Human Right to Water in a Bottled Water Regime
The bottled water industry is a strong manifestation of privatization of water as a resource, which is often promoted by protagonists as a means to improve “accessibility” to “safe” water for all at “affordable” prices. However, for antagonists, the sole
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Human Right to Water in a Bottled Water Regime Ravi Shankar Shukla and Nandita Singh
Abstract The bottled water industry is a strong manifestation of privatization of water as a resource, which is often promoted by protagonists as a means to improve “accessibility” to “safe” water for all at “affordable” prices. However, for antagonists, the sole aim of the bottled water industry is to earn profit out of a generally minimally priced resource, even at the cost of human health and well-being. This chapter aims to examine the implications of bottled water for realization of the human right to water, arguing that it fails to meet most of the criteria for enjoying the right, considering the circumstances of the consumers of bottled water as well as the residents of the areas from where bottled water is mined. Keywords Bottled water • Water privatization • Human right to water • Water rights • Groundwater law • Water quality • India
Ever since mankind started the deliberations over mutual relations in the society and the appended vicissitudes, identification and legitimacy of human rights have been a fixation. It has its prompt presence, of necessity, into all the areas of earthly contemplations, tangible and intangible, water being no exception. The justification of right to water as a human right derives its pulse from the famous dictum of John Stuart Mill, which is almost a truism that “Ultimately the worth of a society depends on the worth of the individuals who compose it” (Riley 1998). It is of utmost importance for any individual to have some security for his own existence and for his own self-development in relation to others who are all demanding the same security. This is where the right to water as a part of the “mega right to life”1 comes into picture as an essence of security and existence. The issues at stake are not only those pertaining
1 Mega right stands here as a key to other rights in the same sense in which Yehezkel Dror has used the term “mega policy” (1971).
R.S. Shukla (*) Sub-Divisional Office, Chakradharpur, West Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, India e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N. Singh Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 N. Singh (ed.), The Human Right to Water, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40286-4_7
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to social righteousness but also those concerned with individual rights including accessibility, affordability, and safety. In the context of privatization of water resources, it reminds us of the Romanist dictum of locatio operarum, a letting of services and of the effects which the parties have willed thereby (Pound 1914). Mushrooming of the bottled water industry is a strong manifestation of privatization of water which in turn poses significant questions as to the nature of the right to water. Classification of right to water as a “human right” has been justified as
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