Calcutta's water supply: demand, governance and environmental change

Abstract Abundant water is readily available in Calcutta's natural environment but few people in this megacity can consume water with any confidence in its purity. Supply sources have been contaminated, the formal system fails to reach millions of the city's population and even those who are served cannot rely on it, while those who draw their drinking water informally directly from natural sources put their health at risk. The paper examines how this situation has come about and considers how supply can be made more efficient and equitable – through decentralized management, water pricing and improved distributional efficiency – and how such measures might begin to heal degraded environments from which water is taken