Municipal water schemes in a Mumbai squatter settlement: assembling space and society

Abstract

Government legislation designed to address the lack of basic services in squatter settlements in Mumbai, India, triggered the formation of local self-organised groups to implement municipal water access and distribution schemes. In one such settlement, the implementation and administration of these water networks intermixed with fertile local political and economic networks. The relationships that emerged from these conditions play an integral role in the social and spatial ordering of the settlement's development. The resulting water assemblages, composed of hybrid social actors, are flexible enough to accommodate the fluid spatiality of the settlement. However, this flexibility exacts a heavy toll from residents who receive minimal amounts of water and experience repeated disruptions in service. Residents' suffering is accentuated by present-day efforts to leverage the power over water access to redevelop the settlement through corporate and state actors.

Keywords:

• squatter settlement
• Mumbai
• water
• hybrid
• emergence
• assemblage
• network
• political
• urban
• space

1. Introduction

Mumbai, the second-largest city on Earth with nearly 20 million people, has historically suffered from a chronic inability to meet its demand for water (Gandy 2008). The 2009 monsoon, delivering the least water in almost 40 years to the growing megalopolis, led to a daily water shortfall of 400 million litres and resulted in strict measures to ration supplies in early 2010. The scarcity of water, both historically and presently, has not only led to social unrest and added difficulties for the populace, but contributes to the ordering of space and society. This article outlines the results of a field study conducted in Mumbai in two parts from 2008 to 2010 that examines the sociospatial development of a squatter settlement where control over access to water plays a defining role. The article deconstructs municipal water distribution networks operating in the settlement to identify the major components of the assemblages and the various roles they play. The article also traces the breadth of the networks to determine their sources of legitimacy and power. As such, the article demonstrates that the malleable connections between various actors associated with municipal water distribution schemes have allowed for the emergence of parallel relationships that produce land, livelihoods, election results and the power to constrain the action of others. Furthermore, responsibility for these emergent relations is distributed among state and corporate actors as well as informal organisations operating in the settlement. Thus, the article demonstrates that the social manipulation of water provision relies on the distributed agency of a number of actors and is a powerful lever in the constitution of urban space and society.

The argument proceeds by first laying out the conceptual framework, Mumbai's development context, and methodologies employed in the study (Section 2). This is followed by an investigation of the main components of the water network ecology (Section 3). I demonstrate that the fluid spatial framework of the settlement, coupled with a growing population, demands responsive and flexible water distribution networks, which, to their benefit, the municipal water schemes are able to provide. The following section (Section 4) investigates the roles played by state, non-governmental and multilateral actors including politicians, municipal workers, police and the World Bank. Next (Section 5), the distribution infrastructure is examined to identify irregularities and additions that work to the benefit of the administrators of the schemes. Section 6 details some of the techniques deployed within the water networks to suppress resident's discontent and prevent new schemes from developing. Section 7 examines how real estate developers are employing the water networks to chart the future redevelopment of the settlement.

2. Conceptual framework, development context and methodology

In large part, the notion of the ‘social’ in urban studies is relegated to the traditional domain of human experience. However, various philosophically diverse studies detailing the role nature and technology play in urban contexts suggest that non-human actors are integrally constitutive of urban environments (Graham and Marvin 2001; Whatmore 2002; Kaika 2004; Amin 2007). Such studies build on the theories of Haraway, Deleuze and Guattari, de Landa, Law, Latour and others who challenge the notion that the social is the exclusive domain of humans. Their work focuses on the hybrid nature of the social as a set of associations between humans, animals, objects and expressive elements in the constitution of space and society. The urban sociospace that emerges is thus composed of a web of temporary alignments of actors that perform their associations to produce improvisational arrangements, alignments and organisations.

From this perspective the city may be understood as an open and non-linear system composed of movements and flows of matter and energy through interconnected networks composed of hybrid social actors. The multiple flows interact and feedback with each other pushing and pulling the city from states of equilibrium to states far from equilibrium (de Landa 1997). Within this dynamic, functional structures may emerge to focus the system's behaviour without an external authority guiding them, suggesting some form of self-organisation (Bonata and Protevi 2004). These functional structures, in the terminology of Deleuze and Guattari, are assemblages, and it is this operational device that I employ to analyse water distribution schemes in the squatter settlement known as Ganesh Murthy Nagar.

An assemblage refers to a constellation of hybrid social actors and their reciprocal relations that are gathered into a functioning system. The associations between these components are relations of exteriority and this denotes a degree of autonomy between components (de Landa 2009). Importantly, however, components are also defined by their potential capacities, which are only realised in association with other components. Various components enable or constrain the potential capacity of those they are associated with. It is these relations of exteriority that allow for emergent relations to form, which ‘enables focused systematic behaviour through constraining the action of component parts’ (Bonata and Protevi 2004, p. 32).

The interdependence of components in an assemblage reconfigures common notions of agency, which are traditionally associated with a human's unique quality of intentionality through conscious will. Rather than understanding agency as a final outcome, an assemblage approach emphasises the distributed character of agency as an effect of performed associations of component parts in a functional structure. Understanding agency in this way emphasises performativity, process and relationality instead of the ‘final’ and ‘fixed’ character of a functional structure. This becoming ontology draws attention to novel and creatively contingent relations that may emerge between component parts. The identification of these trajectories are valuable for societies and city planning, for both their positive and negative outcomes.

The adoption of a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework and elements from Actor Network Theory, both developed in Europe, is not an attempt to superimpose Eurocentric ideas onto the developmental context of Mumbai. Rather, the movement of European ideas of what constitutes the social and how constituent elements function into the context of Mumbai follows studies that seek to generate theory and policies that are based on the experience of developing nations (Sanyal 1990; Roy 2003). The appropriateness of these ideas here is manifest in their focus on the ground-level interactions and processes between local actors, which in the case of squatter settlements, is particularly relevant. Whereas in European contexts the functioning of large technical systems, such as water distribution networks, are largely hidden from view; in Mumbai's squatter settlements, systems such as these are particularly apparent due to their mediation by local human actors. Due to contributing factors such as regulatory shortcomings, governmental complacency and widespread corruption, there is tremendous scope for local hybrid actors to accumulate power and manipulate space and society in squatter settlements. And in Mumbai, where half the population lives in squatter settlements, understanding the local interactions and processes of hybrid actors is a critical element to better understand how these societies function and how policy decisions may contribute to creating a just society.

2.1. Mumbai's development context

The city of Mumbai is here understood as an open and non-linear system. The city is open to local, national and global currents that enter into and out of the city, causing periods far from equilibrium. For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s Mumbai experienced housing shortages of 45,000 units per year as a result of migration to the city of people across India (Bhide 2009). The discrepancy between demand for and supply of formal housing resulted in a state far from equilibrium, which has been prolonged by continuing migration and natural reproduction of the urban society, in conjunction with the power of the market and state-directed forces to not meet this demand. The development of squatter settlements may thus be understood as self-organised assemblages that emerged to focus behaviour and bring the city's housing sector closer to a state of equilibrium.

Maharashtra state acknowledged that squatter settlements could contribute to such housing equilibrium in the 1970s and adopted legislation that facilitated the existence of squatter settlements by providing them access to essential services such as water and electricity. Concurrently, a series of influential ideas gleaned from field studies (Stokes 1962; Turner 1963, 1967; Abrams 1964) that promoted the idea of self-help programmes was adopted by the World Bank. The movement of these ideas from research conducted mainly in South America to Mumbai was effected through World Bank-funded programmes in the 1980s. The Slum Upradation Programme, initiated in 1983, in particular, structured community consent and participation into the process of leasing land and arranging for government subsidies and loans for infrastructure provision. Participatory programmes soon after migrated into Mumbai's general management strategies under the title of ‘community management systems’. Some of these strategies directed towards squatter settlement management triggered the formation of self-organised groups to administer and distribute essential services that were greatly lacking in squatter settlements. It is these assemblages of people, infrastructures and bureaucracies, in the form of water distribution systems, which are the focus of this article.

Currently, global economic, transportation and informational flows are compelling cities to compete for business opportunities, which continue to affect local sociospatial relations (Sassen 1991). Mumbai is now experiencing massive infrastructural development conducted under the rubric of making Mumbai a ‘world-class city’. Most of these programmes are designed to create a more favourable environment for business, in the form of economic zones, motorway flyovers and sea links for example, instead of creating better living conditions for the majority of the city's residents who live in squatter settlements. Furthermore, the necessity to pay for these projects has ushered in a ‘new urban politics’ informed by neoliberal policies (DeFilippis 2004; Wilson 2004). There is thus a shift in the urban mode of operation from a managerial to an entrepreneurial state (Swyngedouw 2005). This shift generally entails a focus on producing the right conditions for capital accumulation and an attendant disinterest in the fate of the poor and vulnerable. In the face of a shrinking state apparatus, Mumbai's squatter citizens are likely to continue to pursue self-organisational trajectories. In this development context an examination of how squatter citizens organise and administer themselves becomes increasingly important.

2.2. Methodology

The data that inform this article were collected in Ganesh Murthy Nagar, a squatter settlement located at the south-western tip of the Mumbai peninsula. The study took place in two parts over a total of 8 months between February 2009 and March 2010. Methods involved participatory observation as well as an initial survey of the settlement, which focused on social and economic factors as well as affiliation with network elements operating in the settlement. The survey provided a purposive sample for semi-structured and conversational interviews with local residents about the various networks. Additional interviews were carried out with local politicians and state and municipal administrators and engineers. Finally, archival information from the municipal water department and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), the legal planning authority for squatter settlements in Mumbai, added historical as well as current information about the water networks operating in the settlement and plans filed to redevelop the settlement.

3. Ganesh Murthy Nagar: fluid space and a rising demographic

The built environment of Ganesh Murthy Nagar is in constant motion. As a squatter settlement that operates largely outside the confines of the state apparatus, residents have a large degree of freedom as to how and when they choose to order space. Like many places that function outside the direct gaze of regulatory surveillance, new land and structures are constantly being built, changed and destroyed. Together with ongoing immigration and other social, economic, political and environmental factors, the settlement experiences a constant push and pull of forces, which physically expand and contract the boundaries of the settlement. The fluid spatiality of the built environment retains its functionality in large part due to a flexible and adaptable water distribution ecology.

Land, and the provision of new land, is a constant motivating attractor in Mumbai where 55% of the city's residents live in the cramped quarters of squatter settlements (Register General & Census Commissioner 2001). It was this desire for land that motivated the state to reclaim land from the sea over a period of 150 years in Mumbai's southern Back Bay, where Ganesh Murthy Nagar is situated (Figure 1). However, the state's failure to reclaim the entirety of the bay, due to mismanagement and corruption charges, created a developmental niche for the settlement to emerge from a mangrove forest. The same motivation for land spurred the first settlers to make an informal service camp at the site during the construction of neighbouring New Cuffe Parade, which started in 1969. Five years later the residents were joined by 80 workers and their families led by a Mr. Murthy, after whom the settlement is named. These new residents paid a local official for the permission to squat on the state land, as they had been evicted from their living quarters in the adjacent military compound known as Navy Nagar, where they also worked. Developing the mangrove forest involved building hutments on poles to avoid flooding during high tides, especially during the monsoon. Later, sand bags and refuse were piled under and around the hutments until the land became territorialised under the expanding settlement. From the earliest days, long-time residents of the settlement recall the trials of having to collect water from several kilometres away. A well located several kilometres away on the military base was protected behind a fence and hutment dwellers siphoned off excess water with large banana leaves into containers that were then lugged back to the settlement.

Figure 1. Showing planned reclamation work in 1922 and actual reclamations undertaken by 2010 including the location of Ganesh Murthy Nagar.

The provision of water was a constant challenge as the settlement grew. A 1976 state census of squatter settlements counted 110 hutments at Ganesh Murthy Nagar, which then extended 180 m from the road towards the sea. The settlement avoided much of the heightened squatter settlement growth Mumbai (at the time Bombay) experienced in the 1970s and 1980s. The largest growth in the settlement's population came in the 1990s after the federal and state governments legislated the Coastal Regulation Zone, which declared the land along India's coast environmentally sensitive and thus protected from future development. This protection from state and private efforts to acquire the land for development purposes must have spurred potential hutment dwellers, as 45% of the settlement's current population, or nearly 5000 people, moved there between 1990 and 2000. Counting the 3600 people who moved to the settlement between 2000 and 2010, there are currently 10,500 people living in Ganesh Murthy Nagar, which spans 5 acres and runs 1.5 km from the road.

Much of the growth of the settlement occurred incrementally with individual efforts to reclaim land and build hutments over time. Yet there were also developmental leaps in the settlement, such as one night in February 1999 when 70 truckloads of debris were dumped in the mangrove forest, creating an acre of land that was quickly developed. Unplanned and incremental development demanded an adaptable and redundant water distribution ecology that was responsive to change and could supply water even when one of the distribution channels temporarily failed. This ecology currently includes four municipal water distribution schemes that span 85% of the settlement's area, a private water tanker business that operates in the settlement, the transportation of water from work places, the use of the sea for cleaning, bathing and sanitation, the use of a fresh water spring near the settlement for washing clothes and informal borrowing and selling of water among residents. However, by far the largest supply of water comes from municipal water sources that accommodate many more clients than they have capacity for.

The municipal schemes have not only accommodated the settlement's growth, but are also flexible in adapting to contractions as well. Small demolitions are a constant feature of settlement life, with city officials knocking down several illegal buildings a year since 2002. However, larger-scale demolitions reordered the settlement in 2004 when 60 hutments were demolished, and in 2008 when close to 400 hutments were demolished as part of the city's annual demolition drive (YUVA 2005; Deshpande 2008). Large-scale fires in the settlement in 1996 and 2003 also razed 350 and 200 hutments, respectively, causing widespread spatial reordering in the settlement that was accommodated by flexible infrastructures. In one case, the entire infrastructure of a municipal water scheme was moved from one location to another to meet the changing spatial topology of the settlement.

The monsoon and high tides are also destructive forces that contribute to the spatial and social constitution of the settlement. They not only destroy newer hutments located close to the sea every year that must be rebuilt or relocated, but act as a negative attractor in the settlement's development as people are motivated to build on high-ground protected from the tidal flux. In this way, the two major commercial and transportation arteries in the settlement developed along perpendicular axes. Stemming from these arteries, long narrow gullies with few interconnections developed down the slope towards the centre of the settlement (Figure 2). This pattern of development created isolated corridors of movement for residential access, which contribute to a sense of social fragmentation in the settlement. This social fragmentation is exasperated by the diverse origins of the people who hail from three countries and over 20 states in India.

Figure 2. Ganesh Murthy Nagar showing residential access ‘gullies’ including commercial arteries.

Following the fire in 2004, the planning authority ostensibly governing the settlement erected a guarded barricade to prevent further expansion into the mangrove forest. However, these efforts did not stem the settlement's growth. Rather, a satellite settlement has emerged on the southwest corner of Ganesh Murthy, beside a small police station, and the colonisation of the mangrove forest continues on a nightly basis despite the guarded barricade. Furthermore, the settlement continues to expand vertically with the addition of floors. A total of 50% of the housing stock is composed of two floor residences, and 10% of hutments exceeds the legal vertical limit of 14 feet to accommodate three floors, despite the fact that some of these hutments now overlook the military base, and thus constitute a security threat based on similar cases in the city. Six busy construction material retailers operating in the settlement are a testament to the ongoing expansion of the built environment.

The water distribution ecology has been very successful in adapting to the constant changes inherent in the fluid spatial topology of the settlement. However, there is a price to pay for this adaptability, which is borne mainly by the long-term residents who have a legislated right to access municipal water. The municipal water schemes deliver water to far more residents than they are supposed to. One network, for example, delivers water to 400% more clients than they are supposed to. This means that residents who are formally entitled to water from the municipal schemes often receive merely one-quarter of their daily allowance, or 60 litres of water per day, which is vastly insufficient for a typical household of five in the settlement. Despite muffled complaints, many residents grudgingly admit that at least the system allows access to others in need of water. Thus, the flexibility of the municipal schemes exhibits a remarkable ability to adapt to a fluid spatiality that might otherwise confound more rigid systems. However, the implications of this flexibility go far beyond reduced water access, as we will see in the following sections.

4. Governmental structures erected to address water needs

Government legislation providing for basic services in squatter settlements in Mumbai was developed in the 1970s. This legislation triggered the self-organisation of community-based organisations (CBOs) in Ganesh Murthy to procure and administer municipal water schemes. These water schemes then came to define the territories in which they operate in the settlement. However, barriers to service implementation created a niche for local politicians and their representatives in the settlement. Politicians thus inserted themselves in between the CBOs and the state, and some exploited this position to capture various degrees of control over the water schemes and their associated territories. Furthermore, other state and municipal employees also in a position to act as liaisons between CBOs and state institutions have become dubiously associated in the water schemes. Thus, the connections between various actors in municipal water schemes are to a certain degree defined by informal associations that have spawned the organisation of paralegal activities detrimental to the community's social fabric and to resident livelihoods.

Municipal water distribution schemes in Ganesh Murthy span 85% of the settlement's area. Nonetheless, the most basic problem reported by local residents in the socio-economic survey was poor access to water. The four municipal water schemes in Ganesh Murthy emerged in response to legislative triggers. The first developed following the 1976 state census of squatter settlements, which enumerated the number of hutments in the settlement and qualified these to receive basic amenities such as access to municipal water under the Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act (1971) and the Central Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act of 1976. As a result of these Acts, hutment dwellers formed a registered CBO to procure water access as per government guidelines. The second scheme emerged in 1981, when the government changed the ‘cut-off’ date for inclusion in the official register from 1976 to 1980. A second registered CBO was thus formed to procure water for what became ‘Part II’ of the settlement in 1982 (Part I comprising the original 1976 hutments). This process was repeated twice again as the cut-off date was changed to 1990 and later 1995 in response to election promises. Hence, the last two water distribution schemes are located in ‘Part III’ and ‘Part III Backside’ of the settlement and serve the hutments included in these later cut-off dates. Thus, water access and its procurement played an integral role in the creation of the various territorial identities in the settlement.

Based on archival data retrieved from the Municipal Water Department, gaining access to municipal water was a challenging endeavour. For example, it took 7 years for the first CBO to acquire four simple standpipes, which required not only a registered CBO to administer the service, but money for the infrastructure, knowledge to communicate with the various governmental agencies involved in the process and political influence to motivate these agencies to act. These components of water access created a niche for local politicians, who use their political influence and discretionary budgets to facilitate the process in exchange for visible support and electoral votes. Through this process of ‘vote bank politics’, politicians rely on the dominant force in the CBO administration, who is more commonly known in the settlement as a slumlord.

The close association between water schemes and politicians provides an arena for competing politicians to attack each other. As early as 1994, the Water Department archives describe the ‘main problem’ in Ganesh Murthy as the ‘dispute between two groups each led by two municipal councillors’. Tactics used in the ongoing confrontation between politicians include reporting the many illegal activities and inconsistencies of other water networks to the authorities that are then prodded to follow the letter of the law and stop the service. This has led to ongoing water disruptions that can leave many people without water for weeks at a time. As recently as April 2010, the private water supplier in the settlement found himself at odds with one of the current municipal councillors, who then had his business shut down. This act created a serious water shortage resulting in increased challenges for the average hutment dweller caught in the crosshairs of political and economic disputes.

Although the ongoing vote bank politicking is blamed for everything in Mumbai, from the proliferation of slums to the city's crumbling infrastructure, payoffs to municipal workers transpire without much attention due to the regularity of such transactions. Municipal regulators are paid by water networks at Ganesh Murthy to overlook irregularities in their distribution systems, such as broken water meters and extra water tanks, which all benefit the administrators of the networks. Another form of corruption called ‘touch’ exists in the peddling of influence with the police and powerful politicians. The link between the networks and the police is facilitated through local criminal muscle gangs who interact with the police on an ongoing basis and thus have special relationships with certain officers. Police touch is a necessity in the ongoing battles between water networks. Politicians may also have connections to police officers, whereas wider political touch is affected through business, political and criminal associations.

The cooptation of state regulators and elected officials into water networks facilitates their creation and consolidation. Local politicians pay for and take a measure of control over the networks to the detriment of residents. Municipal engineers, administrators and regulators are also implicated in the existence of various inconsistencies within network infrastructure. Certain elements within the police cadre are additionally linked to water networks, as are powerful politicians acting at a state level. Thus, the connections between the water networks and the state apparatus are malleable and responsive to the needs of the water networks. Although these associations benefit water networks, they also impose barriers to communication and isolate residents of the settlement, leaving people with little recourse to fight the dominancy of the networks. However, slumlords have had to develop their organisations to pay for their protective barriers. Just how this is accomplished is outlined in Section 5.

5. The malleability of network infrastructures and organisation

In theory, Mumbai's municipal water schemes in squatter settlements comprise the CBO administrator and the physical network itself. The city calculates 25 litres of water per person and an average of five people per household, such that it supplies 225 litres of water per member household per day. The water is supplied once or twice a day directly from the underground municipal water main to a storage tank through a municipal meter to measure consumption. A pump connected to the water tank delivers water to the network through a main pipe to several smaller pipes, which are gauged to deliver a certain amount of water during a specified time. The pipes are fitted with communal taps that are operated by various CBO employees. The water is sold by the city to the CBO for a nominal price and an amount is collected from member households to pay the bill.

In practice, however, the infrastructure and organisation structures of the water schemes have been amended to suit the needs of the network. To begin, the four networks operating at Ganesh Murthy employ a ‘booster pump’, inserted between the municipal water main and the network's water tank, which pulls more water from the municipal system. The booster pump, although strictly illegal, can be informally authorised by the local water department in cases where the water pressure is too low to fill the water tanks. With Ganesh Murthy being at the end of the municipal water network, the argument to add a pump is easily made. The pump in and of itself allows the network to achieve its targeted distribution volume, and perhaps a little more, but its effectiveness is greatly increased by additional storage space. To wit, all the networks have additional water storage capacity, usually composed of one or several 5000-litre tanks added to the network. Where municipal documentation accounts for these tanks, they are shown to be replacing old, dysfunctional tanks. To reduce their costs several of the networks also tap into alternative electrical sources, such as municipal light poles, to avoid paying the electrical costs associated with operating the pumps.

With more water, the network generates increased revenues. However, it is also charged more and has to justify the increased water volume taken from the municipality. Thus, in three of the four networks, the functionality of the water meter is disabled. In one case the meter has been dysfunctional for 7 years. In these cases the city charges for the same volume of water as was last recorded. The municipal record books describe the meters as being broken, buried and inaccessible among a number of other reasons why they may not be functional. There are so many reasons for meter dysfunction that a pamphlet has actually been created to decode the abbreviated symbols of disrepair. Not surprisingly, given the notoriety of corruption at the municipal offices (Vyas 2009), these are not isolated instances. The water meter accounting books for the borough of Colaba, where Ganesh Murthy is situated, reveals that roughly 50% of water meters are dysfunctional, suggesting widespread disorder, if not corruption.

The distribution side of the networks has also been manipulated. As mentioned previously, the settlement continues to expand westward into the remaining mangrove forests, and vertically with the addition of floors. Three of the four water networks distribute water to 300–400% more clients than are officially listed as members of the CBO, resulting in one-third to one-quarter of the water volume each member is supposed to receive. The scarcity of water available to local families not only requires them to find alternative sources, but creates tension between those who are members of the CBO and those who are not. The CBO administrators, however, continue to charge the same rates per household, and have thereby increased their revenue proportionately. Additional fees are collected from families willing to pay for illegal private installations that connect a hutment directly to the water pipes, thus obviating the need to stand in line and wait for water to be distributed. This service costs US$225, a grand sum equalling 2 months' earnings for many residents. The last revenue stream derived from the water distribution scheme is the sale of water directly from the water tank for a nominal, if not legal, fee.

Based on these diverse sources of revenue, the various water networks earn between US$500 to US$2500 a month. Costs include the minimised water and electrical payments, maintenance costs and payments to CBO employees who distribute the water (at an average of US$10 per person per month). Additional payments are made to municipal employees, political parties and local criminal gangs. Profits may be invested in real estate or expansion into other domains of the settlement. Several slumlords have invested their money in rental housing, with one owning 15 hutments in the settlement. As prices for hutments in Ganesh Murthy top out at roughly US$25,000, the extent of water distribution revenue becomes apparent.

Beyond water distribution, the money and power that accrue to the slumlords operating water networks have allowed them to expand into different areas of the settlement's administration and into other activities. Foremost among these is the administration of the settlement's toilet blocks. Less than a quarter of hutments have urinals installed, and only a handful in the entire settlement have toilets. Hence, the great majority of residents rely on toilet blocks. Accordingly, three of the four networks have branched out to include toilet block administration. In two cases, the networks simply took control of the administration of the toilet block in their territory to earn minimal fees from usage charges and from municipal funds apportioned for improvement work. The largest network in the settlement, however, run by a former municipal councillor, managed to capture the Slum Sanitation Project (SSP) contract to maintain two participatory-oriented toilet blocks funded by the World Bank in a Mumbai-wide programme run by the Society for the Preservation of Area Resource Centres in 2001. Although at the time the administrator of the SSP was aware of the illegal activities of the councillor and allegedly tried to steer the project away from his influence, the councillor managed to create two new CBOs in the settlement and to capture the toilet blocks at their inception.

Far more developed, and lucrative, than the regular toilet blocks created by the municipal government, the World Bank toilets have more toilet seats as well as showers, toilets for children and, importantly, running water supplied by the municipality. Unfortunately, the benefits of the World Bank toilets have come to nought. Currently, the showers and children's toilets are used as storage space, and thieves have robbed the toilet blocks of any valuable components. The daily management of the toilets is not conducted by the CBO to which it was entrusted, but has been contracted out to private parties who pay rent to the CBO. Current managers keep limited operating hours and do little to maintain the toilets. Finally, a portion of the water destined for the toilets is diverted to the water distribution networks where it is sold. Interviews with SSP personnel and researchers who conducted a follow-up study for the World Bank revealed that these practices are widespread within the SSP toilet blocks, despite the World Bank's claims that the programme was an overwhelming success that was ‘ushering in a quiet sanitation revolution’ (Chinai 2002, p. 684).

Beyond toilet block administration, Ganesh Murthy Nagar's four water schemes are involved in other peripheral activities. Previously, several networks were involved in illegal satellite and electric provision, although these areas have since been more or less regularised. Currently, several networks receive money from the municipality for waste management services, which are clearly neglected as the refuse piled up throughout the settlement attests. The CBOs also all have parallel CBOs that perform ‘community-based’ work such as providing influence at hospitals without which residents of squatter settlements can often not be seen by a doctor, and providing legal and police intervention and consultation. Although these activities may not generate much money, they do exert influence over the populace, as people know that these services are tied to the synergy of essential services captured by the network. Additionally, some networks run private businesses such as a local restaurant, day-care services for children, a vocational school for women and a construction company.

The municipal water schemes that have emerged in Ganesh Murthy have gone far beyond their ostensible meaning for existence, which is to distribute water to member hutments. Once the infrastructure and administrative body had been established, the augmentation of infrastructure led to a change in kind in the system, away from the state-designed model. The current model uses the formal stratifying power of the state to territorialise and hold power over residents who are discriminated against. Concurrently, the change in kind produced possibilities for new becomings to take root. These emergent relationships have been constructed around the municipal scaffolding and, ultimately, it is on the residents' backs that these edifices are built. As demonstrated below, most residents are browbeaten into submission and those who persist in asserting their rights are suppressed by the protective measures of the networks, to which we now turn.

6. Emergent oligopoly

The water networks have maintained their exclusive dominance to access to municipal water through a variety of means, which restrict the legitimate access residents have with governmental bodies. However, local pressure still manifests and to address this the networks have alliances with different muscle gangs that operate in the settlement. The networks have also been successful at maintaining their oligopoly through the suppression and reterritorialisation of new water networks.

Resident interviewees in Ganesh Murthy Nagar were extremely reluctant to discuss the details of their water problems. Those who did talk insisted that the interview take place indoors or outside the confines of the settlement to avoid prying ears in the dense gullies. In a fragmented society, where rent-seeking behaviour motivates people with limited funds, feelings of unity and trust are very low. Those who complain about poor water distribution risk being the last in line to have their water containers filled and even having their water access summarily cut-off, necessitating the purchase of poorer quality water often from further away. Beyond risking water access, muscle gangs affiliated with water networks threaten and use physical violence against non-compliant residents. Mutinous behaviour has resulted in documented cases of beating, kidnapping and the demolition of hutments. With local politicians, the police and municipal water officials enrolled in the networks, there are few places to turn for those who complain. Even a case demanding the help of the Human Rights Commission of the State of Maharashtra has had little if any effect on the situation, as the municipal water department was unable to find the appropriate paperwork demanded by the Registrar of the Human Rights Commission (Colaba Water Department 2007).

Numerous residents who are less economically compromised and who may have some political influence have tried to create their own water networks, which only require 15-member households to apply for a water connection from the city. However, the established water distribution schemes have been extremely successful in maintaining their oligopoly over the water supply. The four schemes operating in Ganesh Murthy should be compared with over 50 schemes operating in Ambedkar Nagar, an adjacent squatter settlement of similar size and socio-economic profile. Working in favour of the four established networks is the spatial layout of the settlement with regard to the location of the water main. Ganesh Murthy occupies 50 m of the road under which the water main lies, and much of this space is taken up by a communal area and for parking motorcycles and bicycles, thus making it difficult to establish a pump house and water tank there. By contrast, Ambedkar Nagar has 700 m of contiguous space with the water main and numerous open places to place infrastructure.

The networks in Ganesh Murthy guard the open spaces where water distribution infrastructure could be placed. For example, the slumlord in Part I of the settlement makes it very difficult for incipient networks to acquire space in his territory near the road by arguing with the municipality that the space is required for communal use – even though over 50% of the space is used for parking. When a nascent CBO tried to secure additional land, after amassing the signatures, permissions and funding, it was shut down by the network in Part III of the settlement. The slumlord used his connections with a builder constructing a condominium next to the settlement (who had also curiously been awarded the development rights of a state-owned bus station next to the settlement) to revoke the state's previously granted permission to put a water tank on his land. In response to the incident, local newspapers decried the construction of luxury condominiums in an area where slum dwellers could not even get sufficient water. In reality, however, the incident reflected the fact that the water mafia operating in the settlement was protecting its exclusive power of water in the settlement.

Interestingly, as recently as May 2010, a new water CBO managed to build a network in an area bordering Part II and Part III. The head of the network claimed that he was a community leader and that people approached him with their troubles, which motivated him to start a new network. Only later was it revealed that the new network was actually an offshoot of the Part II network, which would be administered by the Part II CBO, and that it had been funded and facilitated by the Part II patron politician. The new network infringes on Part III territory and also includes a water main (without connections yet) that runs into the heart of Part III. This latest development reflects the ongoing battle between two municipal councillors who use water provision in the squatter settlement to enhance their sphere of influence.

The water networks have secured their positions by controlling access to regulators and elected officials, who they pay from their increased revenues. Beyond this, intimidation, violence, suppression of exercising rights and reterritorialisation are all mechanisms the networks employ to maintain their oligopoly. Thus, although the networks do manage to get more water to more people and accommodate the fluid spatial topography of the settlement, the price paid by residents is one of domination. As discussed in the Section 7, over the past 15 years, network administrators have found a novel way to leverage their power over residents to reap further financial windfalls.

7. Slum rehabilitation authority and developers

Since the mid-1990s, Ganesh Murthy's various water networks have been employed in a novel revenue-generating exercise. With the creation of the SRA in 1995, private–public partnerships have arisen to redevelop various squatter settlements in Mumbai. The redevelopment process involves several steps. First, under SRA legislation, hutment dwellers must form a CBO that invites a developer to redevelop the land and produce formal housing in situ at the developer's cost. The state government condones the use of its land for this purpose and gives it to the developer who builds extra units to be sold on the market to generate sufficient profits to fund the entire exercise. What is required is a willing developer and the signed participation of 70% of the slum population, or 70% of a particular pocket in the slum, to let go of its hutments and agree to be housed in transit camps on site until the new homes are built.

Ganesh Murthy is adjacent to the affluent community of Cuffe Parade and has consequently garnered the interest of many developers due to its favourable location in the city, its seaside position and the high cost of real estate in the area. For example, luxury condominiums being built right beside Ganesh Murthy are being sold for over US$300,000. As such, no fewer than 10 developers have been working to redevelop Ganesh Murthy in the past decade. Not only do the water CBOs invite developers, but developers approach water CBOs to collect resident signatures on their behalf due to the leverage these CBOs exercise in the settlement. Developers pay close to US$1000 to various administrators of the CBO, including the slumlord, for permission to operate in the settlement. Subsequently, various CBO employees and thugs associated with the muscle gangs proceed to collect the required signatures.

Until recently, no developer had attained the requisite 70% of the resident population's signatures. In effect, the water networks and gangs were careful to collect a number of signatures slightly below the 70% mark to enable them to approach other developers, and earn more money. The signatures collected by these water networks, often supplemented by fake identities and thumbprints, become a marketing tool used to lure other developers into a collaboration. Although the developer may suspect such foul play, the potential profit to be made in the event of a fruitful campaign outweighs the financial risk.

In this redevelopment process, water networks profit at the expense of regular slum dwellers. Residents are often coerced by CBO members to sign the documents supporting a given developer. ‘Soft’ methods of persuasion include threats of revoking water and other privileges and ostracisation from the community. Several interviewees had their water privileges revoked and were disallowed to use the toilet blocks. Damage can escalate beyond these already dire punishments, as Ganesh Murthy's residents have been beaten and even killed because of the CBO–SRA actions. Pervading the entire exercise is the very real fear that people will lose their homes, and because of the proximity-based nature of their work, their entire livelihoods.

Although the SRA is designed to re-house slum dwellers in situ, many things can go wrong. For one, not everyone who signs the developer papers will be re-housed because many residents are not eligible under SRA guidelines. Furthermore, development plans accepted by the SRA are rarely realised as proposed. The many changes they experience are rendered possible by the flexibility of the SRA guidelines that seemingly favour profit over social justice. For example, if a given project becomes financially suspect, developers are able to shift slum dwellers off-site to make more room for the sales component of the project. Finally, when plans are enacted, transit camps must be created to house people while construction is taking place. However, as the building process is open to any number of problems, many temporary transit camps have become permanent fixtures in the city. In short, SRA legislation triggered liaisons between private developers, water networks and muscle gangs in Ganesh Murthy that have been terrorising residents for over a decade.

In a recent turn of events, two developers have submitted documents to the SRA to develop different pockets of the slum, having somehow circumvented the ruse of the water networks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two pockets correspond exactly to the territories of Part II and Part III backside in one case, and to half of the land of Part III in the other. SRA documentation reveals that the executive committee of the first newly created CBO comprises the leaders of the two water networks and several leaders from the most powerful muscle gang operating in the settlement. The other pocket is being developed by the former municipal councillor who controls Part III and the World Bank toilet blocks, and who has apparently become a registered builder. The two plans are more or less in concert with each other except for an area both plans claimed, which corresponds to the newest network that is aligned with Part II. These cases reveal the astonishing power of water networks to shape the future development of the settlement.

8. Conclusion

Governmental legislation in Mumbai triggered the self-organisation of CBOs in Ganesh Murthy Nagar to respond to the potential for improved water access and distribution. The state-designed water distribution schemes, however, changed significantly even before their construction as politicians exploited bureaucratic and financial barriers to entry. Political support contributed to realising and protecting augmented infrastructural networks, which had the potential to distribute more water to a greater number of people at a lower cost. Throughout this ongoing process, power and profitability accrued to the scheme's administrative components and their attendant politicians, whereas simultaneously burdening residents with decreased water rations and threats of violence and displacement. The synergy created between these components created the potential for other associations to emerge with the assemblages, such as World Bank-funded and municipal toilets blocks, other municipal schemes, local businesses, real estate interests and individual state employees such as police officers and members of the municipal water department. These productive relations contributed to the development of land and hutments through the destruction of a mangrove forest, the professional careers of politicians, the illegal payment of state employees, the viability of criminal muscle gangs and the increasing power and finances of slumlords. Although the assemblages create the potential to distribute water to more people who would not otherwise have been accommodated by the state-designed system, it must be acknowledged that this is accomplished through the power to isolate the state apparatus and the residents of the settlement.

The space within which water networks operate may thus be characterised as nomadic; travelling between the state apparatus and the residents of the settlement, yet remaining insulated from either one. On the one hand, residents have few avenues to redress wrongs as muscle gangs enforce administrative committees' dominance, whereas attempts to connect with the state are precluded by local authorities, regulators and politicians who are enrolled in assemblages. On the other hand, the state apparatus, which might otherwise be interested in preventing theft of assets and injustices, hosts a porous boundary of employees that interface with squatter settlement administrators and their political allies that shields the potentially beneficial machinic effects of the state from its citizens.

Responsibility for this state of affairs is distributed among the various components whose synergy constrains and facilitates their potential for action. Immediately, the design of the municipal water distribution system for squatter settlements places politicians in a position of power through bureaucratic and financial barriers. Local politicians around Ganesh Murthy have exploited this power to consolidate their slumlord allies, create and maintain factions in the settlement that contributes to social fragmentation and place residents in a position of dependence. Furthermore, the state's inability to provide regulatory oversight has harmed both state revenue and credibility, and residents' security and livelihoods. These conditions keep residents too fragmented and isolated to make further demands on the system, and the powerful rich enough to be momentarily content with their revenue and exercise of force. From this perspective the water distribution programme can be understood as a form of control, keeping residents in a liminal space until new triggers, in the form of SRA legislation, facilitate the reterritorialisation of the settlement into the state apparatus. In this next stage of the settlement's development, water networks continue to exercise their role in the constitution of space and society.

Politicians clearly are in a position to, and do, abuse their power. The discretionary budgets afforded to municipal councillors, state legislators and national members of parliament are used to forward personal ends. However, rather than understanding the relationship between politicians and residents of squatter settlements from the traditional perspective of patron–clientelism, Benjamin (2004) is right to recognise the stealthy and entrepreneurial nature of this politics. The same should also be recognised in the efforts of some squatter settlement residents, who are inaccurately portrayed by the patron–client model as simply passive agents (Appadurai 2001; Bhide 2009). This study instead demonstrates a more active role played by some residents who assemble networks of people, cultivate and maintain political and municipal department affiliations, and administer services. This creational power of squatter settlement residents and the entrepreneurial motivation behind them are important dimensions that future redevelopment interventions could exploit.

Finally, infrastructure is susceptible to augmentation and manipulation. This must be addressed by the state either in terms of greater oversight or designing programmes to accommodate this flexibility. Furthermore, the trajectory observed through augmented infrastructure points towards individualised services. This aspect has been addressed to a degree by the state, which will regularise individual water connections for a fee. However, a more integral approach to this trend could be incorporated, which may limit the potential of the CBO administrators. This trajectory may be especially important in terms of the construction of toilet blocks, which are large community assets that are susceptible to capture. Toilets in hutments would remove these assets from capture and manipulation and would deliver a better service to individuals.

In sum, the need for water has a tremendous power to assemble hybrid actors into large functional assemblages. As examined in this article, positive outcomes do emerge from these self-organised structures, such as the ability to supply water to people outside the state system and the ability to adapt to changing social and spatial contexts. However, there are also grave problems that result from the social manipulation of water distribution. There are many challenges in cultivating a just society, but it is possible to integrate processes that produce positive outcomes into future interventions and diminish processes that contribute to negative outcomes. What is needed, however, are local, in-depth and historically informed studies that identify important trajectories for planning and project implementation.

Acknowledgements

The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, the University College London Graduate School and the Bartlett Architectural Fund provided funding for this research project. I thank Adriana Allen and the Development Planning Unit at University College London for organising the ‘Glass Half Empty?’ Symposium where I delivered an early version of this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions with this article.

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Reid W.F. Cooper

Reid W.F. Cooper is a Commonwealth Scholar pursuing his PhD at the Developing Planning Unit at The Bartlett, University College London. He studies the nexus between the built environment and social justice. To this extent, Reid has conducted research in Canada, Burkina Faso and India. His current research focuses on networks of people, architectures and infrastructure that emerge from squatter settlements in Mumbai, India.