Who rules? Whose rules?

Writing this blog, it suddenly dawned upon me how important it is that we ask the "right" questions. When we were discussing the case study of the village outside of Kisumu with a broken water pipe- due to the construction of either a beverage plant or gas plant nearby- being the only source of clean water running in the village, we attempted to figure out what these villagers should do to resolve their water crisis. Do they walk the long miles to the plant to fill up from a highly chlorinated tap? Very far and inconvenient. Do they seek low-cost/ no-cost technologies to clean the dirty water available at a closer distance? Requires time and these technologies might not be effective in exterminating all bacteria in the water. Do they mobilize and demand the plant to fix their pipe? How willing are they to mobilize becomes the question. Or do they just accept their fate and wait for external organizations to provide them with any form aid? There is no sustainable improvement where there is lack of agency.

What type of governing or action is deemed the best approach in this particular scenario then? 

Ronnie Lipschutz defines governance through the following necessary questions: "Who rules? Whose rules? What kind of rules? At what level? In what form? Who decides? On what basis?" (quoted in Ken Conca's Governing Water, 381)

For a small rural community, it seems very unlikely that those who are making the rules for them are sympathetic to their concerns. Are they even aware the pipe is broken? Do they care? Would a few letters from the villagers incite them to act? Will they take on the responsibility to fix it? Highly unlikely (I realize the dangers of making a predetermined judgment- but this has been the case more often that not). 

As an alternative then, would activism count as tyranny of the minority? If the villagers mobilize to demand that justice be served and the "plant" fix the water pipe it broke, what would the outcome be? Will the pipe be fixed? Will the "plant" ignore their plight? Will the government/plant relationship lead to silencing the villagers? Will this be a sustainable solution to access to water? Here it is more difficult to judge. 

Mobilization can also take a different turn, depending on the willingness and capacity of the local community. An endogenous solution would be creating a locally governed low-cost water cleaning system, where the villagers themselves decide the form of governing, create the rules and rule. This can be compared to the participatory budgeting system in Latin America, where local councils governed by local community members, are created to address projects of highest urgency and submit proposals for funding. The locals can determine a form of horizontal organization, voluntary or paid, that allows rotation of responsibilities in ensuring the system is maintained.

There are various obstacles and risk involved with any of the proposed solutions, especially as I propose them while being distant from the reality of those villagers. The only way to find out however, is through a trial and error mechanism. It seems only fair to try, rather than to accept the detrimental impacts of socializing the risk and responsibility that came with the “plant”. Who rules? Whose rules?