1. Absence of Regulator implies politial interference in governance. Majority of municipalities
depend on subsidies due to mounting financial-losses attributed to political
interference wherein elected-representatives decide to keep tariffs unreasonably
low to garner political advantage/votes. A dedicated, independent regulator
would have ensured tariffs based on cost-pricing / scientific-data / municipal-performances / people’s
capacity-to-pay.
2. DEA-based Mathematical-model
indicated poor municipal-performances with 60% of municipalities exhibiting efficiencies below 25% in 3 out of 4 model formulations. Non-existent regulatory-mechanism ensures inefficiencies
remain unmeasured/unknown, while sector remains intrinsically poorly-performing/mismanaged.
3. The Absence
of Regulator implies absence of relative-competition amongst the municipalities who
remain unconnected and unconcerned of sector best-practices
4. The absence of a sector Regulator implies that tariffs stagnate at the same levels for years. There is need to increse these tariffs upto 5% annually to decrese dependence of municipalities on governemnt subsidies. Such factors also make water supply operations inefficient.
5. The Impact of
non-existent sector-regulator spells inconsistencies in data-collection, endemic
across developing countries. This study revealed that if data was collected on
increasing numbers of indicators for greater accuracy, data availability
decreases drastically. Hence, For the 6 indicators employed in this study, data was
available for only 71 out of 199 municipalities, a big difference in 7 years time.
6. The absence
of regulator implies water-sector planning and services run in adhoc manner as
there remains little basis for sector-planning in absence of consistent/regular
data-collection.
7. Lack of data also hinders scientific-analysis of problems that
remain unresolved fuelling public discontent.
Summing Up
Results confirmed that absence of Regulator
leads to sector mis-governance. There needs to be an independent mechanism to
regulate water-supplies.
This study indicates that
water-supply operations in developing-economies like India need to incorporate
provisioning of an independent sector-Regulator for sound governance.
This will ensure that
water-supply operations become efficient, consumers get benefitted, and
municipalities become self-reliant to shun subsidies. This will also ensure
that water-supply operations become transparent, and collect operational data
regularly in terms of predefined indicators forming a basis for sound planning
and policy. This will lead to good governance and wide consumer satisfaction
resulting in municipalities that make profits which can be passed on for
connecting the poor to water-supplies for common good of the society.