Democratisation of water management as a way to reclaiming public water: The Tamil Nadu experience

This document describes the efforts made by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD), to tackle the growing water crisis in the state and describes how it addressed it very differently, unlike the previous reform strategies.

TWAD initiated the change process called "Democratisation of Water Management" that involved an equal partnership between both water engineers as well as the community and addressed the following three core issues:

• Reaching the unreached
• Equity with equitable distribution as an immediate focus
• Principles of social justice.

The democratisation process involved three stages:

• The first stage involved training of all the TWAD officials.
• In the second stage, water engineers sensitised the community to the importance of finding solutions together for the water crisis, including taking responsibility for safeguarding water.
• In the third stage, the water engineers and the community launched water projects based on principles of optimal utilisation, conservation of natural resources, ensuring sustainability of schemes and encouraging local self management.

The intervention aimed at:

• Attitudinal transformation among individuals
• Attitudinal changes within TWAD, as an organisation
• Attitudinal changes among key stakeholders

This effort demonstrated significant positive outcomes in terms of:

• Breaking hierarchies and mindsets of people
• Improvement in the nature and functioning of water systems in each village, leading to reduction in expenditure and generation of revenue that helped to make the efforts sustainable.

The document is a newly added chapter from the book Reclaiming Public Water and can be downloaded from the Transnational Institute website.