Decolonising the Pipeline: How Informal Systems Are Reshaping Water Governance

The water problems in Bhuj and Bhopalse are not just due to lack of resources, Mungekar argues, but signalsthat our the dominant discourse of governance—top-down, formal, rule-bound—is no longer fit for purpose. Particularly in post-colonial cities, where layered histories of marginalisation persist, more project plans from the global North won’t solve what’s essentially a local problem.

What does work? The answer, Mungekar shows, often lies in informality: the networks, improvisations, and solidarities people create when official systems fall short. Rather than viewing informality as a governance failure, her work reframes it as a form of care, innovation, and resistance. She introduces two key capacities that emerge from these informal systems: 

• consolidative capacity — the ability to rebuild trust, strengthen networks, and align diverse interests through collaboration.
• ‘jugaadu’ capacity — from Hindi, corresponding to the ability to improvise within constraints, repurpose existing systems, and subvert rigid, often colonial, bureaucracies using local knowledge and ingenuity. 

Using visual ethnography and participatory workshops as her main tools, Mungekar documents how people navigate broken systems and bureaucratic indifference to build something more inclusive and resilient—often in fragile, precarious ways. These aren’t end-all solutions, but they point to what’s possible when justice, not efficiency, becomes the goal.

Her insights have implications far beyond India. Across the world, from informal settlements to under-resourced municipalities, governance happens in the grey zones— as a hybrid between state and community, policy and improvisation. And for European policy circles eager to “transition” towards sustainability, this research offers a powerful reminder: without attention to history, justice and lived experience, transitions risk reproducing the very systems they seek to transform.

For example, this seemingly nonchalant photograph above portrays the solid and masculine legs of overhead water tanks and three men, one of whom is a water tank supervisor, having a relaxed discussion beneath the towering water storage apparatus. At first glance, we see downtime amid technocracy.

But really, at this moment the water tank supervisor and two residents are strengthening their relationship. This familiarity is a two-way street, allowing the residents to benefit from their affinity with the supervisor during times of dire water scarcity. In turn, the supervisor gains a cushion of solidarity. When water distribution faces delays, the residents, understanding the supervisor’s challenges, respond with more understanding and forgiveness.

Neha Mungekar defends her dissertation Repairing Urban Water Governance: Capacities to enable reparation by leveraging informality to achieve water sensitive governance in India at Erasmus University Rotterdam on 24 April 2025.