Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss plans to construct a vast water diversion scheme in Kathmandu. Its main question is how the Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) is produced, reproduced, maintained and contested by different stakeholders on a technical as well as on a discursive level.

Paper long abstract:

The Melamchi Water Supply Project is supposed to relieve the citizens of Kathmandu from decades of severe water shortage and substantially improve the quality of the water provided. Mainly funded by the Asian Development Bank, the scheme is an ambitious plan to divert most of the Melamchi River's water through a tunnel to the city. Additionally, its proponents claim that through the increased amount of water available, the project will also improve the condition of the city's rivers. The project, however, is far from uncontroversial. On the one hand, water activists and experts doubt the economic viability of the scheme and the very fact of a water shortage, as even official sources estimate more than 60% of leakage in the city's ailing water network. On the other hand, residents of the Melamchi valley to the north of the city have become more and more suspicious about the intentions of the government and its contractors after decades of delay. When their demands for prompt compensation and the relocation of the water intake were not met, on several occasions groups of people have obstructed the construction for months. Against this backdrop, my paper will investigate the newly emerging 'waterscape' of the MWSP as a 'global assemblage' that will bring the residents of Kathmandu and the Melamchi valley in relation with employees, consultants and contractors of the ADB, an entity that has so far attracted far less interest by social scientists than other international development organizations.