In developing countries, the dominant model for managing rural water supplies is a community-level association or committee. Although a relative paucity of evidence exists to support this model, it continues to exert a strong pull on policy makers. This project examines everyday water governance arrangements, situating these in the exigencies of wider village life and over the course of changing seasons. The data highlights the social embeddedness of water governance, and challenges the dominant 'associational model' of community based management. In none of the 12 sites do we observe a fully formed committee functioning as it should according to policy. Instead, water management arrangements are typically comprised by one or a small number of key individuals from the community, who may or may not be part of a waterpoint committee.