Community Management of Rural Water Supply

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF RURAL WATER SUPPLY Community Water Plus Support to community-managed rural water supply by the Water and Sanitation Management Organization in Kutch District, Gujarat BETA DRAFT Administrative Staff College of India Srinivas Chary Vedala, Swapna Uddaraju and Shaili Jasthi June 2015 Community Water Plus Contents Executive Summary ________________________________________________________________ 3 Acknowledgements ________________________________________________________________ 4 1 Introduction _________________________________________________________________ 5 1.1 Background to the topic and the Community Water Plus project ____________________ 5 1.2 Overall objectives of the research and research questions _________________________ 5 1.3 Structure of the report _____________________________________________________ 6 2 Concepts and Methodology _____________________________________________________ 7 2.1 Conceptual Framework _____________________________________________________ 7 2.2 Methodology _____________________________________________________________ 8 3 Enabling Environment Level ____________________________________________________ 11 3.1 Organisational set-up of WASMO ____________________________________________ 11 3.1.1 Background and origins ________________________________________________ 11 3.1.2 Current focus ________________________________________________________ 14 3.1.3 Organisational structure _______________________________________________ 15 3.1.4 Project Cycle ________________________________________________________ 16 3.2 Enabling Environment Description ___________________________________________ 18 3.3 WASMO Performance Indicators ____________________________________________ 21 3.4 Institutional assessment of WASMO _________________________________________ 22 4 Community Service Provider Level _______________________________________________ 29 4.1 Context ________________________________________________________________ 29 4.2 Community service provider descriptors ______________________________________ 30 4.3 Community service provider indicators _______________________________________ 32 4.4 Community service provider participation assessment ___________________________ 36 4.5 Service levels ____________________________________________________________ 38 4.6 Equity _________________________________________________________________ 41 5 Costing ____________________________________________________________________ 42 5.1 CapEx Costs _____________________________________________________________ 42 5.2 Recurrent costs __________________________________________________________ 43 6 Conclusions _________________________________________________________________ 46 6.1 Enabling support environment ______________________________________________ 46 6.2 Costing ________________________________________________________________ 46 6.3 Community service provider ________________________________________________ 47 1 Community Water Plus 6.4 Service levels and infrastructure status _______________________________________ 47 6.5 Contextual factors ________________________________________________________ 47 References _____________________________________________________________________ 48 Appendices _____________________________________________________________________ 50 2 Community Water Plus Executive Summary Community Management has long been recognised to be critical for rural water supply services delivery which eventually sustain when appropriate levels of support from government and other entities are provided. The direct and indirect support represents what the Rural Water Supply Network has called the 'plus' of community water management. In lieu with project objectives and research protocols, the case study of Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO), Gujarat has been taken up. Gujarat is a state with varying rainfall, desert and drought conditions, it was imperative to adopt a decentralised, community-owned and demand-driven approach for the sustainability of the water and sanitation systems. WASMO has given the communities a centre- stage for planning, implementing and managing their own in-village water facilities. Government of Gujarat State brought in a major reform in community managed programme in drinking water sector by establishing Water and Sanitation Management Organization (WASMO) as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) in the year 2002 to facilitate the community in development of water supply facilities in rural areas of Gujarat. This change in strategy entrusts the community with powers to plan, design, own and manage their own water supply systems. WASMO has strong faith in the principle that a sense of ‘Ownership and Pride’ is to be instilled among the community. One of the key feature of WASMO is the establishment of ‘Pani Samitis’. Pani Samiti is a standing committee of the Gram Panchayat. The Pani Samiti and community in co-ordination have may responsibilities such as fixation and collection of water tariff including maintenance of tariff records, water delivery services (daily, frequency, duration etc), regulating the use of different local sources, arranging operation of the system, carrying out minor repairs (either through a person in the village or an external paid service), chlorination at village and household level, water quality testing and ensuring proper use of infrastructure, cleanliness near sources. In Kutch, drinking water security is facilitated through decentralized local water sources. With the help of WASMO, existing regional water supply systems have been strengthened and new water distribution and storage systems have been developed. Following the research protocol the following villages for chosen to carry out the research - Bharasar, Shinay, Kannakpar and habitations- Jabruvandh, Badhuvandh. Each village is administered and managed by a Pani Samiti. These Pani Samitis were thoroughly assessed through a set of research tools. There are several direct and indirect costs involved in implementation and later during ongoing operation and maintenance. The various costs such as CapEx hardware and software, OpEx hardware and software, recurrent costs at the enabling environment level and community service provider level have been captured. The demand driven approach shows that, the community will always need support in form of finance, technical nuisances, capacity building. WASMO being ten years old now, has to chalk out a roadmap to address the issues of service expansion or enhancement through the building cash reserves of the individual Pani Samitis. 3 Community Water Plus Acknowledgements This case study forms part of a three year research project “Community Water Plus”, which is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) of the Australian Government as part of the Australian AID Development Awards Research Scheme. The partners on the project include the Administrative Staff College of India (Hyderabad), the Centre of Excellence for Change (Chennai), Malawaya National Institute of Technology (Jaipur), Xavier Institute of Social Service (Ranchi) and IRC from The Netherlands. Overall project coordination is by Cranfield University from the United Kingdom. We would like to express gratitude to Mr. Mahesh Singh, CEO, WASMO for creating the enabling conditions to undertake the case study. We would also like to thank Mr. K. C. Tripathi who facilitated our entire work in WASMO. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all the colleagues - both at the Head Office and at the Kutch District Office who cooperated during various series of interviews. Finally, we are indebted to the Sarpanchs & Chair and Members of Pani Samithis of Bharasar, Shinay, Kanakpar and Jabravandh Badhuvandh for extending their cooperation and contributing their valuable time during interviews and Focus Group Discussions. We extend our sincere thanks to Ms. Shobana and Ms. Nikitha of Vivekananda Research and Training Institute who helped us in conducting the household surveys across the four villages. We also would like to appreciate all the households for devoting time for the household survey. 4 Community Water Plus 1 Introduction 1.1 Background to the topic and the Community Water Plus project Community Management has long been recognised to be critical for rural water supply services delivery. Indeed, community management has contributed significantly to improvements in rural water supplies. However those supplies are only sustainable when communities receive appropriate levels of support from government and other entities in their service delivery tasks. Communities may need easy access to call-down maintenance staff from government entities, they may need support from civil society organisations to renew their management structures and they may need to professionalize—that is, outsourcing of certain tasks to specialised individuals or enterprises. This is what is referred to as the “plus”—the necessary add-ons to sustain community water supply. Without such support, community management rarely performs well at scale and is then not an appropriate management model to achieve sustainable services. In spite of the existence of success stories in community management, mechanisms for suppport and professionalization have not yet been scaled-up in policies and strategies. Success stories then remain pockets of achievement. The necessary support comes at a price, and sometimes a significant one. Support costs governments and donors additional resources in the short

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