Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 98

Parameters of Successful Wastewater Reuse in Urban India
behind the appearance of functioning
systems and that these layers of known
and hidden failures are part of the complexity
of creating decentralized facilities.
In terms of identifying key parameters
that determine the best examples
of functioning projects, we follow from
Starkl et al. and their critical view of
“success” and “failure” in their analysis
of the functioning of decentralized
wastewater facilities across India. In a
recent paper focusing on 58 projects
across India, they (2017, 133) qualified
how they were determining success and
failure as follows:
For this paper, “apparent success”
is success in the view of
local experts (step 1 of data collection)
and “actual success” is
success in the view of a closer
inspection by international expert
teams (step 2). “Hidden
failure” is apparent success that
is not actual success. This paper
emphasizes hidden failures, as
the subsample of hidden failures
appears to be random, justifying
statistical methodology. (In step
1, data could not be collected at
random, as insight by the local
experts about the systems was
needed. However, as hidden failures
result from a lack of information,
one could not intentionally
search for them.) “Hidden
success” was not observed.
Apart from the use in research
designs and conclusions, definitions of
success and failure are part of the algorithm
for funding agencies at local, national,
and international levels. If identified
as failed systems, these projects
have little hope of continued support,
even in a weak administrative regime.
Alternately, the aim of failure stories
may be to motivate concern, attention,
and investment in infrastructure. Success
stories bring more funds for investment
or may provide justification that
no more investment is needed. In this
study, we draw from our notion of infrastructure
disarray (Alley et al. 2018)
to assume that success and failure are
not mutually exclusive categories but
are determined flexibly by the operation
of parameters. We see that problems in
infrastructure (1) are layers of failed
systems that may or may not be physically
connected; and (2) can be thought
of not in terms of success versus failure
or presence versus nonpresence, but as
a multitude of interconnected, overlapping,
or disconnected segments of
the sewage services chain (Alley et al.
2018).
We also draw loosely from the
framework of the hydrosocial cycle as
we trace out the intertwined water and
society patterns that coproduce the
meanings, uses, and technologies of
wastewater and water consumption and
production (Budds 2008; Linton 2010;
Linton and Budds 2013; Swyngedouw
2009). The hydrosocial cycle accounts
for the ways the society—key actors and
institutions—shape water uses through
and with infrastructures and technologies.
The hydrosocial cycle also means
the ways water flows and turns into
wastewater, the ways it is transformed
to another state and becomes recycled
water and how all these states of water
reflect, refract, and empower or disem-
95