In the humid heat of Karachi — Pakistan’s largest city and home to more than 20 million people — a tanker truck connects to a fire hydrant and begins siphoning water. This is not unusual. These tankers are part of what’s known as the “water mafia” or “tanker mafia,” a loosely organized network that steals water from the public supply and sells it back to residents at inflated prices. While exploitative, the water they provide remains the only viable option for many low-income neighborhoods in Karachi.
At Michigan State University, Ph.D. student Noormah Rizwan and assistant professor James Sears are studying how this system operates and asking the questions:
- Are systematic inequalities paving the way for the “water mafia”?
- What is the social impact of the“water mafia”?
Through surveys with 460 households and 17 tanker operators, they found that the tanker network both reinforces inequality in Karachi and fills a critical gap.
Rizwan explained, “Households that might otherwise be receiving piped water regularly are now receiving it less regularly because that water is being taken out of the system. But we also see that about 48% of households in our data aren’t even connected to the piped infrastructure because of where they’re located.”
By siphoning water from the system, the water mafia creates artificial scarcity, worsening existing shortages over time. But eliminating the mafia entirely without expanding public infrastructure would leave many low-income households, especially those in informal settlements, with no access to clean drinking water.
Read the full story on the Water Alliance website.
