Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai

The author has taken great pains to expose the politics and the nitty gritty of obtaining a water connection in the slums of Mumbai which extend over vast areas of the city on illegally occupied private and government land. These lands have been occupied by squatters (encroaches) who pay no taxes but yet the author feels they have a right to the water that flows past them in municipal mains. As seen on the cover, massive amounts of city's water supply is siphoned away by slum dwellers which reduces the supply and pressure to the legitimate and water bills-paying inhabitants of the city. Clearly the city of hundreds of thousands has ballooned into a megalopolis of 50 million, if the suburbs are to be counted.Having said that, the author's research and data obtained by actually living with the subjects of his study is to be admired. The study is detailed and full of useful information one would not find anywhere else. If one is an anthropologist, like the author, the book would provide pointers to studies of this nature in other cities all over the world where such hydraulic problems exist. The book is a must read for urban and city planners.After over a 150 years, when the large lakes outside he city were constructed and 24 hours water supply was made available at adequate pressure to all, but those staying on third story or higher floors, the city is back to a little more than square one. There is hardly any water pressure in the city's fire hydrants, and the most efficient and well-trained Mumbai fire brigade has to depend on water they themselves carry inside their engines. Whenever there is a major fire, we read in the city newspapers that the fire brigade had to stand idle as there was no water in the fire hydrants. The author has shown pictures of slum dwellers self-supplying water from the mains with plastic pipes (see cover), but he should have also shown the same people tapping the 6-foot water mains coming directly from the lakes at several points thus reducing the pressure and flow for the rest of city down the line. The fact now is that water is supplied for a very few hours with just enough pressure to fill ground or partially underground tanks in each legitimate dwelling. Don't the other citizens of Mumbai including the middle-class also deserve to get clean water? Or is the city's water supply only for the subjects of the author's study?

Useful ethnography, insightful analysis into the politics of water supply in Mumbai