Water Inequality in India

The SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 pandemic has brought back the world’s attention to the need of the equitable access and provision of the clean water. The WHO in their Interim Guidance on Water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management for the COVID-19 virus write: “The provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygienic conditions is essential to protecting human health during all infectious disease outbreaks, including the COVID-19 outbreak. Ensuring good and consistently applied WASH and waste management practices in communities, homes, schools, marketplaces, and health care facilities will help prevent human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus.” A report ‘Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, 2000-2017’ by WHO/UNICEF mentions that in 2017, 785 Million people across the globe either lacked the access or coverage to the basic drinking water facilities or were depended on the unimproved water sources. In the context of access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities and hygiene practices, the same report highlights the prevalent inequalities among countries - the gap among the rich and poor population, and the gap between the rural and urban population of a region.

Like many other countries, India too must go a long way to provide access to safe water to a significant portion of its population. According to a 2018 WaterAid report, 163 Million people in India lacked access to clean water near to their home. In the rural parts of the country 63.4 Million did not have access to the clean water, according to a 2017 study by WaterAid. A news article on Time reports on the country’s annual per capita water availability forecast which causes alarm. The press release issued by the India government that this news article cites, explains, “water available per person is dependent on population of the country and for India, water availability per capita is reducing progressively due to increase in population.”

On March 20,1927 Dr. B R Ambedkar led a movement and reclaimed Chawdar Tank, the only public source of water in Mahad. The Dalits (Lower Caste groups) were forbidden, by the Upper Castes in collusion with the colonial government, to use or even touch the water from the tank. The practice of Untouchability not only restricted the movements or interactions of lower caste groups with various other groups, it also created several other barriers in accessing the (Rural or) Urban Commons such as water resources.

The Caste System that originated as a system or structure to preserve or practice the ritualistic purity, as some have conjectured, has mutated and transformed itself to a system where the Upper Castes have hegemonized the material and social spaces. I am using the phrase Upper Castes in a generic sense where this term signifies the social groups that historically dominated the social spaces on the account of their perceived superiority in the space of ritual purity. Upper Castes includes one or more such groups that are socio-economically dominating in terms of access to wealth and services.

93 years after of this act of resistance, the Dalits and other socio-economic backward communities face discrimination and violence at the hands of people who are at the position of power. The Caste based violence and discrimination is not only present in rural parts of the country, that often are considered the hotbed of regressive practices of Caste System, but also is manifest in many ways in the urban centres of India.

A study in 2015 explored the relationship of caste hierarchy and access to drinking water in the rural parts of the five states. The Schedule Castes (SC) face a variety of challenges in accessing drinking water. Most of the SC households did not own any water resources such as open wells, hand-pumps and household tap water supply. This resulted in their dependence on public or common water resources. About 27.8% of the Scheduled Caste household surveyed faced discrimination while fetching water from public resources. The perpetrators were mostly Upper Caste people; in few incidents, few Schedule Caste households that were in a slightly better position in their economic status discriminated those who were at further lower strata of the socio-economic state. This study underscored the need of increasing the access to water but also its equitable provisioning. It highlighted the caste-based vulnerabilities of Schedule Caste women who generally go to fetch water.

To mitigate or annihilate this discrimination, one of the measures suggested was to employ a robust water supply system designed with the principal of equal access and provision. The economic changes in 90s or neoliberal reforms are often touted as champion of caste-equalisation i.e. a system where there will not be any caste discrimination. But often such well-intentioned systems are trumped by the dominance of those who belong to the upper rungs of the caste ladder. This is illustrated in a study conducted in the rural parts of Rajasthan where the investigators found that neoliberal reforms of water governance did not diminish the caste distinctions but rather strengthen it. As the authors note, “market mechanisms actually assisted dominant caste groups in seizing public resources.” It is not just rural India where the inequitable water access and caste (along with other socio-economic factors) are closely linked, the urban parts are also plagued by such inequalities.

The linkages of caste system and access to water are still thriving. A news article from February 2020 recounts the horrors of the caste system in a village of Uttar Pradesh: “On February 16, however, more than 50 members of a Mehtar family lost their only potable water source — a hand pump near a forest post — as foresters shot dead Madan Balmik while his family drew water from there.”

At the outset of COVID-19 pandemic these conflicts are anything but absent. A National Geographic article reports water scarcity problems in relation to COVID-19. How the water access and services are controlled by dominant groups, is illustrated in the article: “Caste politics, which are especially strict in Bundelkhand, compound the problem: Upper-caste people control most of the water, Kesar Singh explained. Every village has a small colony at one end for lower caste Dalits, and these colonies typically have next to no sanitation facilities. In Kaithi’s colony, there is one tap for 400 people.”

In the face of dwindling numbers and quantum of freshwater resources across the country, inefficient and mismanaged water supply systems, the climate change, and now this pandemic, water equality might seem a farfetched idea. But this should not stop the policy makers to formulate solutions to ensure equitable water to everyone. Neither it should deter the marginalised communities in the country to demand and fight for their basic right of access to clean water.