Regimes For SustaInablWater Scarcity And Adaptation In Periurban Gurgaon, India: emergIng Socio-Technical e Water Use

Water scarcity and adaptation in periurban Gurgaon, India: emerging socio-technical regimes for sustainable water use

Vishal Narain, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Public Policy and Governance
MDI, Management Development Institute
Gurgaon, India 122001
Email: vishalnarain@mdi.ac.in


This paper describes the socio-technical regime – the technologies and their concomitant social,operational and institutional characteristics – through which periurban residents adapt to water scarcity. As land use changes in periurban settings, pressures on groundwater multiply. Periurban residents respond through a mix of technologies that enable them to dig deeper to extract groundwater on the one hand, and to use water more judiciously on the other. In this context, sprinkler sets provide amechanism that enables them to economize on the use of land, water, electricity and labor – all of which gets progressively scarce in periurban settings. The adoption of sprinkler sets constitutes a sustainability innovation that needs further research, documentation and promotion.

The paper is organized thus: section 1 provides a conceptual review of what constitutes periurban and places thecurrent research in a larger context of the periurban literature. Section 2 describes the research context, conceptual framework and methodology for the study. Section 3 provides an overview of the city of Gurgaon in Northwest India, where the current research is located. Section 4 describes the transition and process of land use change in a periurban village called Sadhraana. Section 5 tracesthe impacts of these on water use in the village and describes the growing stress on water and the socio-technical regime through which water users adapt to it. Section 6 concludes the paper with its key messages.


1. The growth and concept of periurban areas
Rapid urban expansion in many nations proceeds concomitantly with the growth of periurban areas that have elements of ‘urban’ and‘rural’ characteristics (Tacoli, 2006).
There is indeed no single satisfactory definition of the word ‘peri-urban’ and different definitions are understood to apply in different circumstances (Mycoo, 2006; Brook and Purushothaman et al., 2003; Simon and McGregor et al., 2006). Nevertheless, the word ‘periurban’ is used in three main different ways, namely, as a place, a process or a concept (Narain andNischal, 2007).

The notion of a periurban as ‘place’ is the most widely understood conceptualization of the term. Shindhe (2006) notes that there are two main approaches to defining the periurban interface: spatially, as a transitional zone around a city and second as a zone of intense interactions, flows and linkages between urban and rural areas. When used in this sense, ‘periurban’ refers torural fringe areas surrounding cities that bear the spillover effect of urban expansion. These areas provide the much needed land and water resources for urban expansion and serve as receptacles of urban wastes. Their residents are often portrayed as losers in the urbanization process and a case is made to involve them in urbanization processes (Narain, 2009a). Often they come into conflict withresidents of the core city over the use and allocation of land and water resources (Janakarajan, 2009). These may also be areas within the jurisdiction of the city or of urban authorities, but located at the periphery. Their residents often suffer from inadequate access to basic services and amenities and face exclusion from mainstream economic activity.

The terms used to describe suchlocations are periurban settlements, rural-urban fringe, urban outgrowth or hinterland. Since they bear the spillover of urban expansion, they are considered to be an extension of the main city. ‘... for many purposes, it is important to consider the periurban zone as an extension of the city rather than as an entirely separate area .. Conversely, the periurban zone should also be considered as...