Nayak, ShefaliShefaliNayakDöring, MartinMartinDöringBhattacharya, ShrimoyeeShrimoyeeBhattacharyaEkmekcioglu, RanaRanaEkmekciogluKnieling, JörgJörgKnielingPoschlod, BenjaminBenjaminPoschlod2026-10-292026-10-292026-10-21Frontiers in sustainable cities 8: 1920960 (2026)https://hdl.handle.net/11420/65567Introduction: Rapid urbanization and climate change threaten global urban water security, with projections indicating that over 1 billion urban residents will face water short ages. In many Global South cities, water crises are infrastructural as well as institutional challenges rather than merely hydrological ones, yet city-level analyses of these institutional barriers remain scarce. This study addresses this gap by examining the institutional and organizational barriers to effective water management in Bengaluru, India, a city of over 10 million people facing severe water stress despite importing 1,450 million liters of water daily. Methods: Using an inductive, exploratory qualitative case-study approach, we conducted 12 semi structured interviews with 13 stakeholders, spanning policymakers to engineers, between December 2024 and February 2025, thematically coded using MAXQDA. Results: Our study identified that Bengaluru’s water crisis stems from four interconnected institutional failures: (1) weak governance, marked by capacity deficits and absent regulatory frameworks; (2) siloed administrative processes fragmenting decision making across departments; (3) inertia embedding inefficient systems; and (4) lock-in contributing to mutually reinforcing feedback loops that are resistant to change. These factors operate simultaneously across strategic, operational, regulatory, and financial dimensions, perpetuating unsustainable water management. Discussion: We propose water circularity as a framework for institutional reform that addresses these barriers across all four dimensions. By grounding institutional theory in city-level empirical evidence, this study extends the largely comparative literature and offers exploratory, key-informant evidence suggesting that institutional transformation and infrastructural investment are essential for urban water resilience and sustainability. While rich, these findings lack statistical generalizability; future research should pursue comparative analyses across South Asian megacities and track how Bengaluru’s ongoing governance restructuring reshapes these dynamics.en2624-96342026Frontiers Media S.A.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Bengaluruclimate adaptationlock-inurban water governancewater-circularitysiloesinertiaSocial Sciences::333: Economics of Land and Energy::333.7: Natural Resources, Energy and EnvironmentSocial Sciences::307: Communities::307.7: Specific Kinds of Communities::307.76: Urban CommunitiesJournal Article10.3389/frsc.2026.192096010.15480/882.19134