The peri-urban to urban groundwater transfer and its societal implications in Chennai, south India – A case study

Abstract

The aquifer of the peri-urban/rural areas of Chennai Metropolitan Area in Tamil Nadu acts as a source of informal water market, and a huge amount of water is transferred and marketed by entrepreneurs, such as private water suppliers and packaged water industries. Water transfer from agricultural to non agricultural uses is not only common in India but most of the water starved developing countries experience it. It leads to temporal and spatial changes in the groundwater quantity and quality, and generates the inequity and affordability issues in accessing the water especially to the peri-urban poor. The paper analyzed the above issue with a case study conducted at Perumbakkam, a Chennai peri-urban village. The multivariate statistical analysis of field findings has been conducted in the peri-urban village for understanding the socio-economic implications of the groundwater market. The study identifies the major findings due to the prevailing informal groundwater market and emphasizes the institutional mechanism through regulatory and legal measures to protect the resource base and conservation and restoration mechanism to replenish the depleting resources.

Periurban Transformations in the Global South and Their Impact on Water-Based Livelihoods

“…Periurban governance has to take into account the complexity of periurban structures, actor constellations and processes [40,47]. Several authors demand the creation of efficient water markets that ensure equitable distribution, improved accessibility, eliminate common good problems and mechanisms that may eventually compensate farmers for the delivery of ecosystem services [20,32,51,57,58]. What is missing is research on the societal impact of agricultural transformations.…”

“…For well off farmers, water vending is a chance to increase their income, while it deprives poor farmers who cannot afford borewells from their livelihood base. Water vending generally requires less labour input and offers higher profits [20,22,103]. Yet, this new livelihood results in further transformations, as farmers drop out of agriculture and professionalise in water vending [20,22].…”

“…Water vending generally requires less labour input and offers higher profits [20,22,103]. Yet, this new livelihood results in further transformations, as farmers drop out of agriculture and professionalise in water vending [20,22]. This is only possible for well-off, land owning farmers, who have the means to invest in drilling deeper boreholes and water tankers [24] and/or treatment facilities such as reverse osmosis plants.…”

“…This is only possible for well-off, land owning farmers, who have the means to invest in drilling deeper boreholes and water tankers [24] and/or treatment facilities such as reverse osmosis plants. This moving out of agriculture by the land-owners leaves landless labourers previously engaged in agriculture without a livelihood [24] and results in a decline of the water table [20]. Thus, the transfer of water from the periurban to the urban areas may also result in a drinking water scarcity in periurban areas [22].…”

“…Together with overextraction and pollution, changes in managing the resource, result in changing access to water, with the patterns being determined inter alia by location, socio-economic status, gender, and social identity [18,[20][21][22][23][24]. In many cases, the shortfall of governance is the root cause for these problems.…”