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My friend, who took over as the President of the 150-unit apartment complex where I reside (in South Bangalore), inducted me into his MC (Managing Committee) to go into the finances, with my being a qualified Chartered Accountant. During the familiarisation exercise itself, the property manager, whose services have been outsourced from an agency, told me that the standard practice over the years has been to pay the valve-man a monthly retainer, which currently is at Rs 4,000/-. Apparently, an earlier President had attempted to stop the payment, which led to the valve-man fooling around with the supply, and the complex having to buy a large part of its requirement through tankers. Eventually, with the costs shooting up, the other members of the MC prevailed on the President to relent, which he reluctantly did, all of it ending with reverting to the status quo.

Apparently, another President, who liked to preach honesty, covered up the payments as part of the tanker water bills, and continued preaching.

The moral of the story apparently is that there is no escaping from the ways of the BWSSB valve-man.

Now, let us imagine a scenario where the water supply is outsourced, to say TATA's, as my friend, Mr Muralidhar Rao, has been advocating from long (check this). And, let us also assume the following:

Population of our J P Nagar - 1.5 lakhs
Average no of persons per household - 3; therefore no of households - 50,000.
BWSSB's bulk rate to TATA's - Rs 30/- per KL (This supposedly is their present cost of getting the water from Cauvery)
Allocation by BWSSB for J P Nagar - 25 MLD
Tariff chargeable by TATA's - Rs 35 per KL

Therefore,
Water availability per household (assuming 90% supply efficiency) - 450 ltrs/ day
Monthly consumption bill per household - Rs 472.50
Avarage monthly revenue for TATA's - Rs 23.625 million
Average monthly cost for TATA's - Rs 22.5 million
Margin (monthly) - Rs 1.125 million, or Rs 1.35 cr per annum

Not quite bad for an operation covering less than 2% of the city's population.

The above covers only the direct costs. But, overall, it conveys a picture of viability, and affordability for the consumer too. More importantly, the consumers will no longer be at the mercy of the valve-man, since the managers will have a good check over his activities.

But, like Mr Muralidhar Rao has himself pointed out in the blog linked above, it is also true that TATA's have not quite covered themselves in glory over the outsourcing experiment in Mysore. He, though seems to attribute it all to sabotage by vested interests. 

Chandru

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@ Chandru - interesting post, and now that you are back hope to hear more from you.

Since the maintenance was totally taken care of by the developer in the first three years of my term as the MC President of the complex where I am residing, I was not confronted with these problems. I am not sure of the present position; but it will be interesting to check out.

The outsourcing scenario projected by you too is very interesting. It is a pity that TATA's bungled the Mysore job. But, I very much maintain that it failed largely because of sabotage.
 

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If money demand is legal, pay only through BWSSB bill. Actually valveman is only face behind others behind him, so it is difficult to resist them.  I dont think they can even shut the valve at scheduled time without filling a log entry.

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