Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Habitat International
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint

Ways of knowing the wastewaterscape: Urban political ecology and

the politics of wastewater in Delhi, India
Timothy Karpouzoglou a, *, Anna Zimmer b
a
Public Administration and Policy group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706, KN Wageningen, The Netherlands
b ^timent Geopolis, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Department of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Quartier Mouline, Ba

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The notion of waterscape has been proposed by urban political ecology (UPE) scholars as a conceptual
Received 24 December 2015 lens for understanding urban hydro-social flows. So far, however, there has been little attention by UPE
Accepted 29 December 2015 scholars to the importance of wastewater in urban waterscapes. This study demonstrates how waste-
Available online 19 January 2016
water is embedded in an arena of social relations of power, defined in this article as the wastewaterscape.
Drawing on research conducted in Delhi, the aim of the study is to examine re-occurring problems of
Keywords:
wastewater disposal and mismanagement through the lens of knowledge; and the different ways of
Wastewaterscape
knowing about wastewater which exist amongst inhabitants of an informal settlement, scientific experts
Knowledge
Urban political ecology
and municipal workers in Delhi. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that the systemic exposure of
Delhi poorer urban citizens to untreated wastewater cannot be attributed to the shortcomings of service de-
India livery alone, but is more fundamentally associated with how legitimacy is awarded to competing systems
of knowledge about wastewater in the urban sphere.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In the field of urban political ecology (UPE hereafter) the role of
knowledge is recognised as central in the re-production of the ur-
ban environment, including the urban waterscape (Bakker, 2003;
Castro, 2004; Kaika, 2003; Swyngedouw, Kaika, & Castro, 2002).
This article investigates the different forms of knowledge about
wastewater in Delhi to highlight how such knowledge is deeply
embedded in and re-produces social relations of power that un-
derpin larger processes of marginalisation currently observed in
urban India (Baviskar, 2003; Bjo €rkman, 2014; Chaplin, 2011;
Fernandes, 2004).
The notion of the ‘waterscape’ (Swyngedouw, 1999) has been
used in UPE to designate the urban hydro-social cycle: the quantity
and direction of water flow through cities which hinges upon
economic and political processes, cultural imaginaries and social
relations. The term therefore also allows analysing the intertwined
dialectics of the material and non-material, which shape access to
and distribution of water (Bakker, 2003; Swyngedouw, 1999, 2004).
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: timothy.karpouzoglou@wur.nl (T. Karpouzoglou), anna.
zimmer@unil.ch (A. Zimmer).
So far however, the analysis of the waterscapes has not included
more systematic analysis of questions around wastewater flows in
cities and their politicisation.
We examine questions of wastewater politicisation through the
lens of knowledge, and the different ways of knowing about
wastewater which exist amongst inhabitants of an informal set-
tlement, scientific experts and municipal workers in Delhi. The role
of knowledge for the creation and maintenance of power relations
is centrally placed in the work of UPE scholars. Ernstson (2013)
identifies for example an important field of investigation in the
‘politics of who can claim to be in the know of urban nature’ as a
conceptual lens for understanding how knowledge is used to
establish or contest legitimacy.
Thus by focussing on different ways of knowing, we draw in-
sights from UPE1 to understand the problematic of wastewater. We
characterise in more detail three different arenas of knowledge
production and sense making: the informal residential area; the
1
We recognise that the boundaries between UPE and other political ecology
studies may not always be that clear or indeed static (cf. Lawhon, Ernstson, & Silver,
2014), but drawing on the UPE category in this study has been useful for identifying
a specific area of debate where we find that the analysis of the wastewaterscape
becomes more relevant.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2015.12.024
0197-3975/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
local state; and the regulatory body of the central state, the Central
Pollution Control Board (in short, the Board). The first two choices
are explained by the fact that residents of informal settlements face
disproportionate exposure to wastewater in their daily lives. It is in
such areas that both arenas, knowledge production in the neigh-
bourhood and in the local state, intersect and interact on a daily
basis as residents and scavengers struggle to maintain wastewater
drainage through their labour. The negotiations that surround this
struggle allow observing how the relations of power at play legit-
imise or de-legitimise different ways of 'knowing wastewater', i.e.
of defining and explaining the recurrent wastewater problems.
The third choice is justified by the fact that scientific expertise
such as the one produced by the Board is hugely influential in
directing state action on wastewater at a national level. The Board is
representative of a type of knowledge arena where expert knowl-
edge based on the measurement of standardised parameters plays
an important role; decision making is highly technocratic and ap-
pears to be driven almost exclusively by a model of negotiation
based on rationalisation and bureaucratisation. This is a knowledge
arena, normally existing at a national policy level and where sci-
entific advisors have contributed to the formation of a certain kind
of expert discourse around the management of wastewater. We are
therefore interested in showing that despite the seemingly distant
position of the Board from the wastewaterscape in question, it has
an important relationship to it because of the way it contributes to
knowledge and action about wastewater management in the city.
Overall, this approach to tracing knowledge and sense-making
around wastewater, has allowed us to show where different ways
of knowing the wastewaterscape become contested.
In the following sections, we discuss first the theoretical ap-
proaches that have informed our own analysis drawing insights
from UPE and post-structuralist geography, studies on power and
knowledge (particularly drawing on Foucault's work (cf. Foucault,
1980) as well as citizen science studies that engage with the rela-
tionship between expert and citizen knowledge. We then briefly
describe the methodology informing the analysis of our case
studies. Thereafter, we discuss how the interplay between different
types of knowledge has emerged in the context of Delhi. The dis-
cussion and conclusion provides some reflections on how to re-
think problems of wastewater disposal as part of debates on ur-
ban citizenship and exclusion in cities of the global South.
2. Power, knowledge and place in the wastewaterscape
2.1. Situating wastewater as part of the waterscape
Urban political ecologists draw upon the waterscape concept to
understand the production of socio-natures (Heynen, Kaika &
Swyngedouw, 2006). A waterscape is perceived as a politicised
space whose unequal production involves contradictions, in-
equalities, and conflicts between actors (Budds, 2009; Mehta &
Karpouzoglou, 2015), leading to environmental injustices and
rights violations (Mehta, Allouche, Nicol, & Walnycki, 2014).
Research on the waterscape further shows the power asymmetries
associated with different symbolic and cultural meanings attached
to water (Baviskar, 2007; Sultana, 2011; Truelove, 2011).
Situating wastewater as part of the waterscape incorporates a
full understanding of the socio-natural transformation of water as it
occurs not only through production, consumption, but specifically
in this case, also through the disposal of wastewater (Gandy, 2008;
Jewitt, 2011; McFarlane, 2012). Everyday practices of Delhi citizens
and state actors e such as the use of water and its discharge as
wastewater, the cleaning of drains, complaints and negotiations e
play a role, as do larger undertakings at the municipal or state level
like the construction of sewer lines or the formulation of Sewerage
151
Master Plans (Zimmer, 2012b).
2.2. Knowledge as analytical lens for understanding urban
wastewater flows
The question of how knowledge of the environment is “pro-
duced, contested, legitimated, and hybridised” (Birkenholtz,
2008:468) is central to political ecological concerns and is
extended to more recent analyses of UPE as well (Forsyth, 2003;
Robbins, 2012; Swyngedouw, Kaika & Castro, 2002; Veron, 2006;
Zimmer, 2015b). Drawing on this work that uses knowledge as an
analytical concept, we focus in this paper on the knowledge of
those who work and live in wastewaterscapes. Doing so illustrates
how these spaces are perspectival in character (Appadurai, 1990)
and socially constructed. The emphasis on ‘ways of knowing’ as
discrete phenomena reflects power asymmetries in specific terri-
torial contexts. This aspect has been formulated in Foucault's work
on knowledge where he states “there is no power relation without
the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any
knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same
time power relations” (Foucault, 1991: 27). It is this knowledge-
power nexus that builds a system of acceptable knowledge. This
system, also termed the ‘regime of truth’, confers on specific in-
formation the tag of being ‘true’ e while other information is
considered erroneous (Foucault, 1977, 1991).
Bouleau (2014) drawing on UPE of water and social studies of
science, highlights that expert ways of knowing the waterscape are
historically situated in how prestige and authority are granted to
established scientific disciplines. Therefore “scientists need to
categorise the waterscape into the abstract entities their paradigm
requires” constructing “different ways of separating or grouping
elements of the waterscape” (Bouleau, 2014:249). Technical ratio-
nalities can become further supported by shifts in discursive for-
mations to produce “new kinds of knowledge, along with new
objects to know and new modalities of power” (Foucault, 1980: 22).
The production of wastewaterscapes can then be understood as
underpinned by not only questions of knowledge production but
also by questions of knowledge legitimacy, raising the questions:
Whose knowledge on wastewater counts? Who has the power to
talk about wastewater and its disposal? Which language is accepted
to describe the wastewaterscape? And what problems surrounding
wastewater are deemed important? Bringing together the concept
of the waterscape with knowledge (as object of analytic enquiry)
allows us to ask questions like these within a theoretical frame of
analysis.
Another strand of UPE research on knowledge which supports
our conceptualisation of the wastewaterscapes highlights pro-
cesses of knowledge generation and contestation not only as ideas
or assemblages of discursive formations, but also by means of
embodied knowledge in specific places. Loftus (2007) drawing on
feminist standpoint theories, especially Haraway (1991), elucidates
for example that knowledge is always ‘situated’ and deeply
embedded within actors' various perspectives about the environ-
ment in which they live and work. This analytical emphasis on the
placement of practices re-directs attention not only to the discur-
sive construction of particular ‘ways of knowing’ a la Foucault
(1996, 1997), but also to the varied ways in which knowledge can
be part of a place, and how people in these places experience
different forms of inequality in relation to their knowledge (Thrift,
1999).
2.3. Locating arenas of knowledge and sense-making in Delhi
As we noted earlier, we characterise in more detail three
different arenas of knowledge production and sense making: the
152 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
informal residential area; the local state; and the regulatory body of
the central state, the Board. In the informal residential areas,
knowledge can be characterised largely as embodied, as it is built
through labour to resolve practical difficulties presented by
wastewater overflow and stagnation, and everyday sensory inter-
action with wastewater. While we try to avoid reifying categories
such as ‘local’, ‘traditional’ or ‘lay’ when referring to citizens'
knowledge (Agrawal, 1995; Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993; Leach,
Scoones, & Wynne, 2005), and caution has to be applied not to
homogenise internal differences, we also perceive how residents'
forms of knowledge can also be described using the notion of cit-
izen knowledge in contrast to knowledge and sense making that
rests upon technical or scientific expertise. Citizen knowledge often
relies on “common sense, casual empiricism, or thoughtful specu-
lation and analysis” (Lindblom & Cohen, 1979: 12), personal values
and belief systems (Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1980), or actual
sights, smells and tastes experienced in everyday life (Corburn,
2004). Doreen Massey (2005: 9) refers to this knowledge as the
knowledge of the everyday space, always under construction,
“never finished; never closed … constituted through interactions,
from the immensity of the global to the intimately tiny”.
At the local state level of knowledge production, municipal
workers such as scavengers and higher-ranking sanitary staff have
hybrid knowledge of wastewater, as their knowledge is produced
through labour, sensory interaction, as well as some degree of
technical expertise. Lipsky's (1983) work on street-level bureau-
cracy, is relevant for understanding municipal workers' knowledge
about the beneficiaries of service delivery. For example, when some
Delhi residents are perceived as illiterate and uneducated, this has
an impact on the delivery of important wastewater management
services. Municipal workers are therefore important agents with
the power to exercise various labelling strategies, and as a conse-
quence can often respond in highly prejudiced ways to the partic-
ular needs of citizens (Coelho, 2004).
An arena of knowledge production about wastewater which is to
this date largely unexplored concerns that which follows rules of
scientific and technical procedure. For this knowledge arena, which
falls within the discussion of the Board's approach to wastewater
management, risks from wastewater, are scientifically perceived as
being in principle easy to parameterise and quantify (i.e. through
the formulation of water pollution standards for toxic substances
found in wastewater) (Karpouzoglou, 2012). Furthermore, because
scientists are institutionally committed to the scientific knowledge
that is being produced, sources of uncertainty or ambiguity about
wastewater-related risks are often masked by a picture of mis-
placed concreteness i.e. a false perception that the risks are either
being accounted for or that they do not exist at all (Stirling, 2011:
84). These different knowledge arenas do not exist in isolation but
intersect and in many cases interact directly. However, in our study
distinguishing between competing interpretations of the waste-
waterscape has allowed us to illustrate the way in which residents',
experts' and municipal workers' knowledge is always to some de-
gree partial and incomplete.
3. Methodology
This study uses a meta-synthesis of two case studies, both
located in Delhi but researched separately (Hoon, 2013). The case
study which informs our analysis of citizen and governmental
knowledge at the municipal level is based on fieldwork carried out
2 7
Unauthorised colonies are defined as areas ‘where no permission of (the)
concerned agency has been obtained for approval of layout plan and/or building
plan’ (The Gazette of India, 2008).
by the second author during 11 months between February 2008
and December 2009 in an approximately 30 years old unauthorised
colony2 (henceforth UAC) in East Delhi. The area is part of a ward
which in its totality is made up of UACs,3 and inhabited mainly by
working class Muslims, who mostly migrated from smaller towns
or villages of Uttar Pradesh. In total, 70 qualitative, open-ended
interviews were held with residents on everyday wastewater
governance in their area.4 This interview sample largely informs
our analysis of those actors who we refer to as citizens and their
knowledge as citizen knowledge. Interview partners were selected
to reflect the different infrastructural situations within the colony,
as well as to achieve a gender balance. These interviews often
involved loose groups of neighbours or relatives; in other cases they
were individual conversations.
Fieldwork in this colony also included interaction with munic-
ipal workers, based on two focus group discussions with the
scavengers and sweepers, as well as three individual interviews
with higher ranking staff. Discussing, here as well, the everyday
governance of wastewater in the colony, we followed the hierarchy
of actors up from the scavengers and sweepers in the ward to the
Sanitary Superintendant of the zone.
All interviews with residents and municipal workers were
conducted by the second author with a research assistant that
translated questions as well as answers orally from Hindi into En-
glish. The interview notes, including direct quotes, were then
analysed with the help of ATLAS.ti, a software for qualitative data
analysis using thematic coding. Apart from interviews, observa-
tions, maps and participative methods were used to study the
wastewater situation.
Our analysis of expert knowledge is based on interviews with
scientists,5,6 working within the Board which is a national envi-
ronmental regulatory body. Fieldwork was conducted during a 6-
month visit in New Delhi, between January 2009 and April 2010 by
the first author. Interviews with Board members were focused on
developing a better understanding of how scientists influenced
‘official’ perceptions of wastewater management at the level of
policy formulation and regulatory design. The Board was selected
for more detailed fieldwork in part because of the centrality of
‘science’ in the execution of its various roles and furthermore
because of the links of the Board with the management of the city,
particularly through its ‘offspring’ institutional branches.7
Approximately 20 Board scientists were invited to contribute to
the original research for this case study. Interviews were ‘semi-
structured’ and conducted in English. As anonymity was offered to
all interview partners in both case studies, their real names are not
disclosed here. In addition to the interviews, fieldwork notes were
taken to record observations in real time. These notes focused on
aspects of daily organisational functioning, informal discussions
with members, and observations of technical work such as labo-
ratory experiments.
3
The colony has since been included in the regularisation drive by the Delhi
Government (Zimmer, 2012a).
4
This study has been undertaken in the context of the doctoral thesis project of
the second author (Zimmer, 2012b; Zimmer & Sakdapolrak, 2012).
5
According to the Board norms, expertise and scientific background are almost
synonymous. It is mandatory for scientists to have expertise in engineering, tech-
nology or the physical sciences.
6
The study of expertise at the Board has been part of a critical study of knowl-
edges surrounding water quality with particular reference to urban and peri-urban
areas of Delhi (Karpouzoglou, 2012; Mehta & Karpouzoglou, 2015; Randhawa &
Marshall, 2014) and is part of research undertaken within the project “Peri-urban
interface and sustainability in South Asian cities”.
These are otherwise known as the State Pollution Control Boards at the level of
the State, or Pollution Control Committees at the city level. These organisations
work together with the Board in environmental regulation.
 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
4. Contested ways of knowing the Delhi wastewaterscape
4.1. Delhi's unequal wastewaterscape
In Delhi, water pollution associated with wastewater stagnation
and overflow is very prominent. The city of Delhi alone has 42
percent of the total sewerage treatment infrastructure of India, yet
less than 50 percent of the city's sewerage generated is treated
(CSE., 2012). Around 50% of the population are currently not con-
nected to the sewer system.8 Consequently, the scope of inequality
as it relates to wastewater services and treatment provision is very
broad. A large section of Delhi's middle classes have successfully
claimed access to wastewater collection infrastructures (Alankar,
2013; Chaplin, 2011). In contrast, in low-income settlements,
especially in informal areas, sewerage coverage drops drastically,
and a hybrid mix of solutions is often self-produced by residents.
Fig. 1 presents the location of UACs and jhuggi-jhompri- or JJ
Clusters9 in relation to the Delhi sewer network. It is shown that UACs
are concentrated at the periphery of the urbanised area while JJ
Clusters are distributed over the urban area, with high concentrations
along railway lines. The location of UACs corresponds to a striking
degree to the ‘blanks’ on the sewer map. The apparent lack of infra-
structure to manage wastewater is blamed on three factors; first, lack
of adequate financing (Deb, 2004; McGranahan, 2006; Prasad, 2002);
second, lack of proper planning (Zerah, 2005); and third, Delhi's
exponential population growth (Chandra & Aneja, 2004; Singh,
2009). All three factors align with a vision where with time and in-
vestment, universal coverage of the sewer system will be achieved.
Economic liberalisation projects since the mid-1980s, and the
more recent mobilisation to turn Delhi into a ‘world-class’ city have
meant that both middle-class and state interests in infrastructure and
service delivery mechanisms e and in a beautiful, clean river Yamuna
e have become more pronounced (Baviskar, 2003; Follmann, 2015).
Delhi's Master Plan for 2021 has solidified further aspirations for
creating a modern, rationalised city space (MoUD., 2007). A logic of
‘bourgeois environmentalism’ (Baviskar, 2002), mobilised in court
cases to remove from the city the aesthetically unpleasant sight of
slums, has led to justifying the demolition of squatter settlements for
the sake of cleaning the city's spaces and creating a more aesthetic
ideal (Ghertner, 2010a). This more recent middle class bias in plan-
ning Indian cities has become enmeshed with a history of persis-
tently unequal infrastructure provision (Mann, 2007). It has also
meant that the link between poor sanitation and water-borne dis-
eases, which is crucial for India's urban poor but not for its urban
middle classes, has not as yet become a campaign issue (Chaplin,
2011). In the context of these developments, then, the notion of
citizenship has changed to one based on property (Bjo € rkman, 2014;
Ghertner, 2010b). This has enhanced the conceptualisation of the
poor as outside the sphere of citizenship, and further eroded
citizenship-based rights such as provision of water, sanitation and
health infrastructure (McFarlane, 2008; Mehta, Allouche, Nicol &
Walnycki, 2014; Truelove, 2011). Partha Chatterjee relates this phe-
nomenon to social divergence between ‘civil society’ (comprised of a
class of citizens with legitimate rights to urban services) and ‘political
society’ (comprising of citizens that are treated as having no legiti-
mate right to the same services) (Chatterjee, 2006), a distinction to
which we shall return to in the Discussion.
8
The Delhi Jal Board (2014: 4), the water authority for Delhi, state that “only
about 50% of the population of Delhi is having access to sewerage system.
Remaining 50% area of NCT Delhi is unsewered”, leaving it unclear whether pop-
ulation or area has been used to arrive at this estimate. However, this estimate
alludes to the continued prevalence of problems of wastewater overflow in the city.
9
JJ Clusters are informal settlements on private or public land, and correspond
most closely to what is commonly referred to as ‘slums’.
153
4.2. Wastewater flows at local level: the situation in the
unauthorised colony
The aforementioned urban processes have contributed to the
creation of an unequal wastewaterscape. One example of the
under-privileged areas within this wastewaterscape is presented in
the following. At the time of research, sewer lines did not exist in
the UAC described in this study. Household wastewater was dis-
charged by open drains, meant for storm water evacuation. This
included black water as colony households had pit latrines built in
such a manner that they were connected to open drains on both
sides of the streets. As the pits were filled with water while con-
structing them, every flush caused a little overflow of black water
into the open drains. The drains connected the colony to another
unauthorised area upstream as well as to a larger open drain that
eventually joins the Shahdara drain downstream and finally the
Yamuna river.
Administrative responsibility for the wastewater infrastructure
in Delhi is shared between (at least eight) different municipal and
state agencies. Within the colony, drains were in principle cleaned
by scavengers of the Municipal Department of Environment Man-
agement Services (DEMS). The staff component of this department
in each ward consists of one Senior Sanitary Inspector with one or
two Assistant Sanitary Inspectors, as well as a number of Sanitary
Guides and a team of scavengers and sweepers; while one to two
Sanitary Superintendents, and a Chief Sanitary Inspector represent
DEMS at the zonal level.10 In the studied ward, however, several
posts, including the one of Senior Sanitary Inspector, were vacant.
As can be seen in the map of the colony, Fig. 2, a large open plot
is featured to the east of the area. Because an effective solid waste
collection system was lacking at the time of research, the plot
developed gradually into a large illegal dumping ground. Waste-
water from six streets in the colony, including discharge from
household septic tanks, that were not connected to the storm water
drain of the main road, also accumulated there.
4.3. Situated knowledge of citizens: the practical, health, and social
dimensions
For residents of the UAC, wastewater is firmly embedded in their
everyday lived experience. As, according to inhabitants, scavengers
do not come often enough to clean the open drains, especially women
spend time almost everyday to clean the stretch of the open drain in
front of their house with a hard broom. When drains are blocked,
young men are sent by their mothers to remove silt and garbage from
the drain along the street with a bamboo stick. Housewives and shop
keepers also reported having to stand and control the scavengers'
work to make sure cleaning was properly done.
The experiences of the residents interviewed and the researcher
show that during the monsoon months, the road to the colony
becomes frequently deluged in up to two feet of rainwater and
wastewater, as the storm water drainage system is already swam-
ped before the downpour by wastewater discharged from the
surrounding colonies. As a result, transportation and daily
commuting is a serious problem, especially for the majority of
residents without own vehicles. Especially men and children going
out of the house for work or school11 were affected by overflow in
the streets and got physically exposed to wastewater (see also
Fig. 3).
10
The National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi is divided into 15 zones.
11
As inhabitants in the UAC were Muslim, and rather traditional in their lifestyles,
only one of the interviewed women was working outside the house, and ‘roaming
around’ was considered inappropriate for women and girls (cf. Nallari, 2015).
154 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
5 km
8
NH
Fig. 1. Location of unauthorised colonies (UAC) and JJ Clusters (smaller size unauthorised settlements) in Delhi in relation to the sewer network.
Interviews with residents as well as personal observations
revealed that inside the colony, problems existed throughout the
year. Unpaved streets were muddy and uneven, and wastewater
partly flowed down the middle of the street, or stagnated in pools.
The dirt from wastewater stagnation was regularly described as so
prevalent that even in the dry season people could not go outside
barefoot. Water pools in the street made walking difficult, and
several residents reported falling in the slippery streets.
This was especially the case for children passing the open
ground in which wastewater accumulates on their way to school.
Spoiling school uniforms on the way was a repeated complaint of
mothers e a seemingly trivial fact that however meant that
women's work load increased considerably, while children might
be labelled as ‘dirty’ by classmates, or become clearly recognisable
as residents of an unauthorised colony. Where streets had been
paved and raised, many houses were below street level (see also
Fig. 2). In these paved streets problems had shifted over time. One
woman whose house was entered from what was originally the first
floor, felt that upgrading streets had been “good for the road, but
bad for the house” (Interview, December 2008). The positive side
was that overflow in the streets now only happened in the rainy
season, and was not very prominent any more. The negative side
was that overflow in low-lying houses had increased substantially
in recent years, leading to damages in the foundations of many
houses and posing significant difficulties for daily life. A senior
woman renting a house in the colony for the previous three years
reported how her family was obliged to live on the first floor in the
monsoon months, “but to get out of the house we have to go down
and get wet” (Interview, December 2008).
Where septic tanks were now below street level, latrines were
disused, or inhabitants had to empty the septic tanks by hand or by
motor pump. If the difference in level was small, latrines were
disused in times of heavy rain as water then started flowing into the
septic tanks. Disuse of household latrines meant that people had to
rely on neighbours to use the toilet. Emptying of septic tanks
exposed residents to faecal matter in the worst case, or caused
additional expenses for diesel pumps. In both cases residents
needed to invest extra time in dealing with the problem.
From the interviews it was also discerned that residents expe-
rienced health problems, related to an overall lack of cleanliness,
and especially the dirtiness of the open space at the eastern side of
the colony. Residents recognised stagnating wastewater as both a
 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160 155

School

Mosque

0 20m

Street Surface Waste Water-related Problems

Mud Street (kaccha) Built-up Area Waste Water Stagnation

Brick Street Open Space Solid Waste
Disposal
Surrounding
Concrete/Cement Street (pakka) Built-up Area Waste Water Swamp
Waste Land Ground Floor below
Waste Water Infrastructure Street Level
Drain
Cess Pool
Source: Existing Lay-out Plan (no date); Google Earth (2011), Draft: Anna Zimmer (2011)
Own Field Mapping (2010) Cartography: Department of Geography, University of Bonn

Fig. 2. Map of the unauthorised colony in East Delhi.

nuisance and a severe health risk as it allowed mosquitoes to breed.
Discussions also focused on the potability of water; many water
taps located in front of houses became submerged when waste-
water stagnated. As a consequence, contamination of the drinking
water source was an inevitable residential hazard.
Wastewater problems are strongly linked to how residents of
this UAC perceive their social position within the larger social
configuration of urban Delhi. Many of the residents in the UAC
complained that the streets were not looking good, and frequently
complained about the bad smells emanating from the drains.
People interviewed felt disgust living in these conditions and they
felt dirty. A housewife in an unpaved street related: “I can clean as
much as I want inside; as soon as I go outside I feel dirty” (Inter-
view, December 2008). Moreover, some inhabitants felt
embarrassed in front of guests. A carpenter whose son we met
while he was trying to de-block the open drain with a stick told us
that: “Outsiders from approved colonies say ‘it stinks so much, how
can you live like this’ ” (Interview, October 2009). The dirtiness
exposed them to ridicule. A woman who shifted to the colony after
her marriage conveyed that: “When our relatives come from UP
[Uttar Pradesh] they mock us because it's so dirty” (Interview,
December 2008).
These statements reflect that the place in the city where people
can afford to live in terms of services and infrastructure mirrors the
social status of the residents. This explains why residents compare
their colony with other areas which they perceive to be in a better
position to mobilise state resources and to take ‘extra care’ of their
surroundings. As one resident who is a school teacher explained,
156 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
Fig. 3. Road to the investigated colony after heavy rainfall, September 2010 (Source: Zimmer, A).
“This is a 3rd class area, I would prefer to call it 4th class, ( … ) [the
neighbouring authorised colony] is 2nd class” (Interview,
November 2009). Residents of this colony therefore relate the
wastewater situation to the regard others have for them e be it
their own extended family or the wider society. In this way, whose
wastewater knowledge counts is deeply intertwined with the
everyday experience of dealing with wastewater which is in turn
embedded in how residents perceive their social position in the
city.
4.4. Municipal workers' knowledge: lack of infrastructure or
residents' mistakes?
There are two themes to the knowledge of municipal workers,
the knowledge of the scavengers and that of the sanitary in-
spectors. Scavengers in particular, even though often socially
ostracised due to their caste and perceived dirtiness of their work,
have gained significant ‘situated knowledge’ of the wastewater-
scape (Loftus, 2007).
Interviews first revealed how the topography of East Delhi
generally, and more specifically of the investigated area, was not
conducive to wastewater evacuation, because the colony's land had
been used for brick-making before being sold off and built up. This
made the area lower than surrounding streets and prevented easy
outflow. Moreover, the open drains, several of which were simply
made of compacted soil at the time of the research, created prob-
lems for drainage. Their walls would collapse, and solid waste
would accumulate in them, frequently causing wastewater stag-
nation. During interviews the lack of dustbins and solid waste
collection points [dalaos] were pointed out. In the absence of a
proper solid waste disposal system, residents deposited household
garbage in the drains, and on the streets or open plots, from where
it easily fell into the drains. This is indicative of how solid and liquid
waste flows at a very local level are fundamentally intertwined.
According to information received by interviews with municipal
workers, infrastructural deficiencies were compounded by lengthy
tender procedures for road and drain construction. Tenders had
also lapsed in the past because of bad synchronisation with election
cycles e when the newly elected political representative took up
the issue, the tender had already lapsed. Until December 2012,
moreover, it was legally stipulated that the local area development
funds allocated to municipal councillors, members of legislative
assembly and members of parliament, were not to be employed for
works in UACs, inhibiting further timely and local decision-making
on infrastructural needs.
The number of sanitary workers allocated to the area was far too
small. The official yardstick, which provided for one scavenger per
2500 running feet of drains had not been followed. One reason that
was provided for this was the ‘unauthorised’ status of the colonies
in the ward. Another reason known to those working here for
several years, was that during the delimitation of new municipal
wards, the former municipal councillor, who had won elections in
the new neighbouring ward, had managed to take the majority of
the former staff to his new area. This left the case study ward with a
much smaller number of scavengers and sweepers. Therefore, the
beat system, where each scavenger is allocated a specific ‘beat’, or
number of streets and drains, could not be maintained.
Also, corruption in the DEMS was described as rampant. It was
claimed that this led, among other things, to a situation where not
all the appointed workers would turn up for work, bribing those in
charge of the attendance sheet instead. Working conditions were
described as unpleasant and internal promotion to the sought after
permanent posts was almost impossible and subject to heavy cor-
ruption, significantly reducing work motivation. One scavenger
complained that “the workers are treated very badly here by our
officers. We work here since fourteen years and still are temporary”
(Interview, January 2009).
Interviewed scavengers repeatedly complained that residents
did not cooperate, and the Sanitary Inspector felt residents were
“not afraid of the law” (Interview, January 2009). Residents were
portrayed as too uneducated to understand their own re-
sponsibilities. Official portrayals of residents also related to the way
certain households disposed of household garbage in the drains,
defying logic and creating problems for themselves. They moreover
criticised certain practices, such as unlicensed slaughtering and
cattle rearing, as the waste of these activities was blocking the
drains. The sanitary inspector characterised residents as backward
and uneducated, and often questioned their civic sense. He was
unhappy about the work environment in the unauthorised colony:
“… whenever I reach here from my house I feel tense ( … ) in the
authorised colonies there are facilities so there is no tension”
(Interview, January 2009). This sentiment was shared by
 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
scavengers, who also disliked the work environment. Yet, their
reasons were different, as they complained about experiencing
social ostracism. One scavenger who belonged, like the vast ma-
jority of scavengers, to the Valmiki caste12 related: “[Residents here]
don't even give us water to drink, they treat us as untouchables. If
they give us water, they pour it from very high” (Interview, January
2009).
The situation resulting from wastewater overflow in the colony
is part of a discourse of “seeing the slum, seeing pollution”
(Ghertner, 2010b:145). This discourse emphasises the way the slum
is ‘seen’, i.e. the state and outside knowledge of the slum. UAC
residents are viewed as an uncooperative class of citizens and this is
intertwined with a discourse that sees individuals and groups in
the colony as less clean, less educated or less hygienic (a point that
we further elaborate in the discussion).
4.5. Expert knowledge and the wastewaterscape: the river and its
designated best use
The colony of east Delhi presented a complex social organisation
around problems of wastewater overflow. In this section, it is
argued that part of this complexity is reduced in the Board's
domain of policy and regulatory practice.
The reasons underlying this are partly related to the rationale for
the Board's inception and ascendance into an expert authority on
matters of pollution. The Board was originally founded under the
Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act, 1974 (Gazette of
India, 1974), designed to coordinate water quality management
and restoration throughout India. Under the 1974 Water Act, the
main mechanism for pollution monitoring and abatement was the
inception of the Board (Reich & Bowonder, 1992). Over the years,
the Board has accumulated significant claims to expertise, as an
exclusive body for coordinating water quality restoration pro-
grammes throughout India including the Ganga Action Plan (GAP)
and Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) (CPCB, 2007; CSE, 2007). Further-
more, it has played a central role in the design and enforcement of
water quality standards, and in providing technical assistance to
city and district authorities on how to implement related policies
(CPCB, 2008).
The Board's Pollution Assessment, Monitoring and Survey
(PAMS) division takes up those functions more closely related to
wastewater assessment. PAMS coordinates India's national water
quality monitoring programme. It was originally set up in Delhi in
1976 with 18 stations for collecting water quality samples along the
river Yamuna that crosses Delhi. The programme has been gradu-
ally extended; in 1989, there were 324 monitoring stations; by
2001, 784 stations (CPCB, 2009). Water quality monitoring there-
fore constitutes an important arena of knowledge associated with
the Board's advisory role on the management of untreated waste-
water in cities. The monitoring process provides insights into sci-
entists' ways of categorising the wastewaterscape, constructing
different ways of separating and grouping elements of wastewater
planning and control (Bouleau, 2014).
One entry point for exploring how expert visibilities around
wastewater are constructed is the Board's Designated Best Use
(DBU) framework for planning water quality restoration pro-
grammes, which organises water quality restoration on the basis of
achieving a range of desired human uses. This concept was envis-
aged as a tool to help prioritise pollution control activities. Given
the very large number of water bodies in India, it is supposed to be
cost effective and provide concrete guidelines for regulators and
12
Valmiki is the traditional scavenger caste, one of the scheduled castes, and
considered especially low in the Hindu social stratification.
157
policy makers. A direct outcome of this process has been a
nationwide water quality monitoring network for classifying water
bodies according to their designated best uses. The information is
regularly collected, analysed and published in official reports that
inform interventions. River action plans (e.g. the Yamuna Action
Plan) are partly designed based on this approach.
Despite the DBU purpose to simplify the work of decision
makers, it needs to be examined for the particular rhetorical13
functions that it serves. The first is deciding what is regarded
as ‘credible’ sources of information for assessing wastewater. The
prominence ascribed to physico-chemical criteria such as ‘bio-
logical oxygen demand’ and ‘dissolved oxygen’ helps to define
wastewater almost entirely as a technical issue. Secondly, the
socially constructed technicality of wastewater becomes affirmed
through the emphasis of the Board's scientists on measuring the
criteria numerically. A senior scientist leading the Board's
monitoring programmes said “our power is that we have the
data, people come to us for information” (Interview, November
2009).
The rhetorical function that numbers serve requires a more
cautious examination of their use in expert advisory systems
(Porter, 1995). The objective quantitative methods do not simply
reflect the technical requirements of researching complex sub-
jects; they also have an important role to play in protecting ex-
perts against charges of ‘indeterminacy’ and ‘subjectivity’. More
so in the case of the Board with its regulatory functions that
necessitate the production of an image of authority and of control
over the evidence used to inform decision-making. Quantification
in this context further offers a framework which is both rigid
enough (i.e. in that it refers only to numerical information) and
highly standardised (presenting monitoring criteria as a legiti-
mate tool for decision-making), and which is used to cultivate
trust in the organisation. However, what is at stake here is the
disclosure of a number of uncertainties and inherent sub-
jectivities associated with the monitoring process by claiming the
support of science while it becomes impossible to reconcile
alternative assessments of wastewater (i.e. such as those
described at the level of the UAC).
Water quality testing points are designed to capture water
quality trends at the level of the ‘river basin’, and as a result do not
capture the locations where people have direct contact with
wastewater. Part of the reason why the focus on the river basin
remains dominant is because it is validated through science.
However, at the same time the emphasis on the river basin re-
flects critical omissions of information necessary for wastewater
management. The view that “our role is to monitor rivers, and
slums are not our responsibility” (Interview, November 2009)
held by the Board's water quality monitoring scientist partly
confirms the prominence of river basin concerns, while dis-
regarding problems of wastewater manifested in specific locales.
Although the Board does not operate independently, but as part of
a combination of various city and national level institutions, we
find that political, legal and policy reforms such as the Water Act,
1974, have shaped in important ways how water quality restora-
tion programmes are administered. As a consequence, the Board's
expert advisory roles have become effectively narrowed down to
monitoring only certain regions, and only those issues that are
more closely related to the scientific mandate of the organisation,
while municipal bodies, and private firms merely play the role of
supervising and implementing bodies of water quality restoration
programmes.
13
We use this term here to refer to the type of discourses used to inform,
persuade, or motivate particular actions with regards to wastewater management.
158 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
5. Discussion
In this article we have focused on analysing the wastewater-
scape in order to capture issues of wastewater disposal in a
metropolis of the global South. The waterscape notion has been a
useful conceptual lens from which to start, since it allowed us to
position wastewater disposal firmly within material and discursive
processes. Our case study insights support that the waterscape
concept can benefit from incorporating broader questions of
wastewater and its disposal. This study also aligns with recent
strands of research that draw attention to the politicisation of waste
in a global South context (cf. Myers, 2014; Zimmer, 2015a) by
showing how wastewater disposal is intertwined with its own
contextual specificities.
We have used knowledge as an analytical lens for showing both
the material and the discursive dimensions of urban wastewater
flows. This focus has brought to the fore different accounts of
wastewater as well as issues pertaining to its disposal, particularly
at the local level. An important result is that the systemic exposure
of poorer urban citizens to untreated wastewater cannot be
attributed to the shortcomings of service delivery alone, but is
partly produced by the difference in legitimacy of contrasting ac-
counts of wastewater e and thus the power relations in which
these accounts are embedded. The distinction between ‘civil’ and
‘political’ society suggested by Chatterjee (2006) is important for
understanding this difference since it brings attention to the way
the modern state shapes the production of different categories of
citizens. The residents of the unauthorised colony can otherwise be
described as falling within Chatterjee's notion of a political soci-
ety14 and were often portrayed as ‘uncooperative’, ‘uneducated’ or
‘dirty’ by municipal workers.
There is a politics of preference in managing wastewater in the
city which is tied to the issue of knowledge representation. The lack
of appropriate interventions to the problems of wastewater over-
flow do not persist only because of the contests of knowledge
described in this article. However, as we have shown, the discursive
environment created by local state representatives in the UAC plays
an important role in de-legitimising people's experience-based
perceptions, practices and local needs. At the national level as
well, the current system does not provide sufficient scope for non-
technical descriptions of wastewater impacts to have the same level
of legitimacy as those that are validated through expert scientific
institutions such as the Board. The scientific experts' view of
wastewater remains influential, and frequently finds its way into
policy documents, directing substantial flows of public expenditure
to address the pollution of major river systems. Citizens' knowledge
as well as the knowledge of municipal workers is rarely valued by
governments, and not used to formulate interventions.
In our view, effectively putting exposure of residents to waste-
water on the political agenda in such a context thus appears to be
impossible without recognising that the wastewaterscape is an
arena of intense struggle and politics. In the Delhi context, these
struggles are also related to larger class divides (Chatterjee, 2006;
Fernandes, 2006). In this sense, the experiences of wastewater at
the level of the UAC are illustrative of how inequalities in the
wastewaterscape have been amplified “within the place and those
connections that stretch beyond it” (Massey, 1999: 22), and
particularly by relations of gender and class (Truelove, 2011).
Finally, it was observed that partly because of the pre-occupation of
14
While we find that this distinction is relevant here, recent work has also
brought attention to the fact that Chatterjee's distinction between civil and political
society may in fact be more blurred than originally suggested (Baviskar & Sundar,
2008; Mehta, Allouche, Nicol & Walnycki, 2014).
the modern state with wealthier middle class segments of society
and their aspiration to inhabit sanitised urban spaces (Fernandes,
2004, 2006:2044), poorer urban citizens are increasingly forced
to fend for themselves while due to their sense of lack of repre-
sentation in urban political life there remains little hope for the
amelioration of their grievances.
6. Conclusion
To conclude, the presented findings add to a growing body of
work on waterscapes by showing how questions of wastewater
production and disposal can be better integrated in such research
(Baviskar, 2007; McFarlane, 2012; Mehta & Karpouzoglou, 2015;
Myers, 2014; Swyngedouw, 1999, 2004; Swyngedouw, Kaika &
Castro, 2002). Moreover, links can be drawn to studies on urban
water specifically as well as UPE debates more broadly through this
study's more substantive articulation of knowledge interplay in the
wastewaterscape (Bjo €rkman, 2014; Castro, 2004; Lawhon, Ernstson
& Silver, 2014; Zimmer, 2012b).
This study has gone some way towards understanding issues of
wastewater politicisation and knowledge contestation in a sys-
tematic way through a meta-synthesis of two different empirical
case studies, one UAC and the Central Pollution Control Board,
investigated in Delhi. The meta-synthesis supports that while UAC
residents have developed a detailed situated knowledge about
wastewater-related problems in their living environment, this
knowledge is on the one hand delegitimised by local municipal staff
on the grounds of inhabitants' supposed lack of education and
problematic livelihoods and solid waste practices. Improvements
are portrayed as impossible to reach due to lack of cooperation by
the residents. The study thus provides evidence to the pervasive
belief that poorer residents of the city are more responsible for
their exposure to environmental problems than the middle classes
(Njeru, 2006). On the other hand, citizens' knowledge e and the
realities it translates e disappear from the agenda of scientific ex-
perts, and hence policy-makers at the national level, as the
wastewater problematic is gauged through technical parameters of
pollution of fresh water through wastewater at the level of the river
alone. This shifts the focus of political interventions away from the
daily exposure to wastewater that presents major risks to the
health, well-being and dignity of urban residents.
Finally, the approach chosen in this paper, combining an anal-
ysis of the waterscape with insights on the ways knowledge and
power are interwoven, has provided evidence that the production
of uneven urban environments hinges on the knowledge politics
involved. Very importantly, the particular relationship between
social status, urban space and knowledge which we have illustrated
is hardly ever made explicit in the formulation of seemingly tech-
nical policies to address untreated wastewater. It must be explicitly
recognised, therefore that in this context, re-configuring the posi-
tioning of science, as one of several important knowledge systems,
is fundamentally a political enterprise (Allen, 2003:146). This re-
lates most obviously to recognising the underlying power re-
lationships that prevent poorer citizens from having a greater voice
in the management of wastewater in the city.
Acknowledgements
The original research for this article was supported by a Doctoral
research grant from the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
(for Timothy Karpouzoglou) linked to the project “Peri-urban
interface and sustainability in South Asian cities” at the STEPS Centre,
the University of Sussex, and a Doctoral scholarship from the
Heinrich-Bo € ll-Foundation (for Anna Zimmer). The ideas expressed
in this article draw from an Institute of Development Studies
 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
Bulletin paper (Karpouzoglou & Zimmer, 2012) that was first pre-
sented at the ‘Some for All? Pathways and Politics in Water and
Sanitation since New Delhi, 1990’, a water and sanitation sympo-
sium hosted in Brighton by the STEPS Centre (Social, Technological
and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) in March 2011. We
are grateful for the feedback and support received by Alan Nicol,
Lyla Mehta and Fiona Marshall. Grateful thanks also to our key
informants in Delhi. Anna Zimmer wishes to thank Chan-
dramukhee for excellent research assistance, and the Centre des
Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, for hosting her during parts of the
writing for this article. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers
for their helpful comments.
References
Agrawal, A. (1995). Dismantling the divide between indigenous and scientific
knowledge. Development and Change, 26, 413e439.
Alankar. (2013). Socio-spatial situatedness and access to water. Economic and Po-
litical Weekly, 48.
Allen, A. (2003). Environmental planning and management of the peri-urban
interface: perspectives on an emerging field. Environment and Urbanization,
15, 135e148.
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In
M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture (pp. 295e310). London: Sage.
Bakker, K. (2003). From archipelago to network: urbanization and water privati-
zation in the south. The Geographical Journal, 169, 328e341.
Baviskar, A. (2002). The politics of the city. Seminar, 516, 40e42.
Baviskar, A. (2003). Between violence and desire: space, power, and identity in the
making of metropolitan Delhi. International Social Science Journal, 55, 89e98.
Baviskar, A. (2007). Waterscapes: the cultural politics of a natural resource. New
Delhi: Permanent Black.
Baviskar, A., & Sundar, N. (2008). Democracy versus economic transformation?
Economic & Political Weekly, 43, 87e89.
Birkenholtz, T. (2008). Contesting expertise: the politics of environmental knowl-
edge in northern Indian groundwater practices. Geoforum, 39, 466e482.
€ rkman, L. (2014). Becoming a slum: from municipal colony to illegal settlement
Bjo
in liberalization-era Mumbai. International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 38, 36e59.
Bouleau, G. (2014). The co-production of science and waterscapes: the case of the
Seine and the Rho ^ne rivers, France. Geoforum, 57, 248e257. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.01.009.
Budds, J. (2009). Contested H2O: science, policy and politics in water resources
management in Chile. Geoforum, 40, 418e430.
Castro, J. E. (2004). Urban water and the politics of citizenship: the case of the
Mexico city metropolitan area during the 1980s and 1990s. Environment and
Planning A, 36, 327e346. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a35159.
Chandra, R., & Aneja, R. (2004). Water environment and sanitation assessment. New
Delhi: Isha Books.
Chaplin, S. (2011). Indian cities, sanitation and the state: the politics of the failure to
provide. Environment and Urbanization, 23, 57e70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/
0956247810396277.
Chatterjee, P. (2006). The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics.
NewYork and Chichester: Columbia University Press.
Coelho, K. (2004). Of engineers, rationalities, and rule: An ethnography of neoliberal
reform in an urban water utility in south India [Doctoral Thesis]. The University of
Arizona.
Corburn, J. (2004). Bringing local knowledge into environmental decision making.
Journal of Planning Education and Research, 22, 420e433.
CPCB. (2007). Annual action plan 2007-2008 (plans and programmes), New Delhi.
CPCB. (2008). Guidelines for water quality management. New Delhi: CPCB.
CPCB. (2009). Annual report 2008-2009. Delhi: CPCB.
CSE. (2007). Sewage canal. How to clean the Yamuna. Delhi: Centre for Science and
Environment.
CSE. (2012). Excreta matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and
drowning in its own excreta (Vol 2). New Delhi.
Deb, K. (2004). Reforms in drinking water and sanitation. New Delhi: TERI.
DJB. (2014). Sewerage master plan for Delhi 2031. Delhi.
Ernstson, H. (2013). Re-translating nature in post-apartheid Cape Town: the ma-
terial semiotics of people and plants at Bottom Road. In Richard Heeks (Ed.),
Actor-Network Theory for Development: Working Paper Series. Manchester:
Institute for Development Policy and Management, SED, University of Man-
chester. Paper 4/2013 http://www.cdi.manchester.ac.uk/resources/ant4d-work
ing-papers/.
Fernandes, L. (2004). The politics of forgetting: class politics, state power and the
restructuring of urban space in India. Urban Studies, 41, 2415e2430. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980412331297609.
Fernandes, L. (2006). India's new middle class: Democratic politics in an era of eco-
nomic reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Follmann, A. (2015). Urban mega-projects for a ‘world-class’ riverfront e the
interplay of informality, flexibility and exceptionality along the Yamuna in
159
Delhi, India. Habitat International, 45(Part 3), 213e222. http://dx.doi.org/10.
1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.007.
Forsyth, T. (2003). Critical political ecology: The politics of environmental science.
London and New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. The birth of prison. New York: Pantheon
Books.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings
1972e1977. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish. The birth of prison. London: Penguin
Books.
Foucault, M. (1996). Die ordnungen des diskurses. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer
Wissenschaft.
Foucault, M. (1997). The politics of truth. In S. Lotringer, & L. Hochroth (Eds.),
Semiotext(e) foreign agents series. New York: Semiotext(e).
Funtowicz, S., & Ravetz, J. (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25,
739e755.
Gandy, M. (2008). Landscapes of disaster: water, modernity, and urban fragmen-
tation in Mumbai. Environment and Planning A, 40, 108e130.
Gazette of India. (1974). Water (prevention and control of pollution) act, 1974. In
Gazette of India (Vol .6). New Delhi.
Ghertner, D. (2010a). Calculating without numbers: aesthetic governmentality in
Delhi's slums. Economy and Society, 39, 185e217.
Ghertner, D. (2010b). Green evictions: environmental discourses of a “slum-free”
Delhi. In R. Peet, P. Robbins, & M. Watts (Eds.), Global political ecology (pp.
145e165). London & New York: Routledge.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature. New
York: Routledge.
Heynen, N., Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (2006). Urban political ecology: politi-
cizing the production of urban natures. In N. Heynen, M. Kaika, &
E. Swyngedouw (Eds.), In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the
politics of urban metabolism, London & New York.
Hoon, C. (2013). Meta-synthesis of qualitative case studies: an approach to theory
building. Organizational Research Methods, 16, 522e556.
Jewitt, S. (2011). Geographies of shit: spatial and temporal variations in attitudes
towards human waste. Progress in Human Geography, 35, 608e626. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132510394704.
Kaika, M. (2003). Constructing scarcity and sensationalizing water politics: 170 days
that shook Athens. Antipode, 35, 919e954.
Karpouzoglou, T. (2012). ‘Our power rests in numbers’. The role of expert-led policy
processes in addressing water quality: The case of peri-urban areas in the national
capital region of Delhi, India. Doctoral thesis. University of Sussex. Available
online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/43304/.
Karpouzoglou, T., & Zimmer, A. (2012). Closing the gap between ‘expert’ and ‘lay’
knowledge in the governance of wastewater: lessons and reflections from New
Delhi. IDS Bulletin, 43, 59e68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2012.00308.x.
Lawhon, M., Ernstson, H., & Silver, J. (2014). Provincializing urban political ecology:
towards a situated upe through African urbanism. Antipode, 46, 497e516.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anti.12051.
Leach, M., Scoones, I., & Wynne, B. (2005). Science and citizens: Globalisation and the
challenge of engagement. New York: Zed Books.
Lindblom, C. E., & Cohen, D. K. (1979). Usable knowledge: Social science and social
problem solving. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lipsky, M. (1983). Street level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public ser-
vices, New York.
Loftus, A. (2007). Working the socio-natural relations of the urban waterscape in
south africa. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 41e59.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00708.x.
Mann, M. (2007). Delhi's belly: on the management of water, sewage and excreta in
a changing urban environment during the nineteenth century. Studies in His-
tory, 23, 1e31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/025764300602300101.
Massey, D. (1999). Power-geometries and the politics of space-time: Hettner-lecture
1998. Heidelberg, Germany: Hettner Lectures.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage Publications.
McFarlane, C. (2008). Sanitation in Mumbai's informal settlements: state, 'slum',
and infrastructure. Environment and Planning A, 40, 88e107.
McFarlane, C. (2012). From sanitation inequality to malevolent urbanism: the nor-
malisation of suffering in Mumbai. Geoforum, 43, 1287e1290. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.08.005.
McGranahan, G. (2006). The citizens at risk. From urban sanitation to sustainable
cities. London: Earthscan.
Mehta, L., Allouche, J., Nicol, A., & Walnycki, A. (2014). Global environmental justice
and the right to water: the case of peri-urban Cochabamba and Delhi. Geoforum,
54, 158e166.
Mehta, L., & Karpouzoglou, T. (2015). Limits of policy and planning in peri-urban
waterscapes : the case of ghaziabad, Delhi, India. Habitat International, 48,
1e10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2015.03.008.
MoUD. (2007). Master plan for Delhi - With the perspective for the year 2021, New
Delhi.
Myers, G. (2014). The politics and technologies of urban waste. In S. Parnell, &
S. Oldfield (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook on cities of the global south (pp.
448e458). London: Routledge.
Nallari, A. (2015). “All we want are toilets inside our homes!”: the critical role of
sanitation in the lives of urban poor adolescent girls in Bengaluru, India.
Environment and Urbanization. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956247814563514.
Njeru, J. (2006). The urban political ecology of plastic bag waste problem in Nairobi,
160 T. Karpouzoglou, A. Zimmer / Habitat International 54 (2016) 150e160
Kenya. Geoforum, 37, 1046e1058. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.
03.003.
Porter, T. (1995). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Prasad, V. B. R. (2002). Municipal wastewater management e Indian scenario. In
International conference on water quality management: South Asian perspective,
Jaipur (pp. 263e272).
Randhawa, P., & Marshall, F. (2014). Policy transformations and translations: lessons
for sustainable water management in peri-urban Delhi, India. Environment and
Planning C: Government and Policy, 32, 93e107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/
c10204.
Reich, M. R., & Bowonder, B. (1992). Environmental policy in India: strategies for
better implementation. Policy Studies Journal, 20, 643e661.
Robbins, P. (2012). Political ecology: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford and
Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.
Singh. (2009). Wastewater problems and social vulnerability in megacity Delhi/India.
Doctoral thesis. University of Cologne.
Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., & Lichtenstein, S. (1980). Facts and fears: understanding
perceived risk. In R. C. Schwing, & W. A. Albers (Eds.), Societal risk assessment:
How safe is safe enough? New York: Premium Press.
Stirling, A. (2011). Pluralising progress: from integrative transitions to trans-
formative diversity. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 1, 82e88.
Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: emotional geographies
of resource access, control and conflict. Geoforum, 42, 163e172.
Swyngedouw, E. (1999). Modernity and hybridity: nature, regeneracionismo, and
the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890e1930. Annals of the Association
of American Geographers, 89, 443e465.
Swyngedouw, E. (2004). Social power and the urbanization of water: Flows of power.
Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Swyngedouw, E., Kaika, M., & Castro, E. (2002). Urban water: a political-ecology
perspective. Built Environment, 28, 124e137.
The Gazette of India. (2008). Extraordinary: Part ii, section 3, sub-section ii.
Thrift, N. (1999). Steps to an ecology of place. In D. Massey, J. Allen, & P. Sarre (Eds.),
Human geography today (pp. 295e322). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Truelove, Y. (2011). (re-)conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a
feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42, 143e152. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.004.
Veron, R. (2006). Remaking urban environments: the political ecology of air
pollution in Delhi. Environment and Planning A, 38, 2093e2109.
Zerah, M.-H. (2005). Towards an improved urban governance of public services:
water supply and sanitation. In E. Hust, & M. Mann (Eds.), Urbanization and
governance in india, CSH (pp. 127e150). South Asia Institute.
Zimmer, A. (2012a). Enumerating the semi-visible. The politics of regularising
delhi's unauthorised colonies. Economic & Political Weekly, 47, 89e97.
Zimmer, A. (2012b). Everyday governance of the waste waterscapes. A foucauldian
analysis in Delhi's informal settlements. Doctoral thesis. University of Bonn.
Available online: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2012/2956/2956.htm.
Zimmer, A. (2015a). Urban political ecologies in megacities: the case of Delhi's
wastewater. In R. B. Singh (Ed.), Urban development challenges, risks and resil-
ience in asian mega cities. Tokyo, New York, London: Springer.
Zimmer, A. (2015b). Urban political ecology 'beyond the west': engaging with South
Asian urban studies. In R. L. Bryant (Ed.), The international handbook of political
ecology (pp. 591e603). Cheltenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar.
Zimmer, A., & Sakdapolrak, P. (2012). The social practices of governing: analysing
waste water governance in a Delhi slum. Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3,
325e341. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0975425312473228.