become visible in the medium to long term. The recent launch of IDFC?s India Infrastructure Report on Water was followed up by an engagement with college students in Mumbai on aspects of water awareness and conservation. The enthusiasm from the next-gen was truly heartening. Each city should launch its own water conservation campaign, built on the foundations of a vision for long-term sustainability and strong stakeholder participation. Consider this: by shortening the duration of water usage, people can save 9 litres of water per minute in the shower and 8 litres of water per minute in the kitchen sink. A series of well thought-out, bottom up campaigns will automatically catapult water as a national priority.

Turning to the two policy directions. First, water management must be placed within the overall framework of public health. Over 50 million people in urban India defecate in the open every day, millions of children suffer from water-borne diseases and only about 30% of the waste water generated in cities with over one lakh population gets treated. In many small cities and towns, untreated waste water is used for irrigation of vegetables. The health implications of such mismanagement of water are both fatal and costly. One way of incorporating a health dimension to water planning in cities is by linking water supply infrastructure creation with sewerage infrastructure creation and a plan for water reuse. With the many water projects in the pipeline, tying up the value chain with adequate sewage treatment infrastructure becomes even more critical.

The second policy consideration is about defining water rights. Well-defined rights of individuals would make it obligatory on utilities to deliver. Financial resources, or the lack of it, cannot then be used as an excuse by water utilities, which will be forced to innovative and secure the finances. Such an approach could possibly provide the window to develop appropriate pricing without affecting the poor and make tariff rationalisation more politically palatable. If utilities fail to deliver, citizens would then have a mechanism to take urban local bodies/water utilities to court. Such a rights regime is missing today.

The challenges of providing water to India?s growing urban population and nurturing clean and healthy cities are well known. Sidestepping the issues in the hope of a silver bullet emerging at some point in time in the future is no answer. City administrators must grab the low-hanging fruits and gain the confidence of its citizenry, to be able to then usher tougher reforms and sustainable institutional mechanisms. As we celebrate World Water Day today, intent is the need of the hour.

The author is with IDFC?s Policy Group. Views are personal