Adarsh Nagar story: BVM’s Successful Struggle Against Water Woes
Adarshnagar is a basthi located in Cherlapally cluster under Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) administration, Hyderabad city, Telangana. Most of the slum dwellers are daily wage labourers and private employees. The houses are mostly semi-pucca and pucca. “Basthi Vikas Manch” is already a known non-affiliated city-wide platform of Citizens, in which the project team is working towards the betterment of conditions in slums of Hyderabad primarily on issues of Drinking Water, Sanitation, and hygiene. As a part of the project regular meetings were conducted in the slum with BVM members to orient them on the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene rights and how to solve their issues by interfacing with government and approaching the concern departments.
This case study tries to capture the success story of Adarsh Nagar BVM members on how they continuously worked hard to represent their slum and solved their WASH issues with concerned department. Series of meetings were conducted in the basthi to strengthen the community and make them aware of WASH importance in their daily life. Initially, in the BVM meetings, they used to discuss their issues experienced by the community. Whenever there is an issue in the basthi the BVM members will have meeting. They discuss on how to take this issue forward with the department find solution. Initially, few representations on issues in the slum were submitted to the concerned departments. Constant follow ups are often needed until it gets resolved.
In Adarsh Nagar, there is a power borewell pump located near the community hall compound where the residents of this community are getting water supply from this bore well. This is the only source of bore water supply for 150 households staying in and around the community hall. The functioning of bore well was stopped in December due to repairs. It’s been almost 3 months that these households are depending on water tankers for water supply. Each household would get only 2 barrels of water which have to be used for 1 week irrespective of the size of family. There was irregular timing maintained by the water tankers and supply was only once in a week or 15 days. The community has faced a severe problem due to lack of water supply and reported this issue to the colony leader but no action was taken and no one has come from the department to check on this. During the BVM meeting which is conducted on Feb 5th,2018 it was decided to report to the government on this bore well issue and wrote a representation to the concerned department on BVM letter pad. On 7th Feb, BVM and community members around 15 members along with project community mobilizer went to the GHMC office to submit the representation.
The concerned section officer has taken the details of the locality, ward members, corporator etc and given the contact number of the person who does the boring repair in that basthi. Very next day GHMC staff visited the basthi for inspection of the bore and it was said that bore has dropped to the yield and should install a new motor which will take some time to resolve the issue. After the visit it’s been 10 days and no one has come to repair the bore well.
This time community has submitted their grievance using Praja Vani service on 19th Feb,2018 (which is a public grievance redressal programme conducted every Monday in Hyderabad by the Telangana government). On the same day concerned department member has come to the basthi and repaired the bore well and solved the issue. The concerted effort of the members of the BVM resulted in quick grievance re-dressal and has helped the community members to come together to resolve their issues with concerned departments.
- Lack of water supply (both drinking water and bore water) was the major issue in the community.
- This bore well is connected with many taps and the pressure, quantity has been reduced. They are relying on water tankers (now the issue is resolved).
- SaciWATERs with an assist from WaterAid have installed motors and repaired 2 bore well pumps which is given a yard connection and benefitted to 50 households app.
Apart from that SaciWATERs have also constructed rainwater harvesting unit to the community hall, 2 bio-toilets, and a bio-digester.
“Last 3 months we had a hard time with insufficient water supply, literally, we couldn’t run the house without water” and ”If we need of more water we had to pay an extra amount of rupees to the water tanker person,” says BVM members.
“Without SaciWATERs assistance we wouldn’t be confident enough to resolve our basthi issues by ourselves and you have brought a lot of changes in our basthi,” say BVM members.
SaciWATERs team through BVM was able to mobilize the community through strengthening of BVM at slum level. The team has organized several capacity building program to initiate community led monitoring of slum level safe drinking water and sanitation facilities and improved access for marginalized household clusters.
This brings to the light that a sense of responsibility and need for WASH rights made the BVM members work for their community development. Apart from the project team, the BVM members of Adarsh Nagar will also maintain a separate book for noting down the minutes during BVM meetings.