Jal swaraj Case Studies in Community Empowerment

This book goes against many of the currently fashionable paradigms of reaching out development and services to the rural poor. It documents cases of communities succeeding considerably for over a decade and more in organising help for themselves in the realm of civic services even while many analogous schemes being run by government and international funding are floundering.
Its main arguement is that contestatory politics does no good for delivering the results of development to the people. If anything, contestatory politics , the book strongly argues, is to be avoided for ensuring that the fruits of development and cooperative enterprise in small scale communities remain achievable. It studies the cases of communities that worked together for creating drinking water supply services for themselves.
The study of successes across a diverse set of political, economic and social spectrums suggests the importance of good design and social consensus for success in service delivery.
This book notices that while democratisation of decision making was important but its friend and ally, politics (as understood and practised in India) needed to be kept out of the management of civic services.
It argues that the mere existence of demand at the community level for a particular service was not good enough a reason for the success of local projects. What more is required, is the the subject of the book.