Equity and access: community based water management in urban poor communities: an Indian case study

India is urbanizing rapidly and two of the major issues grappling the urban habitats in India today are issues of water and sanitation. These issues affect the development of urban settlements. The assumption is that these are technical problems thereby technical solutions should be able to address the concern. However, water and sanitation issues are embedded in complex social realities. This is more accentuated in urban poor communities where there are resource, access and equity disparities within and also outside. One of the ways of ensuring sustainable and equitable access to water and sanitation is by facilitating social ownership and developing community based socio engineering and environmentally safe models by building peoples’ organization and strengthening community governance structures. This paper attempts at sharing the need for community based water management systems to tackle water inequity issues in society by sharing a case study of 2 ongoing projects on Strengthening Community-Centric Governance through Integrated Water and Sanitation Management in urban Cuttack in the state of Orissa and in the periurban town of Delwara in Rajasthan, both in India. Strengthening participatory local self-governance and improving the quality of life of people through integrated water, sanitation and waste management interventions is the key approach to this model and the paper shares the insights and principles generated from the case studies. Keywords: community, water governance, water management, equity, sustainable development, community participation, NGOs.