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Long abstract:

This paper studies the challenges in socio-technical transition of the urban water supply regime of Ludhiana, a northern city of India under the powerful narrative and rubric of water reforms. It particularly focuses on the adaptability of various actors to the two-fold transition the city of Ludhiana is undergoing: (i) from a groundwater-based system to a surface water (dam) based system for the city water supply, and (ii) from an intermittent water supply regime to a continuous (24x7) water supply regime, through a pilot experiment that would be subsequently upscaled. These (ongoing) transitions reconfigure the existing water supply regimes by transforming an irrigation canal into multipurpose canal delivering water for urban use on a continuous basis. Based on a framework of multi-level actor network (Fatimah et al, 2023), the paper examines how assemblage of practices (Antczak & Beaudry, 2019) shape the relationship between actors and the artefacts (i.e. components of water supply system), which facilitate or resist and disrupt this transition. In this, the materiality of the components of water system, both – the pre-existing (groundwater) and newly brought in (surface water) – play a crucial role in characterizing the relationship. The paper shows that adaptability to the new water regimes in Ludhiana is strongly dependent on reconfigurations of (new) actor networks at multiple levels, that either retain the pre-existing vested interests or replace them by newer, more powerful interests at the regime level.