Aqua (Feb 2024)
Challenges in developing trust in the rural drinking water supply systems
Abstract
The water sector in developing countries continues to tackle the emergent challenges of increasing demand for water by the growing population, poor cost recovery from the users, ageing infrastructure and intermittent water supply regime. The national and sub-national governments entrusted the community to tackle these challenges. This led to the emergence of community-managed rural water supply systems where ‘Building Trust with Stakeholders’ is an essential concern for the sustainable functioning of the rural drinking water supply schemes. Trust is developed by engaging stakeholders in decision-making and the overall knowledge-sharing process. However, maintaining and sustaining trust is challenging in the context of the above-mentioned challenges. Amongst all the concerned stakeholders of the water sector, building the service provider's trust with the residential water users is an important aspect. Building upon the given context, this study attempts to understand the trustful relationship among the three key stakeholders of the rural drinking water sector: Scheme operating agencies, village local self-government bodies and their residential water users. The study aims to utilise the learnings from the trust research to empirically understand the factors shaping the trustful relationship between the stakeholders in India's rural drinking water sector. HIGHLIGHTS ‘Building trustful relationships between stakeholders’ is an essential concern for the effective last-mile delivery of rural drinking water supply schemes.; Trust is one of the key principles of stakeholder engagement, where user participation is institutionalised through community-based management of schemes.; Sustaining trust amongst the stakeholders requires problematization on the various aspects of trust in the rural drinking water sector (RDWS).;
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