WATER, MARKETS, AND EMBEDDED INSTITUTIONS IN WESTERN INDIA

A process of state withdrawal from water control and provision, ceding this space to the market, characterized global water politics in the 1990s. A series of global pronouncements during this period lauded the market as the best means of dealing with the harsh reality of allocating ever more scarce water resources. This development mirrored a broader political shift, as the dominant “Washington Consensus” of the 1980s and 1990s urged a relentless unshackling of economic forces from the constraints of social conditions and political pressures. 1 This dominance has not gone unchallenged. The implementation of market-approaches to water has spurred an outbreak of protest, particularly at the municipal level and in reaction to large water projects. Local communities and their supporters struggle to articulate an alternative framing of water management, around community rights, social risks, and local control rather than around supply, demand, and corporate control.