Urban Water Politics
The Mumbai ward where the World Bank’s Water Distribution Improvement Project (WDIP) attempted reforms.
What is K-East Ward?
This is the specific document settlers seek from the municipal water system to gain access to public resources like housing and education.
What is a government-issued water connection document?
Anand describes this term as the social and political process by which settlers gain recognition and access to water through city systems. This refers to the fact that citizenship is not an all-or-nothing relationship between individuals and government.
What is hydraulic citizenship?
The name of the study funded by the World Bank that served as a precursor to proposed water privatization in Mumbai
What is the Water Distribution Improvement Project (WDIP)?
This term describes why settlers in Mumbai resist water privatization, highlighting their reliance on multiple informal connections.
What are "known systems"?
Mumbai’s settlers argue that this kind of “improvement” project furthers inequality by favoring wealthier neighborhoods
What is water privatization
Residents like Alka tai rely on these actors, who use their technical skills to bypass formal distribution systems.
Who are plumbers?
The term Anand uses to describe public water systems’ tendency to accommodate informal access points, benefiting marginalized residents?
What is "vital forms of leakage"?
This term in Chapter 1 describes the phenomenon where water infrastructure’s visibility is interpreted as a marker of urban decay in cities of the Global South.
What is "hypervisibility"?
Settlers claim this neighborhood’s residents receive disproportionate attention from city officials regarding water distribution.
What is South Mumbai?
Mumbai’s settlers perceive this type of water system as more inclusive, despite its inefficiencies and unequal distribution.
What is the public water system?
The specific neighborhood where Alka tai and her neighbors relied on informal political and technical arrangements to access water.
What is Meghwadi?
The year the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) began studying water privatization reforms for Mumbai
What is 2004?
To protest the World Bank-supported privatization efforts, activists argued for this framing of water as a resource.
What is "water as a human right"?
This practice, involving unofficial relationships with municipal plumbers and social workers, is key to how settlers claim water rights in Mumbai.
What is infrapolitical resistance?
In Chapter 2, settlers in Mumbai balance the threat of eviction with efforts to establish stability by accessing and maintaining these essential resources.
What are basic infrastructure and services?
The federal ministry that worked with the World Bank on structural reforms for Mumbai’s water system
What is the Ministry of Urban Development?
According to Chapter 1, this term reflects the uneven allocation of resources, where wealthier neighborhoods like South Mumbai receive a disproportionate share of water.
What is "inequitable distribution"?
By connecting to municipal water systems, settlers often gain access to these other crucial forms of urban support (name 3).
What are housing, healthcare, and education?
What anthropologists' fieldwork took place in Papua New Guinea?
Who is Marilyn Strathern