Sustainable water management: assessing external actor intervention to promote and develop coproduction processes. The case of Saath and the slum communities

Abstract

In the slums of Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India) access to improved water and sanitation facilities is an issue that is still affecting the livelihood of many individuals.

Water and sanitation service provision is a type of good which is frequently provisioned by an only actor: a governmental agency. The discourse on how to provide to a larger share of the citizens access to improved water and sanitation facilities is still addressed, as of today, by academic literature. Among other models, such as: provision by a governmental agency, a private one, or a mix of both, a different approach emerges in literature: coproduction. The concept of coproduction differentiates itself from the traditional approaches due to the fact that the customers and the provisioner of the service must cooperate in order to achieve successful service provision.

Coproduction does not imply the presence of an external agent, such as an NGO in promoting or developing the process and act as a broker between the customer group (slum residents) and the government (the provisioner of the service).

This study assesses whether the interactions between the slum residents and an NGO to address water and sanitation issues might result in a relationship based on high coordination which can then develop, in the long-term, in a coproduction process for water and sanitation services between the customer group and the government, in which the NGO acts as a facilitator. The assessment of the two main stakeholders (three slum areas and the NGO that hosted the project) is conducted upon a series of capacities based on academic sources such as collective action, coproduction and NGO organizational capacities. The two stakeholders’ capacities are then crossed in different clusters composing a relationship based on high coordination.

In addition to the two stakeholders’ assessments and their possible coordination an analysis of the institutional framework is also conducted. The assumption is that the institutional framework might influence the customer groups and the NGO capacity development and their potential coordination.

The research’s main findings are that the coordination potential in the three slum areas taken into account is rather low. The lack of leadership in the customer group and the inability of the NGO to develop new capacities according to the water and sanitation needs of the customer group were discovered to be major influencing factors for a successful coordination process. Moreover, the institutional framework of Ahmedabad is also posing a negative influence on the two stakeholders in addressing the lack of improved water and sanitation facilities and the possible legal pathways to solve them.

The study concludes with recommendations to the NGO on which strategies should be implemented in order to improve their capacities to achieve improved coordination with the customer group. Moreover the research’s finding suggests that the governmental agency shall be re-included in the coproduction model since the influences of the institutional framework were deemed too relevant on the two stakeholders’ capacity development to be treated only as an influencing factor.

All in all the NGO did not demonstrate to be ready to engage in meaningful coordination processes with the customer group and be a positive stimulus to develop coproduction, therefore, further research on the subject is needed.