How participatory design is transforming urban water governance in Kochi

India’s urban water crisis is often framed as an engineering problem, one of broken pipes, inadequate supply, and insufficient infrastructure. But what if the real failure lies not in the system’s hardware, but in its distance from the people it serves? A  new study from Kerala challenges the dominant narrative, arguing that water insecurity persists not because cities lack technical solutions, but because governance systems fail to listen, adapt, and respond to lived realities. Published in the Journal of Urban Management in June 2025, the paper by J. Sophie von Lieres and colleagues places communities at the centre of both diagnosis and design; the research reframes water not just as a resource to be delivered but as a relationship to be governed.

Focusing on two marginalised wards in Edakochi, the study offers more than a diagnosis of scarcity. It presents a method and a warning. Technology alone cannot fix India’s urban water crisis unless governance systems learn to listen, respond, and co-evolve with communities.

A paradox of plenty and precarity

Kerala is often celebrated for its high human development indicators and relatively strong public services. Yet even here, urban water supply is far from secure. In Kochi, a fast-growing secondary city, water is supplied intermittently—sometimes for as little as 30 minutes a day, sometimes only a few days a week. Households cope by storing water, relying on tankers, or turning to unsafe alternatives.

The paper zeroes in on Wards 15 and 16 in Edakochi, both located at the tail end of the municipal distribution network. Their geography makes them invisible to pressure-based systems: when water flows, it rarely reaches them in sufficient quantity or quality. Ward 15 residents depend almost entirely on municipal tankers, while Ward 16 has piped connections but struggles with high chlorine levels, turbidity, and intermittent supply.

What emerges is not a story of absolute scarcity but of unequal distribution, a familiar pattern across Indian cities, where the urban poor bear the highest costs of infrastructural failure.

Why top-down solutions keep failing

India has no shortage of water-sector programmes, from national missions to externally aided schemes. Yet, as the authors note, many urban water projects fail not because of engineering flaws, but because they are designed and implemented for communities rather than with them.

The study situates itself within a growing body of literature critical of technocratic, supply-driven water governance. Intermittent supply systems, for example, are known to increase contamination risks and exacerbate inequality. But institutions often respond with managerial fixes—more tankers, more chlorine, and more control, without addressing how people actually experience water scarcity in their daily lives.

The Kochi case underscores this disconnect. In Ward 15, pipes exist but carry no water. In Ward 16, water flows but is distrusted. Residents know these nuances intimately, yet their knowledge rarely informs planning decisions by agencies such as the Kerala Water Authority.

Listening as method: PRA in an urban setting

What distinguishes this study is its methodological choice. Instead of starting with hydraulic models or demand projections, the researchers began with Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), a set of visual, interactive tools traditionally used in rural development.

Through transect walks, resource mapping, historical timelines, problem-tree analysis, and priority ranking, women from self-help groups mapped their water realities. They identified where taps fail, how tanker schedules disrupt livelihoods, why borewells are abandoned due to salinity, and how waste disposal contaminates local water bodies.

Crucially, PRA reframed residents not as “beneficiaries” but as analysts of their own environment. In an urban context—often assumed to require formal surveys and expert assessments—this approach proved surprisingly effective. The social cohesion of fishing and low-income communities in Edakochi mirrored rural settings, making PRA both feasible and revealing.

The findings were stark. For Ward 15, drinking water scarcity ranked alongside unemployment and drainage failures as the most pressing concern. For Ward 16, water quality—chlorine, foam, colour—emerged as a priority second only to waste management. These insights rarely surface in conventional project reports, yet they directly shape household behaviour and health risks.

From diagnosis to design: co-creating solutions

If PRA helped communities articulate problems, co-design workshops brought them face-to-face with engineers, municipal officials, and frontline workers. Over six iterative workshops, representatives from the Kerala Water Authority, the Kochi Municipal Corporation, Anganwadi teachers, community development societies, and self-help groups jointly explored solutions.

Two proposals crystallised through this process.

1. IoT-based monitoring of the water system

One of the most revealing insights from the workshops was how manual monitoring constrains institutional response. Reservoir levels are checked visually. Pressure drops at tail ends go unnoticed until complaints accumulate. Overflows and shortages coexist.

The co-designed solution proposes Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to monitor reservoir levels, pipeline pressure, and flow in real time. Audible alarms and visual indicators would alert operators before crises occur, while backup power systems would ensure continuity during outages.

Technically, such systems are not novel. What is novel is how they were conceived: not as smart-city add-ons, but as responses to lived problems of inequitable distribution and delayed action.

2. A multilingual Digital Social Platform (DSP)

Technology, the community insisted, must also speak back to people. The proposed Digital Social Platform would share real-time information on water availability, issue alerts, and allow residents to report problems or respond to surveys—in Malayalam as well as English.

For institutions, the platform would generate data on spatial and temporal water stress, enabling better planning. For residents, it would reduce uncertainty—no more waiting all day for an unpredictable tanker—and create a channel for everyday accountability.

This dual function is critical. Too often, digital platforms serve administrators alone. Here, co-design ensured that usability, language, and trust were central design parameters.

What this means for urban water policy

The Kochi study carries lessons far beyond Kerala.

First, it challenges the assumption that secondary cities lack the institutional maturity for participatory governance. In fact, their smaller scale and dense social networks may make collaboration easier—if institutions are willing.

Second, it reframes technology as an enabler, not a driver. IoT sensors and digital platforms do not solve water scarcity by themselves. They only matter when embedded in responsive institutions and informed by community priorities.

Third, it exposes the limits of infrastructure-led thinking. Pipes without pressure, taps without trust, and treatment plants without feedback loops will not deliver water security—no matter how large the capital investment.

Recommendations: from pilot to policy

The paper is refreshingly explicit about what should happen next. Drawing on its findings, several policy-relevant recommendations emerge:

• Institutionalise participatory diagnostics: Urban water agencies should adopt PRA-like tools as a standard precursor to infrastructure planning, especially in marginalised wards. This is not a “soft” add-on but a risk-reduction strategy.

• Pilot before scaling: The proposed IoT and DSP solutions should be piloted ward-wise, with clear metrics: response times, reduction in tanker dependence, improvements in water quality perception, and user participation rates.

• Invest in capacity, not just hardware: Training for water utility staff and community intermediaries (ASHAs, Anganwadi workers, SHGs) is essential to ensure that data translates into action.

• Design for inclusion, not assumption: Digital platforms must account for uneven smartphone access and digital literacy. Offline interfaces, SMS alerts, and community kiosks should complement app-based systems.

• Link participation to accountability: Community feedback should trigger defined institutional responses. Without this, participation risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

• Align with national and global goals: The approach directly advances Sustainable Development Goal 6 and Sustainable Development Goal 11, offering a grounded pathway for India’s urban climate and water commitments.

A quiet but radical shift

Perhaps the most important contribution of this study is not its technical proposals, but its epistemological stance. It treats community knowledge as infrastructure—something that must be built, maintained, and integrated into systems.

In a sector dominated by engineers and economists, this is a quiet but radical shift. It suggests that the future of urban water security in India will depend less on how fast we build and more on how well we listen.

As secondary cities like Kochi continue to grow, the choice is stark. Either urban water governance remains a distant, technocratic exercise—perpetually chasing crises—or it becomes a shared, adaptive process rooted in everyday realities. The Kochi experiment shows that the latter is not only possible but also necessary.