The smart money on drinking water

One of the most amazing transformations in attitude that I have witnessed in Pakistani society is the acceptance of the commodification of drinking water. No more than 15 years ago, a glass of water was something one could expect, as of right, anywhere they went. Now we have no qualms paying to drink water out of little plastic bottles.

The other great transformation in attitude has to do with women in public spaces. My grandmother and her sisters can recall cycling to college in the 1940s. Now, social attitudes towards women in public spaces have undergone a 180-degree turn. But this is better served for another column because, as Will Self recently said in The Guardian, “walking is political”.

The transformation to attitude towards water is due, in no small part, by the increasing degradation in the quality of drinking water. The Fifth report of the National Water Quality Monitoring Program of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, published in 2007, documents the water quality situation throughout Pakistan. It is based on an analysis of water quality from 357 samples of water taken from 23 major cities, eight rivers, six dams, four lakes, two canals and one reservoir. The report finds, inter alia, that none of the water sources tested in Bahawalpur, Kasur, Multan, Lahore, Sheikhupura and Ziarat were safe for drinking purposes.

The advent of commodified water — the little plastic bottles — has also played a part in the change in social attitude. Bred by a fear of poor water quality provided by local water utilities and brainwashed by heavy doses of marketing that imply that drinking water from the little bottles will somehow make us better people, private drinking water providers like Nestle and Pepsi have had little resistance in enlarging their market share.

Why is this important and why should this matter?

To begin with, we have to remember that the right to an unpolluted environment and unpolluted water are fundamental rights recognised by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. With per capita water resources falling (due to an explosive growth in population), the big question now and in the future is how to ensure these rights are adequately and equitably provided and protected. And this question revolves around the issue of the availability of water.

The availability of water — the ability of the local utility to pump it to your house — depends on the bottom line: the ability of the local utility to pay for laying down infrastructure. And this Bottom Line is predicated on the revenues of the local utility — what you and I pay for water.

A look at the bottom line for any local water utility in Pakistan shows the same thing: a deficit. None of the water utilities raise enough revenue to pay for the repair of old and installation of new infrastructure. In fact, many can barely cover their staff salaries. Of course, raising water charges and having consumers pay for the cost of operating the system has political repercussions. Water is something people consume every day. Raising its price — in today’s political scenario — would be suicide. That is why, despite being the number one cause of deaths among men and women in Pakistan, poor water quality is scarcely touched upon in the dominant political discourse.

And so, with no discourse on water rights, water availability, water quality, private sector operators can run unregulated. When we pay for the little plastic bottle, we not only pay the cost of extracting and purifying the water, but also the salaries of the multinational that does so and the dividend to its very happy shareholders.

What we don’t ask is how the rest of Pakistan (the 40 million who use surface water for drinking) will afford similar prices. By not paying for we are doing exactly the same thing we’ve done to natural gas and electricity. Without our own discourse, my money is on the corporate’s stepping in and running the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in another decade, people will happily pay for a ration of bathwater and will balk at any suggestion that water utilities raise water charges.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2012.