DescriptionThis dissertation examines the situations of shit(ting) and sewage in urban India to understand the processes contributing the gap between infrastructure construction and service delivery. The conditions of sewage services in India are particularly confounding given its growing economic power and the massive spending that has been put toward its sewage services in the last several decades. Drawing upon data from ethnographic interviews, plan analysis, participant observation, and historical data collection, I develop three primary findings. First, I conclude that the most commonly state problematization of residents, inconvenience, is not acknowledge by formal governance institutions. Further, the problematization favored by those institutions, contagion, was not viewed as a problem for residents. Second, using three common characterizations of infrastructure – visibility, function, and work – I demonstrate that many of the constructions readily recognized as infrastructure are, in fact, simply representations of sewage infrastructure. Additionally, improvisations enacted by those without access to sewage services has made other components of the city de facto infrastructure, but are not recognized as such. Finally, sewage governance in Agra forms what I call a hybrid network and I find that practices that strengthen micro-level and inter-level connections within that network lead to better outcomes.