IRAN AND DUBAI LEAD THE WAY107around their swimming pools. They hosed down cars and walkways
to keep down the dust. “Forty years ago drinkable water was hard to
access. The leadership of this country offered people water for free.
That’s very honorable,” Zaafrani said in an interview. “But that was forty
years ago. It’s a different world today.”
Angry citizens complained to the Arabic press and radio talk shows
and launched a spate of illegal well drilling.^32 Prominent Emiratis began
complaining to Zaafrani, often in person. “The ones who made much
more noise after we made the increase were UAE nationals,” he said. “For
UAE nationals, water is not free anymore. Human beings do not want
to be told to pay more. People came to me and said, ‘We are being penal-
ized!’ I said, ‘No, we’re trying to save energy and raise awareness.’ ”
Dubai’s elites might have managed to hold the line against such
complaints, except that the increases had the misfortune of coinciding
with the Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia and Egypt just as prices
were raised in Dubai. By February, political unrest had swept into neigh-
boring Bahrain and Oman.^33 Policy makers became much more sensi-
tive to citizen opposition.^34 The ruling al- Maktoum family began to
back away from the price increases. Ruling elites decreed three separate
retractions of parts of the 2011 tariff reform, all of which affected only
the citizen residential sector. Government officials portrayed these
retractions as ad hoc decisions, again made without consulting the
usual policy channels. First, Sheikh Mohammed quietly rolled back
electricity prices to previous levels for low- income households receiv-
ing social benefits.^35 Second, one of the ruler’s sons announced that the
government would pay LNG surcharges on behalf of citizens.^36 And in
October, the Dubai ruler relented on the increase in water prices and
announced a doubling of the free water quota for citizen households to
20,000 gallons per month.^37 No price relief was offered to noncitizens
or business and industrial customers. “This is what happens when you
announce the policy with no proper analysis or consultation,” a gov-
ernment policy maker said, in response to the climbdowns.
Raising prices was one side of subsidy reform. Collecting payment was
another matter. DEWA had a record of effective bill collection, unchar-
acteristic in a region where paying utility bills used to be understood as