Public participation in urban water supply projects - The case of South-West Guwahati, India

Piped water supply in Guwahati covers less than 30% of the city's population for which the Government of India proposes four new water supply projects, but astonishingly, they faced vehement public protest. The reason for the protest was attributed to lack of trust and need of public representation in the governing body. Besides, public participation is not a mandatory clause in water supply projects and, hence, was not carried out a priori to the project implementation. In an effort to address this, the present study aims to develop a framework incorporating public participation as a mandatory clause in water supply projects. In doing so, secondary data was collected from studies worldwide on public participation in water supply projects and analyzed to identify critical success factors (CSFs). South-West Guwahati water supply project was taken up as a study area, and a semi-structured questionnaire was designed to generate primary data on public participation. Thematic analysis was employed to identify the CSFs from primary data influencing public participation in the project. Finally, a framework was formulated following the identified CSFs from primary and secondary data and the review of various theories on public participation. The framework is developed to achieve effective public participation in six levels viz. inform, educate, consult, involve, collaborate, and capacity building. Each level satisfies a set of CSFs and ultimately all CSFs addresses to deemphasize the effects of disincentives in water supply projects. Further, the framework was validated by 16 experts and received an exceptionally copacetic rating for all six validation aspects. Copacetic expert ratings demonstrated appropriateness, objectivity, replicability, practicality, reliability, and suitability of framework for water supply projects.