In Delhi, where the population has continued to flow into the city since India gained independence in the middle of the 20th century, a stable supply of safe and sanitary water for domestic use has been an important government issue. In addition, since 1991, when the economic liberalization policy was in full swing, private companies have entered the water supply business one after another, and access to water supply for urban residents has been gradually improving. However, in areas where low-income people are concentrated, not all residences are supplied with water.
The author has lived with a family that makes a living as a street vegetable vendor in a town in central Delhi where many lower-middle class people live. In this town, the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) has taken the initiative in building water pipelines for water distribution since the mid-2000s. The house of this family are also supplied with water through water pipes. Every day, they turn on the motor at a set time and sends the water distributed through the pipes to the tank on the rooftop. On the other hand, there are many houses around the vegetable vendor's house that do not have water pipes, depending on when and where the houses were built, but the residents still have access to water that is indispensable for their daily lives. Why they can get water? Residents connect pipes from neighboring houses with water ration and store water in buckets or tanks, or go to the neighboring houses with tanks to get water. This paper will consider how the disconnection at the end of Delhi's water infrastructure is connected in a local context from the perspective of urban neighborhood relations and the local knowledge of "jugaad".
