Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 100

Parameters of Successful Wastewater Reuse in Urban India
were also used to identify the persons
with knowledge of projects at each facility
location. Several research groups
led by Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) professors were especially helpful
in sharing information on existing STPs
and their creators and funders and introducing
the projects with the most
effective performances. These teams of
researchers also helped us gain access to
functioning projects, given that it is up
to the project owners or facility owners
to decide whether they will allow a
researcher entry and grant permission
to collect water samples and interview
project members.
Among the 40 sites we visited, we
found a range of recycling projects at industries,
university campuses, hospital
grounds, housing complexes, neighborhoods,
airports, malls, and city parks. In
these, we identified five key parameters
that we found across all sites to varying
degrees (Frijns et al. 2016). We identified
these key parameters after analysis
of data collected at each site using
qualitative focus groups, structured interviews,
and participant observation.
Key informants, official and company
records, NGO reports, and university
research projects were used as sampling
frames for the conduct of focus groups
and interviews at many of the sites we
visited. Interviews with officials in the
Ministries of Environment, Forests
and Climate Change, Water Resources;
Power; Renewables, Central and State
Pollution Control Boards, the Sanitation
departments of municipalities and
other councils such as the NDMC produced
an understanding of government
interest and acceptability as well as institutional
regulations and procedures.
In interviews with authorities, project
monitors, NGOs, and university teams,
we explored institutional constraints
and possibilities and technological innovations
and limitations. Generally,
in each site, we conducted 3–5 focus
groups and 20–30 structured interviews
to find convergence regarding
important themes. Research reports,
maps, feasibility reports, detailed project
reports, and ecology, wildlife, and
landscape projects were also collected
and analyzed.
Selection of Cases and
Key Parameters
In this paper, we introduce four cases
of water reuse to show four functioning
systems representing government,
public–private partnerships,
and business arrangements, and we
discuss the working of key parameters
for each case. We are concerned with
overall functionality and with significant
parameters that we have identified
through the survey of 40 projects. Our
survey led us to identify (1) leadership,
(2) water pricing, (3) water availability,
(4) regulations, and (5) business savings
as the key parameters in the functioning
of these projects. Departing from other
studies that we reference later, we did not
include the broad label of “acceptability”
as a parameter. Since some of the projects
we have investigated do not have
a user public associated with them, acceptability
of public or private users was
considered more specifically in terms
of leadership and the decisions that are
made in the face of scarcity, pricing, and
regulations and court orders.
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