SPECIAL ARTICLE

Social Ecology of Domestic Water Use in Bangalore

Vishal K Mehta, Rimi Goswami, Eric Kemp-Benedict, Sekhar Muddu, Deepak Malghan

A
The rapid growth of urban India has added new saliency s India continues to rapidly urbanise, it is vital to under-
to the resource conflict between the burgeoning cities stand cities’ crucial dependence on social and natural
resources of rural areas, and on its own natural resources
and village India that continues to be the home for vast
(Wimberley and Morris 2006). Cities are like living organisms,
majority of Indians. Cities, like living organisms, depend depending on external metabolic flows of matter and energy
on external metabolic flows to keep them alive. Among to keep them alive and for growth, generating waste in the
all the metabolic flows of matter and energy none is process (Decker et al 2000; Newman 1999). In a deeply un-
equal society like India, the political economy of this “social
more important than water – especially water used for
metabolism” is characterised by conflicts across caste, class,
meeting basic drinking water and other domestic economic and geographic-demographic axes – urban versus
consumption needs. This paper develops a metabolic rural, the rich versus the poor, agriculture versus industry,
framework for domestic water use in Bangalore, one of adivasis versus the rest, upper castes versus the subaltern
castes, slum-dwellers versus the rest of the city, men versus
the fastest growing urban agglomerations in India. Our
women, etc.1
urban metabolism framework treats the city as a Among all the metabolic flows of matter and energy none is
tightly-coupled social-ecological system and shows that more important and more contested than water – especially
a spatially explicit understanding of consumption water used for meeting basic drinking and other domestic con-
sumption needs. India is home to a significant proportion of an
patterns is crucial to addressing three central aspects of
estimated 1.5-2 billion people around the world without access
the water conundrum – equity, ecological sustainability to clean sources of drinking water. Only 35% of households in
and economic efficiency. rural areas and 71% of households in urban areas have access
to drinking water within their household premises.2 Utility
provided piped water supply being inadequate in all Indian cities,
water is consumed from a mix of surface and groundwater
sources (CGWB 2011), through a combination of utility piped
supply, private borewells (self-supply), tankers, bottled water
and untreated waterbodies (Srinivasan et al 2010, Misra and
Goldar 2008). Many large urban centres import surface water
from sources that are a hundred or more kilometres away and
across large gradients (Narain 2012a: 6).
Domestic water consumption is driven by a complex set of
intersecting social, economic, demographic, political, geographic,
infrastructural, and hydrological factors. There is considerable
variation of these drivers within a city, reflecting the spatial
diversity that characterises most metabolic flows in a city.
The multi-institution collaborative research underlying this paper was However, official water planning in Indian cities reduces this
funded by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India complexity to one of expanding the physical water utility in-
(through a COE-Grant awarded to the Indian Institute of Management frastructure to meet a simplistic per capita water target which is
Bangalore), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation called “demand”, in conjunction with a simple extrapolation of
Agency (through programmatic support funds provided to the
Stockholm Environment Institute). We thank Gopal Naik, Ashima Sood
trends in population growth. In actuality, “no city municipality
and an anonymous reviewer for constructive comments on an earlier knows what the real water demand is in the spaces they govern”
draft. The authors are responsible for all remaining deficiencies. (Narain 2012a: 1). Utility performance metrics based on such
Vishal K Mehta and Eric Kemp-Benedict are with the Stockholm planning are therefore overoptimistic and narrow. The social
Environment Institute, Stockholm; Rimi Goswami and Deepak Malghan metabolism of domestic water consumption in a city demands an
(dmalghan@iimb.ernet.in) are with the Indian Institute of Management assessment against three aspects – justice, ecological sustain-
Bangalore and Sekhar Muddu is with the Indian Institute of Science, ability and economic efficiency (Malghan 2010). In this regard
Bangalore.
neither public nor private or public-private-partnership (PPP)
40 april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

water utilities have met the criteria in India (Bajpai and activities that will complete the urban metabolism framework.
Bhandari 2001; Bhaduri and Kejriwal 2005). When one con- We conclude in Section 6.
siders the spatial pattern of growth in a city, a programme
designed in the interest of economic efficiency might fail to 1 Urban Metabolism Framework for Water
deliver on its promises even while deepening existing inequities India’s first nationwide analysis of urban water consumption
(Ranganathan et al 2009). was aptly titled Excreta Matters: How Urban India Is Soaking
In this paper, we argue that the traditional “planning” exer- Up Water, Polluting Rivers, and Drowning in Its Own Waste
cise in urban water utilities needs serious overhaul. A much Volumes 1 and 2 (Narain 2012a; 2012b). The physical and social
broader framework to urban planning is needed, one that infrastructure that Indian cities use to manage its waste flows
(1) situates urban planning within regional, multi-sectorial is the locus of some of the worst affronts on human dignity. No
planning; (2) uses formal approaches for planning under Indian city would function without the families that live in
uncertainty; (3) is capable of evaluating both supply- and shanty settlements abutting the sewers and former rivers that
demand-side measures; (4) explicitly accounts for the patterns now carry the city’s excreta, and make a living rummaging
of spatial variation (of social, economic and ecological varia- through the city’s waste. When both water flowing into the
bles) in a city; and (5) does not collapse questions surround- city and the waste emptying out of the city are properly
ing equity and ecological sustainability to an economic accounted for, a social metabolism framework allows for com-
efficiency problem. bining questions of justice and ecological sustainability. The
We propose a social metabolism framework for urban water social metabolism framework (Fischer-Kowalski and Hüttler
planning. There are four central features to our framework. 1998 and 1999; Martinez-Alier 2007 and 2009) offers a parti-
First, as with any metabolic process, we account for both the cularly convenient apparatus to address the social, economic,
flow of resources coming into the city, and waste flows from and ecological complexities of urban water consumption. It
consumption. Thus, our framework will account for both water provides a basis for understanding not only the physical flows
imported into Bangalore and the sewerage generated by its use. of matter and energy through a society, but also to understand
Second, we show why metabolic flows in general, and water social relations that generate these metabolic flows. The city is
flows in particular are best understood as tightly coupled a living entity whose survival and growth is contingent on a
social ecological systems (Ostrom 2009). We show how the steady throughput of matter and energy into the city, and the
metabolic flow of water is directly shaped by social, political, return flow of waste product. Waste flows are a defining char-
economic and policy variables. In our example, the social and acteristic of any metabolic process. Thus, social metabolism
economic variables contribute as much to groundwater dynamics helps understand the co-evolution of social and ecological
as the natural systems – Bangalore as a metabolic structure systems (Sieferle 2011; Weisz 2011).
alters the background hydrology that would have existed The central approach of an urban metabolic framework is to
without the city. explicitly acknowledge that human and natural systems are
Third, using Bnagalore’s domestic water use as a case study, tightly coupled in urban environments (House-Peters and
we demonstrate the spatial diversity that is inherent in any Chang 2011). Since policy choices determine the physical shape
urban metabolic processes. A city is spatially clustered along of the urban environment, they have substantial, often long-
various social, economic and demographic axis.3 There is also term and unexpected, consequences on the social-ecological
inherent geographic and topological differences between vari- feedbacks.4 Policies have a lasting impact on hydrology, as il-
ous parts of the city (in our example, distance from the piped lustrated by the evolution of the groundwater systems of other
water supply infrastructure and the underground topology are major cities around the world (Onodera et al 2008; Kim et al
important spatial variables). 2001; Hayashi et al 2009). The Tokyo metropolitan area is
Finally, we make the case that the urban metabolism particularly instructive of the surprises that a tightly coupled
framework is well-suited to investigate the nexus between “social-ecological system” can hold in store. In the 1950s and
social equity, biophysical sustainability and economic effi- 1960s, unregulated extraction led to declining groundwater
ciency. In our example, the metabolic framework helps un- levels and land subsidence. Regulations limiting extraction
cover why certain policy solutions like privatisation of public manifested themselves in recovering groundwater levels dec-
utilities in the interest of economic efficiency may fail in ades after the regulations. However, these recoveries are now
meeting their objectives. endangering underground structures like subways that were
The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: in constructed before the regulations and their impacts were
Section 1 we describe the urban metabolism framework. manifested (Hayashi et al 2009). In Seoul, Korea, researchers
Sections 2-5 illustrate key elements of the framework for found that groundwater pumping and leakage from pipes were
Bangalore. In Section 2 we analyse the spatial pattern of dominant components of the city’s socioecological groundwater
Bangalore’s growth in the last decade; Section 3 documents budget. The feedback in Seoul was such that total groundwater
the spatial disconnect between this growth and water supply barely changed, as leakage made up for extraction, but water
infrastructure; and Section 4 develops the hydrological nexus quality was impaired (Kim et al 2001). The examples from
among Bangalore’s imported surface water, the efficiency of its Tokyo and Seoul are of immediate relevance to Bangalore,
public utility and groundwater levels. Section 5 outlines ongoing given the expansion of Bangalore metro, artificial recharge
Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 41
SPECIAL ARTICLE

from leaking piped supply, and in- Figure 1: Ward Distributions of Population and Population Density (2001-11)
creasing groundwater use (Sekhar and
80
Kumar 2009). Elsewhere, in Bangkok
and Jakarta, excessive groundwater 60 60

extraction led to the water table falling 40 40

below sea level, causing intrusion of sea- 20 20

No of wards
No of wards
water and shallow groundwater into
0
deeper aquifers (Onodera et al 2008). 80
The first step in implementing the
60 60
coupled social-ecological systems ap-
40 40
proach in the water sector is the con-
struction of a well-defined water mass 20 20
balance (Kenway et al 2011). A water 0
mass balance is the most basic descrip- 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 0 50000 100000
Population Population Density
tion of water metabolism – it details how
a city draws upon many different sources to meet its water earlier Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) by merging it
needs and also keeps track of waste flows. Even within the con- with eight smaller municipal jurisdictions and over 100 villages
text of water consumption and supply, there exists a burgeon- under various panchayat jurisdictions surrounding the city. The
ing literature on combining hydrologic and economic factors newly added areas include peri-urban areas as well as large
in a unified modelling framework (Harou et al 2009). In the swathes of new industrial development including information
Indian context, Srinivasan et al (2010) developed a detailed, technology parks.5 Even as the administrative boundaries of
dynamic hydrologic-engineering-economic model to study the city have increased over time, Table 1 shows that popula-
Chennai’s water supply and transcend the simplistic popula- tion density has also increased – the city has not only expanded,
tion projection models used by public utilities. Based on pub- but has also progressively become more crowded. Using offi-
licly available data, we develop a spatial snapshot after re- cial 2011 BBMP ward boundaries as a common frame, we gath-
viewing the disconnect in patterns of growth and the urban ered ward population numbers from Census 2001 and Census
water supply infrastructure. 2011.6 The majority of wards now have more than 40,000 peo-
ple living in them, whereas in 2001, there were no wards with
2 Spatial Pattern of Bangalore’s Growth more than 40,000 people (Figure 1). The figure also shows
Bangalore is a poster child of Table 1: Forty Years of Bangalore’s that population density (people/km2) remains high in almost
Evolution: Population, Population
the problems confronting ur- Density and Percentage Built-Up Area all the wards, reflecting the overall citywide population den-
ban India. Rapid economic Year Population Density Built-up Area sity increase reported in Table 1.
(Mill People) (People/km2) (%)
and population growth is The pace of population growth has by no means been uni-
1971 1.7 9,465 20
driving concomitant growth form across the city. Figure 2, showing the spatial pattern of
1981 2.9 7,990 26
in not only water and energy population growth between 2001 and 2011, clearly illustrates
1991 4.1 9,997 39
demands, but also waste crea- 2001 5.7 11,545 69
that peripheral areas around the city centre experienced very
tion that utilities are increas- 2011 8.5 12,142 na high growth rates – greater than 300% in some of the outlying
ingly unable to cope (NIUA Sources: Iyer et al (2007); Census 2011. wards. Figure 2 shows how the city has expanded in all directions.
2005; Narain 2012a). In four decades, Bangalore has Figure 2: Spatial Distribution of Population Growth between Census 2001 and 2011
grown from 1.65 million people in 1971 to 8.5
million people in 2011 (Table 1). The pace of
% growth
growth has also increased in recent decades – in -30-0
the last 10 years, almost three million people were 0.10
10.25
added compared to the previous two decades’ 25-55
55-125
growth of one million each. It is now the third- 125-336
most populated Indian city, and one of the fastest
growing city-economy in the country (GoK 2006).
Much of the new population growth in Bangalore
between the last two decennial census enumera-
tions has happened in the peripheral areas of
Bangalore – including regions that were incorpo-
rated into the city when it expanded its physical
jurisdiction by nearly 40% in 2007. The Bruhat
N
Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) or the
Greater Bangalore City Corporation was formed in 0 0.05 0.1 deg
2007. The BBMP extended the jurisdiction of the
42 april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 3: Spatial Transformation of Bangalore: 2001-11 1896, the first piped water supply came from
Hesaraghatta lake, built across the river
2001 Population 2011
19000-32000
Arkavathi, with water pumped to the city
32000-36000
36000-39000
where it was treated before distribution.7 The
39000-45000 next major expansion came in 1933, when
45000-56000
56000-95000 Chamaraja Sagar reservoir was built across
Arkavathi, downstream of Hesaraghatta, about
26 km west of Bangalore. Since 1964, Banga-
lore’s piped water supply has been managed
by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage
N Board (BWSSB) which is an autonomous body
0 0.05 0.1 deg under the state government. The BWSSB is
responsible for providing adequate water
supply and sewage disposal for Bangalore. Its
Ward % Population
0.25-0.4 mandate calls for collection of charges for its
0.4-0.5
0.5-0.6
services on a “no loss no profit basis” (BWSSB
0.6-0.7
0.7-1.0
2011). The current BWSSB jurisdiction covers
1.0-1.6 a little over 800 km2, divided into six mainte-
nance divisions which are in turn divided
into 26 subdivisions and 106 service stations.
Since the 1970s, water from the Cauvery
river, over 90 km away, is the main source of
N surface water supplied by the BWSSB. The total
0 0.05 0.1 deg
installed capacity from the Cauvery and
Population, and (bottom) population percentage contained within current (2011) ward boundaries. Map generated Arkavathi rivers currently stands at 959 mil-
using provisional Census 2011 numbers for wards provided by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
lion litres per day (MLD), with a (March 2011
While certain areas to the south-east of city centre have grown estimate) supply of 900 MLD. The Arkavathi only supplies 59
particularly fast, the city has seen increases all around its MLD of this total surface water imported into Bangalore. Fig-
periphery. This pattern of growth has transformed the city ure 4 provides a schematic representation of these two surface
such that more people now live in in the peripheral areas away water sources that supply water to Bangalore. The BWSSB also
from the city centre than in the central areas (Figure 3). supplies about 70 MLD of groundwater from over 7,000 borewells
(Narain 2012b).
3 Domestic Water Consumption and Supply in Bangalore Approximately every 10 years since 1974, a new stage of the
Cauvery Water Supply Scheme expanded surface water supply
3.1 Overview of Bangalore’s Piped Surface Water Supply to the city. In 1974, the first stage added a capacity of 135 MLD
Unlike other big cities, Bangalore is not close to any large per- to the system. Successive stages added 135 MLD (1983) and
ennial waterbodies. Before 1896, Bangalore residents used 270 MLD (1993). Phase 1 of the fourth stage brought the total
wells, lakes and kalyanies (temple wells) as water sources. In current surface water supply from the Cauvery to 900 MLD. A
second phase of Cauvery fourth stage is planned for 2012,
Figure 4: Schematic of Piped Water Supply to Bangalore City
Hessarghata
which would add another 500 MLD of system capacity. The
- 20 km from the city Cauvery River Water Disputes Tribunal Award caps Bangalore’s
Chamraja Sagar
withdrawal of Cauvery water to approximately 1,400 MLD.8
-35 km from the city Bangalore city While the public utility (BWSSB) cites the limit placed on Cauvery
withdrawals as a constraint on expanding Bangalore’s water
Tataguni supply, the relatively prosperous farmers of the Cauvery com-
Pumping station
mand area have protested the tribunal award as a case of urban
Harohalli industrial interests usurping the water needs of irrigation.
Pumping station Pumping from Cauvery and Arkavathi river sources and
through the distribution network requires a total of 60 booster
Cauvery water
pumps, 52 reservoirs in the city and close to 6,000 km of pipe-
Shimsha River line. The total energy consumed is approximately 50 GWH per
Plant TK Halli
month. Electricity charges alone account for Rs 280 crore
NBR
annually (BWSSB 2011).
SBR The city’s water treatment capacity, at 810 MLD, is approxi-
Cauvery River - 90 km from the city mately on par with current water supply. However, sewage
Source: BWSSB 2011. treatment and disposal is lacking largely due to the lack of an
Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 43
SPECIAL ARTICLE

adequate sewage network. Only half of an installed sewage Systems (GIS) to develop subdivision-scale population estimates
treatment capacity of 721 MLD is utilised, whereas waste water from the ward population geodata and subdivision boundaries.9
is generated at 1000 MLD (Narain 2012b). The result has been In Figure 5 we present a scatter plot of the average domestic
the conversion of possible water sources – rivers and lakes in water consumption (litres per capita per day, lpcd) in each
the Vrishabhavathi, Hebbal and Koramangala-Challaghatta subdivision against subdivision population, along with the
valleys – into waste sinks and carriers, and the pollution of spatial representation of the same. This startling graphic shows
another water source – groundwater. Limited data on ground- that on average, BWSSB supply for domestic consumption is
water quality shows that some of the most contaminated very low, especially in the outer, newer wards where population
sources correspond with areas in the city that are likely to growth has been very high. The often-quoted BWSSB average
depend most on groundwater (Reddy 2003). figures of 110-120 lpcd is a gross overestimate because it is based
on total water pumped into the city and not what actually
3.2 Spatial Snapshot of the Pipe Dream reaches customers after leakage. Its own estimate is that as
Using domestic water consumption data from the public water much as 37% to 40% of water is lost to leakage at various parts
utility, BWSSB for the month of March 2011, we present a snap- of the transmission and distribution network (BWSSB 2011). Fur-
shot of this spatial mismatch and its implications. Since the thermore, there is considerable spatial variability. The periph-
highest available resolution for piped water supply information is eral wards that have grown much faster than the wards in the
at the BWSSB-subdivision scale and not at ward level, both popula- central city are also the wards that are least served by the public
tion and per capita domestic water consumption are analysed at utility. The residents of some of these areas in the periphery of
this BWSSB-subdivision scale. We used Geographic Information Bangalore also bear a disproportionate financial burden of
Figure 5: Per Capita BWSSB Domestic Water Consumption extending utility-provided piped water through the Greater
Domestic Consumption (lpcd) Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (Ranganathan et al 2009).
3-20
20-37 Figure 6 sketches out the Lorenz curve for piped surface
37-55 water supplied by BWSSB using aggregate subdivision level
55-72 data. What this mapping makes clear, even with aggregate
72-90
low-resolution data, is that at least 20% of Bangalore does
not have any access to piped surface water simply based on
their location within the city. The Lorenz curve is approxi-
mately parallel to the line of perfect equality for the next
60% of the population, and the top 20% of Bangalore con-
sumes 40% of its piped surface water. This Lorenz curve
underestimates the actual inequality among households because
we are able to capture the variation between the 26 subdivi-
sions of BWSSB, but not variations within a given subdivision.
As we will show in the next section, this spatial inequality
Figure 6: Lorenz Curve for Piped Surface Water Supplied by BWSSB
100
Cumulative piped water consumption from BWSSB (%)

90

80 80

70

60
60
50
Average lpcd

40
40
30

20

20 10

0
40 50 0
60 1070 2080 3090 100
Cumulative population (%)
0
100 200 300 400 500 600 The solid black line is the Lorenz curve constructed using BWSSB data for the month of
Population (thousands) March 2011. The dashed-line is the line of perfect equality. The Lorenz curve represented
The top figure shows the spatial pattern of domestic consumption of piped surface water here underestimates the actual inequality among households as this curve was obtained
supplied by BWSSB in the month of March 2011 (data from BWSSB). The same data is using aggregate data at the level of BWSSB subdivisions rather than individual households.
plotted against subdivision population in the bottom figure where the X-axis represents We capture the variation between the 26 subdivisions of BWSSB, but not variations within
subdivision population in thousands. a given subdivision.

44 april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

in supply of surface water has important hydrological and private borewells to be between two and three times higher,
ecological consequences, besides obvious political and eco- and the corresponding supply to be three times higher at almost
nomic consequences. 30% of BWSSB supply (Narain 2012b). Thus, the spatial
Figure 7 illustrates the spatial mismatch between the mismatch between the patterns of population growth and the
growth of Bangalore and its utility-provided surface water domestic water supply infrastructure has serious economic,
through a scatter plot of domestic water consumption (from political and ecological consequences that we illustrate in
piped surface water sources supplied by BWSSB) and the the next section.
percentage population growth in each subdivision between
Census 2001 and Census 2011.10 The fastest growing subdivi- 4 Socioecological Water Balance of Bangalore
sions also contain the most populated wards in the city (as How has this pattern of city growth, spatially skewed piped
seen in Figure 2). water supply and groundwater extraction affected the
Figure 7: Average Domestic Water Consumption groundwater resource? There is evidence that it has affected
(lpcd, domestic surface water from BWSSB) both the quantity and quality of groundwater. From a quan-
tity perspective, the CGWB has estimated a state of ground-
80
S4 water overdraft for the Bangalore urban district as a whole,
lpcd (Domestic Surface Water, March 2011)

W4
C2
C3 SE2 at 142% of net groundwater availability.11 From a quality per-
N2
60 spective, 50% of monitored wells had more nitrate than the
W2
permissible limit (45mg/l) (CGWB 2011: 23). However, these
N1 W1
C1 SE1 E2
N3 impacts on groundwater – and therefore, the impacts on the
S2
40 W3 S5 urban population – are not spatially uniform. Another study
SE3
E3 S3 shows that some of the most contaminated sources corre-
E1 W5
spond with areas in the city that are likely to depend most on
20
groundwater (Reddy 2003). Also, the central parts of the
N4
W6 city, far from seeing overdrafts, are experiencing a rise in
C3 E4
0 groundwater levels. This is shown in part by shallow ground-
0 50 100 150 water levels (CGWB 2011; Sekhar and Kumar 2009) and in
Percentage population growth (2001 to 11)
The figure shows how the fastest growing regions of Bangalore (which also happen to be the most part from (limited) long-term monitoring data, which shows
populated – see Figure 6) are least served by the piped surface water infrastructure of Bangalore.
a rise in groundwater levels in areas where BWSSB supply is
Obviously, people in the peripheral wards are not getting by available or where no significant development has taken place
on less than 10 lpcd (the average domestic consumption from (CGWB 2011). This is almost certainly a consequence of leak-
BWSSB-supplied surface water sources in the eastern, western- age from water supply, waste water and sewer lines. In con-
most and northern-most parts of Bangalore). The World Health trast to the city centre, a number of observation stations in
Organisation estimates an absolute minimum requirement of outlying areas (Bannavara, Doddakalsandra, Chikkajala and
70 lpcd to sustain a healthy life, and at least 100 lpcd for mini- Talaghatpura) have dried up, falling below their screen-depth
mal additions to mere sustenance (WHO 2003). Even the 20% of 10m below ground level. In at least some of these areas, for
of the total population of Bangalore that lives in the central example, in the south-eastern and north-eastern parts of
wards and accounting for 40% of all piped surface water sup- Bangalore, depth to water levels is directly related to pace of
plied by BWSSB consume less than 100 lpcd of piped surface development (CGWB 2011). However, as of now there are no
water. To make up the difference, like in all Indian cities, water is long-term monitoring wells to quantify this effect at sufficient
consumed from a mix of surface and groundwater sources spatial resolution.12
(CGWB 2011). A recent CGWB study estimates that approximately
40% of Bangalore’s population depends on groundwater. 4.1 Pedagogical Thought Experiment
Even in older parts of the city with better water supply infra- The narrative above underscores the urgent need for situat-
structure, people use a mix of sources including self supply ing urban water within a spatially explicit, metabolic frame-
drawing from groundwater – from private borewells, and work because human and natural systems are tightly coupled
from tankers. There is great variability even with the central in urban environments (House-Peters and Chang 2011). The
30 km2 of Bangalore – with the groundwater fraction of water first step in such a framework is a well-defined water mass
supply ranging from 1% to 51% of total consumption (Sekhar balance (Kenway et al 2011), which we call a “socio-ecological
and Kumar 2009). Housing colonies, commercial and indus- water balance” to make explicit the coupled nature of the
trial establishments that have come up in extension areas are system. In India, the lack of data on both water demand and
almost entirely dependent on groundwater. One estimate biophysical dynamics of urban environments severely limit
puts the number of groundwater-extracting structures at such an approach – after all, “we cannot plan what we do not
1,50,000; and the size of the tanker market at about 2,800 know”.13 Acknowledging this limitation, we present a thought
tankers supplying 8.4 MLD or 10% of BWSSB water supply experiment to clarify what a socioecological water balance of
(CGWB 2011). However, a study by the Institute for Social and Bangalore could look like, one that can be refined in the
Economic Change (ISEC) in 2005 estimates that the number of future as data and knowledge accumulate.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 45
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 8: Schematic of the Socioecological Water Balance of a City Qcons = domestic water consumption;
Natural state Altered state Pumping lreturn = return flow fraction = 0.8 (from
External water
NIUA (2005)).
supply Qpump = estimated net pumping
Evaporation Rain Evaporation Rain
~ 80% ~ 100% Since no systematic data is available
Streamflow Surface watershed on actual volumes of private pumping in
Streamflow Surface watershed
~ 10% the city, Q pump was estimated by assum-
Percolation (Rainfall Recharge)
~ 10%
Percolation ing a 150 lpcd uniform total domestic
(Rainfall Recharge + Leakage + Return)
Net Groundwater Aquifer consumption and subtracting from it
Groundwater Net
discharge Groundwater Groundwater Aquifer the BWSSB surface water domestic con-
~ 10% discharge
sumption. Also note that although infil-
We first consider the city as a whole. Figure 8 is a conceptual tration and recharge would be affected by increasing built-up
model of net groundwater recharge under two conditions for environments, for the purpose of illustration of possible im-
Bangalore – on the left, a “natural” state; on the right, the pacts even under optimistic conditions, we retain the same re-
current state.14 The natural state is unobserved – it is the state charge factor rnat=ralt in both natural and altered states – in
of the water balance if the city did not exist, with no surface other words the results for groundwater recharge could be in-
water imports and no groundwater pumping. Research in similar terpreted as upper limits of altered state recharge.
sub-humid to semi-arid ecosystems in peninsular India shows Table 2 summarises the results from this aggregated or
that, after rain has fallen, around 80% of it subsequently evapo- “lumped” model for Bangalore, under three scenarios: the nat-
rates or is used by plants (transpires); the remainder is parti- ural state; the altered state with leakage and pumping; and the
tioned in roughly equal parts into stream flow and groundwa- fully altered state with leakage, pumping and return flows.15
ter recharge as the rain percolates into the soil. In the natural Table 2: A ‘Lumped’ Water Balance for Bangalore for the Domestic Sector
state, the dominant source of groundwater recharge is rain- (mm/yr)
Natural Altered (No Return Flows) Fully Altered (Return Flows)
fall-recharge. Urban environments drastically change this
Rainfall recharge 63 63 63
natural water balance, by adding new components – leakage
Piped supply leakage 0 140 140
and return flows add to net recharge; pumping subtracts from Net pumping 0 -360 -360
net recharge – and by modifying existing balance of components Return flow 0 0 138
– built-up areas modify groundwater recharge and runoff. Net recharge 63 -157 -19
In the absence of measured data, empirical formulae have The first column shows the water balance for a hypothetical “natural” state in the absence
of the city (with no surface water imports and groundwater withdrawals). The second
been used for portions of the water budget. For example, column considers groundwater pumping and surface water imports but no return flows; and
finally the last column includes return flows. As seen from the second and third columns, the
Hegde and Chandra (2012) use empirical formulae to estimate artificial recharge from the BWSSB infrastructure exceeds annual rainfall-recharge. (Water
groundwater recharge as a function of rainfall over built-up supply and domestic consumption data are from BWSSB, rest is authors’ calculations).
and natural landscapes. The weighted average rainfall-re- Table 2 highlights that Bangalore as a whole is in a state
charge from their paper evaluates to 3% for Bangalore under of groundwater overdraft, echoing recent independent esti-
current (altered) state. For our lumped model of net ground- mates by Hegde and Chandra (2012). Further, two important
water recharge, under the natural state, we assume ground- aspects of the socioecological water balance of Bangalore
water recharge at 7% of annual rainfall, which we set at 900 mm. stand out. The first is that artificial recharge leakage is very
In the altered state, there are two additional sources of arti- high, more than twice natural rainfall recharge – with the
ficial recharge – leakage from piped water supply, and return important difference that the leaking water is largely polluted.
flows, and one source of extraction from groundwater – Similar patterns have been reported in other Asian megacities
pumping. The following assumptions were used for the altered (Onodera et al 2008; Kim et al 2001; Hayashi et al 2009). As
state. Total BWSSB surface-water supply and domestic con- detailed in the introduction, the experiences of Seoul echo the
sumption is 900 MLD and 334 MLD, respectively (March 2011 second important message from Table 2: the high degree of
data from BWSSB). To convert to length units, BBMP boundary sensitivity of recharge estimates to the fate of return flows.
area of 700 km2 was used. The simple water balance picture We have assumed return flows at 80% of consumption
depicted above can be written out as: (NIUA 2005), but this analysis only includes pumping and
NR = rnat * P ...(1) return flows from the domestic sector. This means that leak-
age from piped water supply and its effluent components
AR = ralt * P + (l * Qsupply) + (lreturn * Qcons) – Qpump ...(2) buffer groundwater extraction, but pollute the resource while
where: doing so; further, whether they make up quantitatively for
NR = groundwater recharge under natural conditions; extraction from pumping will depend on the balance of
AR = groundwater recharge under altered conditions; pumping versus artificial recharge from all sectors, not just
rnat = rainfall recharge factor under natural conditions = 0.07 the domestic sector.
ralt = rainfall recharge factor under altered conditions = 0.07 Continuing with this conceptual model, we now extend it to
P = rainfall; see what the socioecological water balance looks like in differ-
Qsupply = BWSSB total water supply ; ent parts of the city. The city core, at 930 m above mean sea
46 april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 9: Bangalore 2011 Population Overlaid over Terrain, Watersheds and and institutional sectors are likely progressively higher away
Waterbodies
from the city centre and that these could be lowering ground-
water levels in outer areas.
With the data currently available, only conceptual models –
such as the ones described in this section – are feasible. Never-
theless, the conceptual models are compelling and illustrate
the potential value of further research. An important lesson
learned from the preliminary spatial analysis above is that
even though the aggregate impact of domestic water consump-
tion on net recharge seems to be negative compared to the
natural state, the spatial distribution of impacts is highly
variable in magnitude and direction. Given the complex water
supply and use within Bangalore, a better picture of the socio-
level is on a divide that lines up on a roughly north-south axis ecological water balance can only emerge from a systematic,
lying between the Arkavathi River on the west, and the South data-driven understanding of water demand across sectors
Pennar to the east (Figure 9). The city sits on lateritic and red and across multiple water sources.
loamy soils. Below the soils are granitic landforms. Granite by
itself does not conduct water, so any groundwater passage 5 Refining the Metabolic Framework
through this lower layer depends on how fractured the rocks Section 4 illustrated the social-ecological nexus, albeit with
are; the net result is low groundwater yields. Using the same limited data. In this section we describe two key elements of
assumptions as in Table 2 and Figure 8, we ran a GIS-based the metabolic framework that we are currently working on
distributed groundwater model.16 that need special attention in the Indian context: one that is
The model was run for one year at monthly time step using data-driven to fill in crucial knowledge gaps, and the second
natural and altered state conditions. We simulated groundwater that extends the planning effort beyond simple trend analysis
recharge, extraction, and flow in natural and altered states, towards a scenarios analysis.
considering as before only domestic water use. Figure 10 shows
the change in groundwater level from domestic consumption.17 5.1 Robust Water Demand Models
In the central parts of the city, this analysis shows groundwater A severe limitation of any planning is that we have no system-
levels that are higher (shallower) than in the natural state by atic idea of actual water demand across different sectors – do-
up to 4.7m. This is consistent with the trend documented by mestic, commercial, industrial – within a city. In the case of
the CGWB for core areas of cities supplied by piped water supply Bangalore, we only have BWSSB supply information. However,
(CGWB 2011). Although receding water levels have been reported as discussed in this paper, private groundwater sources make
Figure 10: Groundwater Impact of Domestic Consumption up a large proportion of the domestic sector alone and ground-
water sources account for the majority of the water consumed
within Bangalore if non-domestic uses of water are also ac-
counted for, as the public utility’s core mandate is limited to
supplying water for domestic household consumption. A crucial
first step towards any comprehensive planning for water that
is able to address all three aspects of social equity, ecological
sustainability, and economic efficiency is the delineation of a
comprehensive water demand model. A robust and spatially
explicit demand model is needed for each sector of the city,
for each distinct demographic, and for each of the many dif-
ferent water sources. Such a demand model is also vital for
completing and refining the evaluation of the socioecological
system illustrated in Section 4. A spatially explicit demographic
model combined with a spatially explicit groundwater distri-
bution model will be a better predictor of water metabolism
in a city and will improve our understanding of the linkages
between social and ecological systems as has been shown
in some other contexts (Ostrom 2009; Anderies et al 2004;
Predicted changes in groundwater depth relative to the “natural” state.
Janssen et al 2007).
in the popular press and in qualitative narratives for the outer Figure 11 (p 48) illustrates a schematic of such a compre-
areas (ibid), our analysis does show only a slight lowering of hensive demand model. The authors of this paper are currently
water levels in outer areas from domestic consumption alone. fielding a large city-representative household survey in Ban-
We note however that pumping from industrial, commercial galore that attempts to obtain the most comprehensive source
Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 47
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 11: Schematic of a Comprehensive Water Demand Model for Bangalore Combining quantitative models with
Socio-economic Characteristics
• Household demography
imagination, scenarios allow planners
• Household income and other stakeholders to think through
• Types of employment Water Quality
• Household standard of living • Portability of the groundwater what could happen in the future and
• Educational status • Natural of contaminants
• Religion/caste • Incidences of water-borne diseases adapt their plans accordingly (Godet
Housing Characteristics Groundwater Availability 2010). In the context of the spatially
• Household spatial Location • Mode of extraction of groundwater
• Type of dwelling (slum/high rises/ • Depth of the water table explicit metabolic framework that we
villa/independent houses, etc) • Frequency of abandoned wells
• Construction material (walls, floor,
Household Biographical
• Frequency of deepening of wells
have outlined, the scenarios approach
roof)
Characteristics Characteristics
• Formal/informal settlement can be integrated to model uncertain-
Household
ties in a manner that allows planners to
Water Demand see the impacts of these uncertainties
(Qij)
on inequality and sustainability in addi-
tion to economic efficiency.
Pipe Water Connection
• BWSSB connection in house
• BWSSB connection shared
Infrastructural
Cost of Water 6 Conclusions
• BWSSB supply through public stand posts Characteristics Cost of Water Procurement
• Water tariff This paper documented how cities are
• Price of water from private water
Presence if Alternate Water Source providers tightly coupled social-ecological systems,
• Presence of in-house wells/borewells
• Presence of private water providers using Bangalore’s domestic water use as
• Presence of community water source Cost of Additional Infrastructure
• Electricity cost of pumping a case study. Our analysis of domestic
• Cost of water purification
Water Conservation and Reuse • Cost of construction, maintenance water consumption in Bangalore under-
• Rain-water harvesting (RWH) and storage
• Use of treated waste/used water scored two principal components of a
urban metabolism framework. First,
Household water demand, Qij is the water demanded by household i from the source of type-j.
any metabolic approach must consider
explicit demand equation for domestic water consumption at- not only resource flows into the city, but also waste flows after
tempted in India. We are combining traditional quantitative resources have been consumed. We demonstrated how return
household socio-economic profiles with physical measure- flows (flow of used water to the underground aquifers) and
ments of water quality, water consumption, groundwater leakage flows from imported river water brought into the city
depth and household electricity consumption associated with are crucial to understanding depletion of groundwater. Sec-
domestic water use. We are sampling 1,500 randomly selected ond, we showed how urban metabolism is an inherent spatial
households in Bangalore such that our survey is statistically problem. From both biophysical sustainability and social eq-
representative of the city not only on the usual social demo- uity perspectives, it is crucial to delineate the spatial variation
graphic variables, but also on hydrological, spatial, and infra- in resource flows.
structure variables.18 The current clamour for privatisation and PPPs as the
solution to urban India’s water woes disregards the central
5.2 Planning under Uncertainty – A Scenarios Approach precepts of urban metabolism. The privatisation and PPP
Current planning in the city of Bangalore must keep up with a experiments in various cities have so far exclusively focused
rapidly expanding population on the city’s periphery. But it is on water supply, while disregarding the sewerage side of the
equally important to prepare for futures that look quite differ- problem (Narain 2012c). This is not surprising as water supply
ent from the present (Benjamin 2000). Dramatic drivers of is financially more lucrative than processing a city’s sewer-
population growth, like real estate and information technology age. However, this not only further ruins the fiscal health of
booms, and industrial growth are not guaranteed (Wenban- public water utilities (who are now starved of water supply
Smith 2000). The kinds of uncertainties that we are describing revenue), but will also result in two separate entities being
are critical to Bangalore’s development, in that their resolution responsible for what is physically and ecologically a unified
strongly affects the way the future will unfold. The idea to flow. An urban metabolic framework can thus help uncover
explore futures through such “critical uncertainties” was the nexus between economic efficiency, social equity and
developed by Pierre Wack at Shell in the 1980s (Wack 1985), biophysical sustainability.
and is now arguably the most popular way to construct scenarios The urban metabolism framework discussed here can
(Bishop et al 2007). These kinds of uncertainties – which produce also help understand the potential conflicts between cities
large changes – distinguish scenario planning from the more and the surrounding countries by situating the urban space
conventional trend analysis. Among the critical uncertainties within the larger regional context. Bangalore has been
identified at a workshop held at the Indian Institute of awarded 1,425 MLD of water from the Cauvery River as part
Management in Bangalore in February 2012, participants of the Tribunal formula used to allocate water between
mentioned: Bangalore’s importance in the global economy, the various riparian interests. This represents nearly 5% of
level of corruption, migration rates of both high and low- the total water available in the river. With the domestic
income earners, the evolution of urban-rural conflicts, and demand already exceeding the maximum water it is allowed
people’s attitudes towards the environment. to draw from the river, any further growth in the city will
48 april 13, 2013 vol xlviII no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

only exacerbate the pressures on groundwater. By treating Bangalore’s domestic water needs are entirely met by im-
the city as a tightly coupled social-ecological metabolic sys- ported surface water and groundwater. However, it is simple
tem, the framework presented here can help planners move to use the scenarios approach discussed here to understand
beyond a narrow focus on continuous augmentation of utility- measures like recent bylaws mandating rainwater harvesting,
supplied water. For example, in the pedeagogical groundwater reuse of treated water for non-potable uses, and other conser-
model that was discussed in the paper, we assumed that vation strategies.

Notes 2008) module r.gwflow. The module solves for “The Current State of Scenario Development:
1 For an example of how the social metabolism each cell, groundwater flow partial differential An Overview of Techniques”, Foresight, 9: 5-25.
framework (Fischer-Kowalski and Hüttler equation of the form: BWSSB (2011): “Bangalore Water Supply and Sewe-
1998, 1999) has been used to study the political (dh/dt)*S = K x * (d2h/dx2) + Ky * (d2h/dy2) + q rage Board, presentation to the BWSSB Board,
economy of resource use, see Martinez-Alier where : 11 March, Government of Karnataka.
(2007, 2009). h: piezometric head (m); CGWB (2011): Ground Water Scenario in Major Cities
2 Provisional results from Census 2011. dt: time step for transient calculations (s); of India, Technical report, Central Ground
3 For recent evidence in the Indian context, see K x, Ky : hydraulic conductivity in x and y direc- Water Board, Ministry of Water Resources,
Vithayathil and Singh (2012). Government of India, Faridabad, India.
tions respectively (m/s);
4 For example, it is local and state-level land-use CSE (2012): “The Flush, the City, and their River”,
q: source or sink flows (m/s);
decision-making that led to a loss of some 30% Down to Earth, Centre-for-Science-and-Environ-
S: specific yield (-) ment, 20(21): 44–54, March.
of Bangalore’s lakes and other waterbodies For hard rock aquifers, hydraulic conductivi-
between 1973 and 1996 (Narain 2012b: 317). Decker, E H, S Elliott, F A Smith, D R Blake and F S
ties and specific yields are very low. We as- Rowland (2000): “Energy and Material Flow
Zoning and instruments such as floor area ratio
sumed a fully penetrating, homogeneous un- through the Urban Ecosystem”, Annual Review
(FAR) have far-reaching impacts on growth
confined aquifer formulation with parameters of Energy and the Environment, 25 (1): 685-740.
patterns (Sridhar 2010, 2007).
K x, = Ky = 0.5m/day and S=0.0075. q was set Fischer-Kowalski, Marina and Walter Hüttler (1998):
5 See Ranganathan et al (2009) for a detailed to the net recharge term, estimated spatially
account of the great diversity among the new “Society’s Metabolism: The Intellectual Histo-
from equations (1) and (2). Monthly rainfall ry of Materials Flow Analysis, Part-1: 1860-
areas added to BBMP in 2007, and its implica-
data for Bangalore were extracted from WMO. 1970”, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2(1): 61-78.
tions for extending piped water supply to these
new areas. http://grass.fbk.eu/gdp/html_grass63/r.gw- – (1999): “Society’s Metabolism: The Intellectual
flow.html and divided the city into 90m resolu- History of Materials Flow Analysis”, Part-2:
6 The 2001 population numbers that are pre-
sented here and in the remainder of this paper tion pixels. 1970-1998”, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2(4):
have been corrected such that both 2001 and 17 Technically, the figure shows change in ground- 107-36.
2011 population numbers correspond to a com- water head, which is the level to which the Gilbert, Natasha (2012): “Water Under Pressure”,
mon geographic frame. The 2001 population water would rise (or fall) if a well were dug at Nature, 483(7389): 256-57, March.
simply represents the number of people enu- that point. Godet, Michel (2010): “Future Memories”, Techno-
merated by Census 2001 inside the current 18 The survey results are likely to be available in logical Forecasting and Social Change, 77 (9):
ward boundaries. the middle of 2013. 1457-63.
7 This original source of piped water to Bangalore GoK (2006): All Figures at a Glance, Department of
is no longer functional as the Hesarghatta lake Statistics, Government of Karnataka.
has dried up. References
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Survey
within a single subdivision. August 11, 2012
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domestic-lpcd and population growth (bet- by
ween 2001 and 2011) yields a negative coeffi-
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11 Also cf Hegde and Chandra (2012).
12 Since 2010, the Department of Mines and
Contemporary mainstream economics has become concerned less with describing reality than with an
Geology has added monitoring wells at 12 loca- idealised version of the world. However, reality refuses to bend to the desire for theoretical elegance
tions around the city: however, historical and that an economist demands from his model. Modelling itself on mathematics, mainstream economics
existing monitoring is nowhere near the spatio-
temporal resolution that is required to compre-
is primarily deductive and based on axiomatic foundations. Econophysics seeks to be inductive, to
hensively understand Bangalore’s ground- be an empirically founded science based on observations, with the tools of mathematics and logic
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13 Olcay Unver, UN World Water Assessment Pro- reinterpret empirical data to conform to a theorist’s expectations, but describes the mechanisms by
gramme, cited by Gilbert (2012).
14 Soni (2003), attempts a similar conceptual
which economic systems actually evolve over time.
“lumped” water balance for Delhi. For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
15 For simplicity, we consider only domestic with- Economic and Political Weekly,
drawals in this conceptual model and do not
change the rate of infiltration in the altered state. 320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
16 We used the GRASS GIS (Neteler and Mitasova email: circulation@epw.in

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