ABSTRACT
There is agreement on the need to reduce the share of the world's population with inadequate water and sanitation, but not on how this should be achieved. A centuries old argument over whether water and sewerage utilities should be privately or publicly operated was revived during the 1990s. Such debates do a good job of pitting different vested interests in the water sector against each other, and a bad job of focusing attention on measures likely to improve provision in deprived settlements. First, as described below, whether a utility works efficiently and equitably is only contingently related to whether the operator is private or public. Second, utilities are often not even present in low-income settlements, while cooperation among residents and between community groups and the organizations that work with them is almost always critical.
