Pipe Politics, Contested Waters

Despite Mumbai's position as India's financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbai's dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In "Pipe Politics, Contested Waters," Lisa BjOrkman explains how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a world class business center like Shanghai has wreaked havoc on the city's water pipes. Believing that markets could resolve longstanding political conflicts over urban land and resources, Mumbai policymakers in the 1990s institutionalized regulatory instruments that enabled urban developers to ignore city planning and to build without regard for the water infrastructure. BjOrkman spent eighteen months in Mumbai, talking with everyone from plumbers, families, and businesses, to meter readers, government officials, and international consultants. She found that in contemporary Mumbai politics is often about water, so much so that those who can command it reliably can also wield considerable political power. BjOrkman shows how urban infrastructures exist within materially dense sociopolitical networks whose workings are transforming lives and rescaling political authority in the city.