This paper published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies examines the argument that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people's access to the state and its resources and also the mediation between citizens and government institutions by councillers, by examining the case of the water distributions systems in Johannesberg and Mumbai.
The study undertakes ethnographies of water supply and distribution systems in Mumbai and Johannesburg to examine how the organisational structure of the water utility, institutional arrangements of service delivery, regulatory systems, councillors’ proximity to decision makers and their relationship with municipal officials, civil servants and party members variously influence councillors’ mediation capacities and their ability to fulfil the claims of their constituencies for piped water supply and connections.
The institutional contexts of service delivery play an important role in enabling elected representatives to fulfil the diverse claims of their constituencies. The dynamics within institutions, between councillors, administrators and municipal ground staff, shape these contexts and variously enable or disable access to services for different citizen groups. They also shape the social and political distances between citizens and various decision makers, thereby influencing people’s access to the state.
The water supply contexts of Mumbai and Johannesburg reveal how different kinds of alignments and fragmentations within the state shape people’s access to institutions, authorities and welfare and how these consequently enable and disable councillors from fulfilling the claims for water made by their constituencies.
Institutions that are completely aligned with the state, where the functionaries follow rules, regulations and laws to the exact letter and hierarchies are rigidly instituted and followed by organizational restructuring, are marked as efficient. However, such efficiency largely accrues to those citizens who are already at an advantage in terms of their proximity to institutions, decision makers and implementers through networks, personal resources and political clout.
The paper ends by arguing that access to the institutions and authorities in question can be difficult and limited, especially for groups who are variously designated as ‘illegal’, ‘informal’ and ‘poor’, because such institutions are often created by closing down avenues of access, which in turn enforces rigid, watertight conceptions of law and legality.
The complete paper can be downloaded below: