Based in Kathmandu and traveling through several districts of Nepal to research water management, the markers are slightly different: lines of empty water vessels, women waking up early to fetch water from a hike away, private wells, and commercial water tankers weaving their way through traffic.[break]
The mention of Melamchi Water Supply Project evokes dismissive laughter, and the Asian Development Bank’s two-year-old incarnation of Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC), the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), provokes frustration. If nothing else, they offer a hard lesson for Nepal: Water management in this highly centralized and exclusive model may not work.
Since the 1970s, the World Bank and later on the Asian Development Bank have tried to nationalize the water supply system in Nepal. “[It] is to basically generate more revenue from the water supply so that this revenue can sustain the management of water,” Dr. Pitamber Sharma, former Vice Chair of the National Planning Commission, explained. “What we have here is a process of steadily centralizing water management when the need is to decentralize,” he added.
At this point, there exists enough academic work and expertise to offer alternatives, too. The most obvious of these alternatives is, of course, the decentralization of water management through elected bodies across the country, namely the municipalities where it can come under the influence of the people—the consumer.
Municipalities at work
Nepal hasn’t had municipal elections for almost a decade. So would municipalities have institutional capacity to plan and execute water management projects? Considering how the municipalities functioned with elected bodies running it, and how despite circumstances they are still able to provide services and is regularly dealing with issues of its constituency today, the answer is seemingly yes. There is a historical argument too.
The Pokhrel Commission Study (1987) that produced a landmark document on Nepal’s water supply noted: “Prior to the launching of the World Bank funded water supply and sewerage projects there existed systems, both in the government and non government sectors, that served the water and sanitation needs of the urban dwellers in Kathmandu and other major urban centers…Similarly, government owned and operated public water supply networks, some constructed as early as 1895 AD, were functioning systems run by local government bodies (municipalities) or the Department of Water Supply and Sewerage.”
Municipalities can even be found performing a critical role in doing the work of NWSC today. In Dharan and Pokhara, the role of the municipality to develop water management and supply is remarkably active. However, the antiquated NWSC in both these urban centers makes profit yet remain unaccountable about where that profit is invested.
In Pokhara’s Ward 18, the municipality funneled its local development budget to help build a community user group-managed water supply system. When NWSC asked them to hand over the infrastructure, the locals asked if NWSC was capable of developing the existing system to connect the entire ward. NWSC conceded and gave the user group the right to manage their own water supply.
In Dharan, NWSC is capable of supplying water to only about 50% of the municipality’s 22,000 households. In response, Wards 11 and 17 have developed their own water management and supply systems while many smaller groups of homes have also devised their own communal water taps. Dharan has also formed a unique body, the Dharan Integrated Watershed Conservation and Drinking Water Management Committee with representatives from what the committee sees as key stakeholders, such as officials from: the municipality, NWSC, Department of Forest, and even local community members because it recognizes that their primary source of water, the watershed areas in the town’s north, falls under various jurisdictions.
The NWSC has, however, floated the idea of creating a Melamchi-like project, ignoring the fact that Dharan’s water crisis, like much of Nepal’s, is not a matter of supply but rather management. And that proper management of water from the rivers supported by the region’s watershed areas could sufficiently provide for the municipality, even with its growing population considered.
Communities at work
Within the Gundu VDC, a peri-urban community located in Kathmandu Valley, an NGO named Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) implemented a community-based water and sanitation improvement plan in Wards 6 and 7. The program focused on involving local people to find solutions through a participatory approach in order to increase community ownership on all the program activities.
Another example at the VDC level is the old village of Mattikhan in Kaski/Syangja district. There, a 9-member committee oversees the water supply to more than 400 households. The committee was formed under the local district offices, and has managed to perform fairly well since its inception.
These are both fitting examples of how a local user committee with some oversight by an elected local government or non-government body can function at ward and VDC levels. And surely, examples of communities and individuals managing their own water supply can be found across the country for they have no other option.
Need for devolution?
What role then, if any, could a form of centralized system like KUKL have in Nepal’s future? This model seems increasingly outdated in its function and philosophy.
“Not all capacities exist at the Ward level, so it’s really about differentiating the function between the local and the national. It’s a matter of mandate that translates to accountability,” says Anil Chitrakar, a member of the Kathmandu City Planning Commission in the last elected municipal government. There are viable roles for the private sector too, such as in maintenance and metering.
Currently, a centralized system assumes the role of both supply and management. In a mixed form, the state could assume the role of supply if the municipality was to assume management. However, municipalities could possibly use a mix of existing water supply sources— watershed, rainwater, groundwater— as sufficient enough sources.
Kathmandu in particular could significantly increase its groundwater sources by replicating the Shivpuri Watershed Project for other hill forests like Chandragiri, Nagarkot, and Phulchowki. If a municipality’s independent water supply sources aren’t sufficient, one municipality could possibly work with neighboring municipalities to offset its needs. In the process, securing necessary water rights remains critical.
Advocates of water managed by local elected bodies make arguments based on a historical study with a keen sense of the utter failure of recent developments, such as KUKL, as well as observation of water managed by user groups under wards and municipalities. The other side, that is NWSC and KUKL, offer no counter argument. They are irresponsive to queries and dismissive of their failures and are resistant to the idea of involving municipal offices in their work. They raise the problem of supply even when it has been long established that this is an issue of management. It seems foreign loan-aid organizations and national political parties have occupied the role of key stakeholders too long. Perhaps, in this juncture of socio-political transformation, it is time to seriously reconsider the devolution of these models so that Nepal’s water is better managed, and the process is accountable to the real key stakeholders: the people of Nepal.
N. Keesler Welch is a student of graduate studies at The New School University in New York. She recently spent the summer in Nepal for her International Field Program to research contemporary issues of water management.
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