Water governance in peri-urban areas

Why in the News?

India’s water challenge is increasingly shifting to peri-urban areas that are growing rapidly but lack proper governance and services. This has become important because India’s urban expansion is accelerating fast: the number of Census towns rose from 1,362 to 3,784 in two decades. While the Jal Jeevan Mission has brought tap water to nearly 80% of rural households, peri-urban regions still face urban-level pressures without reliable water and sanitation services.

What are Peri-Urban Areas?

1. Peri-urban areas are transitional zones located on the outskirts of metropolitan regions where urban and rural activities mix. 
2. They are characterized by rapid, often unplanned, land-use changes, overlapping jurisdictions, and a heterogeneous population with diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
3. India’s peri-urban landscape represents the transition zone where farmlands, fragmented settlements, industrial units, and expanding cities intersect.
4. These areas are neither fully rural nor formally urban, resulting in governance ambiguity.

Why are peri-urban areas emerging as the “missing middle” in India’s water governance framework?

1. Institutional Vacuum: Creates governance ambiguity as peri-urban areas remain outside effective rural governance but lack urban administrative integration.
2. Rapid Urbanisation: Expands peri-urban settlements at a pace faster than institutional adaptation. Census towns increased from 1,362 to 3,784, registering a 178% rise over two decades.
3. Unplanned Settlement Growth: Converts agricultural land into industrial sheds and densely clustered settlements without parallel expansion of water and sanitation infrastructure.
4. Administrative Limbo: Produces fragmented accountability as these regions are “no longer villages but not recognised cities.”
5. Service Deficit: Imposes urban-level costs without corresponding urban-level services, creating dual vulnerabilities.

How does governance fragmentation intensify water insecurity in peri-urban regions?

1. Intermittent Water Supply: Forces residents into uncertain access arrangements. In Rawta village near Delhi, water is supplied only on alternate days between 7 p.m. and midnight, compelling households to sacrifice sleep for water collection.
2. Dependence on Informal Markets: Encourages exploitation by private water vendors, particularly where piped access remains unreliable.
3. Municipal Overstretch: Weakens service delivery when peri-urban regions are absorbed into municipal corporations without administrative preparedness. In Gurugram, abolition of rural governance exposed residents to urban prices without adequate services.
4. Governance Discontinuity: Generates inefficiencies during transitions from panchayat systems to municipal administration.

How does peri-urban expansion transfer environmental burdens onto vulnerable communities?

1. Groundwater Contamination: Intensifies due to waste dumping and untreated urban spillovers. In peri-urban Hyderabad, toxic leachate from waste dumps contaminated groundwater systems.
2. Urban Resource Extraction: Diverts water away from downstream users. The Bisalpur Dam, originally built for Tonk and Sawai Madhopur irrigation, increasingly prioritises Jaipur’s urban demand, shifting costs to rural farmers.
3. Sacrifice Zones: Converts peri-urban regions into sites bearing ecological costs of urban growth without compensatory governance mechanisms.
4. Water Inequity: Expands when rural water sources are appropriated for urban consumption without accountable regulatory systems.

Why is sanitation failure becoming a major peri-urban governance crisis?

1. Septic Tank Dependence: Leaves nearly 40 million urban households dependent on on-site sanitation systems such as septic tanks.
2. Irregular Desludging: Creates public health risks because septic tanks are often cleaned only after overflow.
3. Illegal Disposal: Encourages dumping of untreated septage into rivers and open fields, undermining sanitation outcomes.
4. Infrastructure Reversal: Weakens gains achieved under the Swachh Bharat Mission, as a single 5,000-litre tanker dumping untreated waste can negate sanitation improvements created by thousands of constructed toilets.
5. Public Health Risk: Increases groundwater contamination, vector-borne diseases, and ecological degradation.

Institutional reforms necessary to address the peri-urban water governance vacuum:

How can governance structures be redesigned for peri-urban settlements?

1. Nagar Panchayats: Ensure institutional continuity for all Census towns, as envisioned under the 74th Constitutional Amendment.
2. Functional Reclassification: Strengthens governance capacity after rural-to-urban transitions.
3. Collaborative Governance: Improves accountability through local coordination. The Sultanpur village platform experiment brought together engineers, panchayat representatives, and residents, demonstrating better coordination outcomes.

Why must water-source sustainability become central to urban water planning?

1. Catchment Protection: Prevents encroachment and ecological degradation at water origins.
2. Solid Waste Regulation: Reduces contamination risks near drinking water sources.
3. Community Monitoring: Strengthens local accountability through sanitation inspections of water bodies.
4. Source Sustainability: Addresses a key gap in Jal Jeevan Mission, which expanded tap access but requires stronger long-term water source protection.

Why is a ‘Swachh Bharat Mission 3.0’ necessary for peri-urban India?

1. Faecal Sludge Management: Prioritises safe collection and treatment of septage.
2. Decentralised Treatment Infrastructure: Facilitates establishment of faecal sludge treatment plants where sewerage systems remain economically unviable beyond 15-20 km.
3. Technology Integration: Deploys GPS-equipped desludging trucks to prevent illegal dumping.
4. Narrow-Lane Accessibility: Introduces mini-cesspool vehicles, as demonstrated in Berhampur, Odisha.
5. Financial Integration: Internalises desludging expenses (₹1,500-₹6,000 per trip) into monthly water charges through sanitation levies.
6. Rural Employment Linkage: Leverages employment guarantee programmes for sanitation implementation.

Can decentralised wastewater treatment improve peri-urban water resilience?

1. Modular Systems: Support localised treatment close to wastewater generation points.
2. High Water Recovery: Technologies developed by Indra Water and Tigreen recover over 95% of used water.
3. Low Resource Requirement: Minimises land and energy consumption.
4. Policy Support: Requires single-window clearances, green procurement mandates, and government-backed guarantees to create treated-water markets.

Why should peri-urban water infrastructure be treated as strategic infrastructure?

1. Future Urbanisation: India will require 230 million housing units and nearly 500 cities by 2047, increasing water demand sharply.
2. Blended Financing: Strengthens investment capacity through models such as Uttarakhand’s financing framework, combining State risk-bearing with World Bank concessional loans linked to performance indicators.
3. Infrastructure Prioritisation: Ensures financing for sanitation, decentralised treatment, and water reuse systems.

Conclusion

Peri-urban India represents the decisive frontier of India’s water future. Continued institutional neglect risks creating zones of ecological degradation, sanitation failure, and social inequity. Governance continuity, decentralised treatment, source sustainability, and strategic financing are necessary to transform peri-urban regions into resilient urban transitions rather than sacrifice zones of growth.

Value Addition

Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), 2019

1. Objective: Ensures Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) to every rural household under the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
2. Coverage Expansion: Increased rural tap water access from nearly 17% in 2019 to around 80%+ households, marking one of India’s largest public service delivery programmes.
3. Community Participation: Strengthens local ownership through Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSCs/Pani Samitis).
4. Source Sustainability: Supports rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, watershed management, and local water conservation to ensure long-term water security.

Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban & Grameen)

1. Objective: Ensures Open Defecation Free (ODF) status, improved sanitation infrastructure, and behavioural transformation.
2. SBM-Grameen: Strengthens household toilets, solid-liquid waste management, and village sanitation systems.
3. SBM-Urban: Facilitates scientific waste disposal, faecal sludge management (FSM), sewage treatment, and urban sanitation planning.
4. SBM 2.0 Focus: Expands from toilet construction to ODF+, ODF++ standards, ensuring safe treatment of faecal waste.
5. Behavioural Change: Promotes sanitation through Jan Andolan (people’s movement) and awareness campaigns.

AMRUT Mission (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation), 2015

1. Objective: Strengthens urban water supply, sewerage networks, septage management, stormwater drainage, and green spaces.
2. Coverage: Targets 500+ cities, particularly focusing on basic urban infrastructure.
3. Water Security Focus: Ensures universal water supply, reduction of non-revenue water losses, and sewage treatment expansion.
4. AMRUT 2.0: Prioritises water circularity, reuse of treated wastewater, rejuvenation of water bodies, and drinking water security.

Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal), 2019

1. Objective: Ensures sustainable groundwater management in water-stressed regions through community participation.
2. Coverage: Implemented across 7 water-stressed States, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.
3. Demand-side Management: Promotes water budgeting, crop diversification, efficient irrigation, and community-led groundwater monitoring.
4. Institutional Innovation: Uses performance-based incentives for States linked to groundwater outcomes.
5. World Bank Support: Implemented with financial and technical assistance from the World Bank.

Case Studies / Examples 

Rawta Village (Delhi): Example of Intermittent Water Access

1. Issue: Residents receive piped water only on alternate days between 7 p.m. and midnight.
2. Governance Challenge: Reflects irregular service delivery despite physical infrastructure presence.

Gurugram: Example of Municipal Absorption Challenges

1. Issue: Rural governance structures were abolished and peri-urban areas absorbed under the municipal corporation.
2. Challenge: Municipal institutions struggled with administrative capacity and service provision.
3. Outcome: Residents experienced urban-level costs without adequate urban services.

Berhampur, Odisha: Example of Sanitation Innovation

1. Innovation: Introduced mini-cesspool vehicles for desludging in narrow peri-urban lanes inaccessible to large trucks.
2. Outcome: Improved faecal sludge management and reduced illegal dumping risks.

Bisalpur Dam, Rajasthan: Example of Urban-Rural Water Conflict

1. Issue: Originally constructed for irrigation in Tonk and Sawai Madhopur, but increasingly redirected to meet Jaipur’s urban water demand.
2. Challenge: Creates tensions between urban consumption priorities and rural livelihoods.

Hyderabad: Example of Groundwater Contamination

1. Issue: Toxic landfill leachate from waste dumps contaminated peri-urban groundwater.
2. Challenge: Demonstrates environmental costs of unregulated urban expansion and weak waste management.

Uttarakhand Financing Model: Example of Blended Infrastructure Financing

1. Model: Combines State risk-bearing with concessional World Bank loans linked to performance indicators.
2. Objective: Ensures financing for water, sanitation, and decentralised treatment infrastructure.
3. Outcome: Encourages result-based financing and accountability.

PYQ Relevance

[UPSC 2024] Analyse the role of local bodies in providing good governance at local level and bring out the pros and cons of merging the rural local bodies with the urban local bodies

Linkage: The PYQ directly tests peri-urban governance transition. The article discusses how peri-urban areas fall into a governance vacuum during transition from Gram Panchayat to municipal governance, creating water and sanitation failures.