| dc.description.abstract | Caused by the rapid urbanization of the city, Bangalore has been lacking to provide adequate water and sanitation services for its citizens. As the centralized water supply and sewerage network has been unable to meet this rapidly growing demand, Bangalore has been increasingly confronted with water shortages and lake pollution issues. In order to cover for these shortcomings, Bangalore has been pushing for decentralized water and sanitation technologies. However, due to the lack of coordination and guidance provided by the government and others, a large number of decentralized solutions were either sub-optimal for their context or became completely dysfunctional. Moreover, policy directives were poorly received by citizens, leading to the unsuccessful diffusion of many decentralized solutions.
The challenge for Bangalore was therefore to overcome these development and diffusion barriers in order for these technologies to be serving as a sustainable alternative to the centralized systems. In order to understand the mechanisms contributing to the shift towards more sustainable practices of basic services, innovation scholars have proposed the Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework. This study has adopted the TIS framework in order to analyse the mechanisms contributing to the development and diffusion of decentralized solutions in Bangalore. Due to the different development challenges and goals of these decentralized solutions, they have been developing in two sub-TISs. One is the water recycling sub-TIS and the other is the on-site sewage treatment plant (STP) sub-TIS. For these decentralized solutions to be serving as an alternative decentralized service regime (way of doing things), a better understanding of the development and alignment of these two sub-TISs is needed. Therefore, this study conducted a qualitative event analysis, based on a period of 15 years (2006-2020), in order to identify the key mechanisms contributing to the development and alignment of these sub-TISs.
Findings of this study indicate that particularly the (mis)alignment between shared visions, regulatory measures and user legitimation, contributed to the (un)sustainable development of both sub-TISs. As both sub-TISs have been insufficiently developed and have been emerging rather separately, they cannot serve as a fully functional alternative service regime to the centralized systems yet. However, when both these sub-TISs would be integrated more, the establishment of a decentralized urban water management service regime may start to emerge. | |
