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Talk by Malini Ranganathan

Municipal Water and State-Society Relations at the Periphery: Examining the Implications of Reforms in Greater Bangalore.

SPEAKER: Malini Ranganathan
DATE: Monday, 17 December 2007
TIME: 4.00 pm (tea at 3.30)
VENUE: NIAS, IISc Campus Lecture Hall, New Faculty Block

National Institute of Advanced Studies
Indian Institute of Science Campus
Bangalore 560012



The School of Social Sciences invites you to a talk on :
Municipal Water and State-Society Relations at the Periphery: Examining the Implications of Reforms in Greater Bangalore

SPEAKER: Malini Ranganathan
DATE: Monday, 17 December 2007
TIME: 4.00 pm (tea at 3.30)
VENUE: NIAS, IISc Campus Lecture Hall, New Faculty Block
All are cordially invited.


Abstract:
Reforms in governance and urban water delivery have generated new spaces for citizens to engage with the state, while also exacerbating existing patterns of exclusion and alienation. Current internationally and domestically supported reforms promote institutionalized strategies for citizen engagement in service delivery. World Bank endorsements of "citizen voice" and "client power" provide justification for these strategies. Popular tools include beneficiary contributions in infrastructure projects, public auditing, and computerized grievance redressal—all of which are hailed as conduits for increasing the bargaining power of the consumer-citizen and the accountability of service providers. But who really benefits from these types of citizen-centric strategies? How do they differ from and affect traditional ways in which citizens engage with the state? Are services improving?

This study examines these questions in the context of municipal water provision in the Bommanahalli Zone of Greater Bangalore, an erstwhile City Municipal Council. Two interconnected cases are examined in detail: the Nirmala Nagara municipal reforms program and the on-going Greater Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (GBWASP). The study first provides an international perspective on current trends in water and municipal governance, particularly with respect to discourses on citizen engagement and public accountability. The study then assesses implications for equitable water delivery and shifting citizen-state relations by looking at computerized grievance redressal in the case of Nirmala Nagara and beneficiary capital contributions in the case of GBWASP—two strategies that are increasingly being emphasized through the national urban reforms agenda.

About the speaker:
Malini Ranganathan is a PhD Candidate at the University of California at Berkeley. Her interests include water and electricity reforms, the politics of participatory governance, and transitions at the peri-urban interface. She spent most of 2007 doing fieldwork in Bangalore and at the Asian Development Bank's headquarters in Manila.

Comments

murali772's picture

my thoughts on the subject

My thoughts on the subject may be accessed at http://privatised-water-s... Muralidhar Rao PS: I expect to be attending this talk
Muralidhar Rao

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