What is interesting is that many who would talk about pricing parking, roads, etc. don’t extend it to water. As I have explained in some earlier post, this is usually because of valid fears (poor will have to pay for water). There is also their inability, purposely or not, to extend the parking/road pricing logic to water. There is support for parking and road pricing because of the assumption that this will force the rich to pay for what they use. Well then why not make the rich pay for the water they use, whether the rich is a farmer or not?

Just like road pricing is complex and will take a lot of thinking to implement, so will water pricing. Does the poor rickshaw walla have to pay for using the road? What about the cyclists? Why not ? How will you check and implement this?

It would be far easier, I think, to price water and hence help the environment and the economy (read people in both cases!) For example, any farmer deemed poor could be given electricity credits paid for by taxpayers. The farmer still pays for the electricity he uses, but the money come out of the taxpayers’ pockets. For drinking water, I have discussed this in one or more earlier posts.

One critical issue is delinking the operating and capital cost/revenue of the company (public or private) providing the service from the subsidy. Otherwise it starts of a vicious cycle – company looses money, hence cannot upgrade its facilities, bad service, lose due to theft and leaks, company looses more money. ……