Hard and Soft Infrastructure of State Water Provisioning in Urban Mountain Towns

In April 2025, the Government of India approved Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation 2.0 (AMRUT 2.0) projects worth Rs.1,503 crores to the Himalayan mountain districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong over five years. Of that,  Rs.238.6 crore allocated for the Darjeeling municipal town is meant to complete the Rs.205-crore AMRUT 1.0 drinking water project, which has been underway since 2015. Another Rs.60 crore is earmarked for renovating the North and South reservoirs in the Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, which serve as the water sources for Darjeeling town, and for constructing a new reservoir in the same area. Given the amount allocated for an ongoing project, the AMRUT 2.0 plan for expenditure and implementation to address the water crisis needs clarification.

While constructing hard infrastructure (technocratic and physical elements) is essential, it overlooks the importance of soft infrastructure (institutional rules and regulations for obtaining a state water connection), which is equally important for accessing state water systems. The lack of equal focus on soft infrastructure underlines a serious problem in state water provisioning in the Himalayan region. None of these large water projects will solve the water crisis unless they integrate hard and soft infrastructural concerns.

Problems with State Water Provisioning

Before the AMRUT 2.0 project, the government had proposed 13 projects to address Darjeeling’s water crisis over the years. Unfortunately, all these focused on technical components without assessing the inadequate institutional capacity to facilitate universal access to water. They failed to develop contextual planning, often ignoring existing water distribution systems. These projects prioritised hard infrastructure for implementation but overlooked soft infrastructure needed to obtain a state water connection to access these ‘upgraded’ water systems. The exclusive focus on hard infrastructure has resulted in a gap between the water demand and supply for the residents.

The Darjeeling Municipality serves only 15% of households, highlighting its inability to meet demand and expand household water provisioning coverage. Consequently, only a small section of the population is accruing the benefits of these projects. The Municipality supplies water only once or twice weekly, with 1,500 litres per supply, resulting in 214 litres per household or about 43 litres per person for a family of five. The access rate is below the national standard of 135 litres per person daily. In sum, the Municipality is doing little to meet the daily water demands of the citizens.

Failure to Enable Household Connectivity

Several factors affect a household’s decision to seek a state household connection from the Municipality. Connection costs in Darjeeling are Rs.17,000 for a regular and Rs.35,000 for a ‘tatkal’ connection, which are easily the highest numbers anywhere in India. Along with the connection fee, residents must also submit three documents from three different departments: (1) a Khatian, land rights record, from the Land Resources Department, (2) a Land Registration Document from the court, and (3) a Mutation document from the Municipality. Once the application for connection is submitted, approval typically takes 3-5 years. Until then, people are left to depend on informal water supplies, such as springs and private water suppliers. Once the application is approved, households face material and labour costs of around Rs.1,50,000 to draw the connection from the nearest Municipality point.  A household’s location also affects these costs — the closer a household is to an existing municipal network, the lower the cost of drawing the connection and vice versa. The annual water fee is only Rs.500. Even though it is small, the residents cannot fulfil the application requirements for a water connection in the first place.

The irregularity and insufficiency of the Municipality’s supplies, high costs, and overbearing and rigid bureaucratic expectations discourage households from applying for private water connections. Among the most vulnerable demographics are migrants, tenants, and residents in slum areas, who are completely disenfranchised in the process.

Remedies

State water suppliers need to increase their water volume for distribution, which is currently most feasible through the AMRUT projects. Furthermore, they need to ensure that this results in an increase in both the frequency and the volume of water supplied to the residents. To achieve this, they must engage with the soft infrastructure aspects. Bureaucracy needs to be eased by reducing connection costs, the time taken to accept an application, and by subsidizing the material costs. The need for multiple documents from different departments only highlights the poor coordination between government departments. The requirement can be simplified to one primary document while enhancing inter- and intra-departmental coordination.

The integration of hard and soft infrastructure will meet people’s demands. The integration requires out-of-the-box thinking by incentivising innovations and incorporating existing water systems for project development. These factors will undoubtedly reduce the current challenges and help achieve universal water access.