Untapped transformative potential in decentralised groundwater systems that improve households' resilience in India's water-scarce urban environments

Abstract

Off-grid, decentralised water infrastructures are increasingly being promoted to help cities meet their water delivery targets and build resilient water systems in the face of changing water availability. Against this background, this paper examines how integrating off-grid, decentralised groundwater systems with centralized piped supply helps water utilities and urbanites achieve transformative resilience under conditions of chronic water scarcity in the secondary city of Tiruppur, India. Empirical findings on users' water access practices from off-grid systems like municipal or private borewells to remain resilient, their role in the everyday governance of these systems, and the costs of building resilience through borewells—obtained through a participatory action research project where 94 households recorded month-long water access using a ‘water and waste calendar’—reveal that Tiruppur's public borewells are an affordable and mostly inclusive resilience building measure but are far from being transformative. Moreover, diverse arrangements for their everyday governance unevenly enable user participation, impose invisible costs on female members of borewell-reliant households, and create differentiation in service quality across the city. The paper argues that the potential to achieve transformative resilience through off-grid sources like borewells remains untapped in Tiruppur and concludes with some reflections to pursue just and inclusive resilience.