This study assesses the efficiency of the urban water supply system in 27 selected Indian cities. It applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an analytical tool to measure technical efficiency. Cities are categorized into different groups according to the management structure of their water utilities. The results show that within groups, the utilities that are managed by ‘municipal corporations (MCs) and parastatals', with a certain amount of functional autonomy, perform better in comparison to the group ‘MCs and government’ and thus, strengthen the hypothesis that functional autonomy in management leads to better performance of the water utilities. Moreover, the results also have implications for urban domestic water pricing. We find that most water utilities are operating under decreasing returns to scale (DRS), implying that water should be priced at a marginal cost of supply.
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Research Article|
January 02 2012
Measuring the performance of water service providers in urban India: implications for managing water utilities
Shreekant Gupta;
Shreekant Gupta
aDepartment of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India
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Surender Kumar;
bDepartment of Business Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi 110021, India
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Gopal K. Sarangi
Gopal K. Sarangi
cTERI University, 10 Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, India
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Water Policy (2012) 14 (3): 391–408.
Article history
Received:
September 25 2010
Accepted:
September 06 2011
Citation
Shreekant Gupta, Surender Kumar, Gopal K. Sarangi; Measuring the performance of water service providers in urban India: implications for managing water utilities. Water Policy 1 June 2012; 14 (3): 391–408. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2011.109
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