ABSTRACT
The growth of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the delivery of essential services to urban residents has been articulated as a form of market-based decentralized service delivery that makes services more efficient and brings governance structures closer to the people (Pirie 1988; Stoker 1989). Two intended key outcomes of PPPs aside from technical and financial objectives, are depoliticizing services and discursively constituting citizens as customers. Water is being revalued and re-presented as a scarce economic good. With this shift, the triangular relationships between the external provider, the state and the citizen – the three critical agents in the delivery of water – take on new forms with the ascent of the neo-liberal paradigm. When the external provider takes the lead in fostering a relationship with the citizen, the model of interaction is one of “customer management” and “sustainable development” in order to resolve the cost recovery constraints facing the state as well as educating users to appreciate water as a “scarce ecological resource”. The relationship between the town and nature – a key focus of political ecology – gets significantly recast with the naturalization of scarcity and the commodification of water (Harvey 1996: 147-148). The outcome of this mode of governance, when examined at the local level, deepens rather than contains, the struggles for access to water.
