Abstract
Millions of urbanites across the Global South receive intermittent water supply (IWS). This paper examines how discretionary action by street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) in everyday water supply planning in IWS systems redistributes water quantities and service quality to alleviate unequal scarcity burdens. Ethnographic findings from the small city of Tiruppur, India, reveal that SLBs’ supply plans aim to distribute water volumes equitably within the network. However, SLBs’ communicative strategies to manage socio-material uncertainties and improve supply predictability, a critical dimension of service quality, reinforce existing socio-spatial inequalities. Rethinking SLBs’ contradictory discretionary actions in everyday water supply plans is crucial for managing water scarcity equitably in the IWS systems of Global South cities.
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