Abstract

This paper critically analyses complex arrangements of actors, infrastructure technologies and practices to argue that co-production of urban service delivery entails a mutual, but contested dependence of state and non-state actors. We present two empirical cases based on in-depth qualitative fieldwork highlighting the role of Councillors regulating formal hydraulics and the fragile, volatile relations of private water provisioning in Baruipur Municipality, a small, peripheral town in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area. Characterised by groundwater arsenic, iron risks and heterogeneous urban waterscape, our analysis shows that powerful socio-political intermediaries shape everyday provisioning and access, ‘re-politicisation’ complicating notions of collaborative alliances, equitable benefits and sustainable, material improvements. While gaps in piped water provisioning in the global South cities do find nascent community-led, collective service delivery efforts, in a socio-political context where water is understood as a public right, a state provision, does the continued reliance on the state allow joint service delivery to manifest?

摘要

本文批判性地分析了行动者、基础设施技术和实践的复杂安排，认为城市服务交付的共同生产需要国家和非国家行动者相互但有争议的依赖。我们基于深入的定性实地工作提出了两个实证案例，突出了在加尔各答都会区的一个外围小镇巴鲁伊普尔市，监管正式水力学的议员的作用以及私人供水的脆弱、不稳定的关系。以地下水砷、铁风险和异质城市水景为特征，我们的分析表明，强大的社会政治中介塑造了日常供应和获取，“重新政治化”使合作联盟、公平利益和可持续物质改善的概念复杂化。