Water Politics: Climate Change and Its Impact on Caste
Access to water in the country has, for a very long time, been negotiated by a complex entwining of caste and gender identities that work to perpetuate structural inequalities. As severe drought threatens the country, Vaishnavi Behl examines how poor infrastructure and caste-based discrimination are compounding the problem.
Annihilation of Caste, B R Ambedkar’s magnum opus, a powerful and revolutionary text, is a manifesto of social and political reformation, as threatening to the Hindutva agenda as it is telling of its deeply embedded systems of oppression and exclusion. Ambedkar’s legacy spans generations — from drafting the Indian constitution to shaping the trajectory of Dalit activism. He was a prolific scholar whose ideology and writings continue to mould Indian social and political thought and contemporary discussions on caste. “People are not wrong in observing Caste. In my view, what is wrong is their religion, which has inculcated this notion of Caste,” he wrote.
Caste, in its essence, is a discriminatory system based on the ethics of purity and pollution, enforcing a hierarchy between groups, and allowing for intergenerational transfer of economic, cultural and social capital. The discourse on the relationship between access to food and the apparatus of caste is one that has existed within mainstream academic circles. However, the conversation on water, and patterns of deprivation in its allocation, has often been ignored.
In some regions, socio-cultural norms of untouchability, rather than natural availability, determine one’s access to freshwater. Increasing unpredictability of climate patterns, wide-scale droughts and depleted water resources have led to a massive failure of crops and wreaked havoc on the agricultural output of the country. Within the rural setting, the ability to access non-agricultural and financial resources like banks and rural cooperatives is dependent on one’s position in the caste hierarchy. Various caste groups, unable to diversify economic activities because of social and economic hurdles, have been forced into impoverishment, reproducing systemic inequalities.
In 1927, Ambedkar led the ‘Mahad Satyagraha’, a foundational struggle for Dalit emancipation. He encouraged lower castes in Mahad to drink water from the Cavdar tank which, while notionally open to the public, was reserved for the upper caste Hindus. The Dalits faced a violent backlash, and many delegates were physically assaulted. Purification ceremonies were performed by upper caste Hindus in a bid to make the water suitable for consumption. Ambedkar decided to return to Mahad in December, but faced an injunction against any attempt to draw water from the well. Not wishing to break the law, on the night of December 25, Ambedkar and his followers returned to Mahad to publicly burn a copy of Manusmriti, a blistering attack on Orthodox Hinduism and its entrenched social, economic and political inequality. Ambedkar held that this form of rebellion was not exclusively about access to water, or about Dalit rights in the country, but that the key objective of the satyagraha was to restructure Indian society.
The struggle for water has always been closely associated with the struggle for power, for representation, and for material resources. Water transcends boundaries when flowing from one region to another, and an attempt to compartmentalise it for exclusive use by certain regions or communities has inevitably led to widespread conflict and distress.
Image credit: WaterAid/ Mansi Thapliyal
Deepa Joshi, a leading CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) researcher conducted a study in 2011 with residents of Chunni village, in the mountains of Uttarakhand, and found two very conflicting descriptions of their relationship with freshwater. Upper caste Khanka Kshatriya women believed that Jal Devi, the goddess of water, had blessed them with a continuous and unlimited supply of freshwater. They revelled in water abundance, firm in the belief that they would always be the ‘water-lords’. On the other hand, the Dalit Agari women who lived in the same village narrated an entirely contradictory state of existence: the freshwater underground wells of the village were not accessible to Dalits. Burdened with extreme water scarcity, they were unable to bathe after working long hours in the summer and were compelled to feed farm animals with the dirty water remaining after washing utensils.
Vigyan Dalvi, a resident of Bhandivali village, near Maharashtra’s Raigad district, faced a blanket ban from the village after letting Dalits fill up water in his house after the village had decided to cut the water connection in Dalit households. The fear instilled by rebuking and penalising has often determined the behaviour of individuals on both ends, deepening the caste divide, and making it impossible to break away from its vicious grip.
In the Becharaji village of Rantej Taluka in Mehsana, Gujarat, a separate water tank situated at a distance from the centre of the village is meant specifically for Dalits. It is strategically placed in order to prevent water from flowing backwards into the main well, which, again, is kept away from the lower castes in order to prevent it from getting ‘polluted’. Lower caste hamlets have traditionally been positioned at a distance from the centre of the village, forcing communities that inhabit such settlements to travel long distances to acquire the smallest quantities of water, which inevitably reduces their supply.
Within this hierarchical and discriminatory system, women, often times solely responsible for sourcing and utilising water for household purposes, are far more constrained than men. Young girls are duty-bound to walk long distances to fetch water, exposing them to incidents of physical violence. They are most vulnerable to implicit and explicit violence and occupy a very dismal position in the social hierarchy, marginalised not only because of their class and caste, but also gender. Many girls are made to sacrifice their education in order to take up domestic responsibilities instead, making them far less likely to mobilise out of poverty. Economic dependency coupled with social exclusion, vulnerability and lack of political representation have rendered them disenfranchised.
India is reeling under what seems to be the worst climate crisis, with one half of the country facing severe drought, and major metropolises running entirely out of water. Despite the depleting water resources, the privileged continue to hold on to their power. Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand district faced severe shortages after taps and hand pumps went dry last summer. Water tankers were hired for exclusive use by the Brahmins and Thakurs, and the Chamar community living in the Dalit basti were admonished and sometimes even physically beaten up for trying to use upper caste hand pump and tankers.
The situation in Bundelkhand is one of the many instances that bring to light how the poor are disproportionately affected by climate change. We need to secure the fate of the rural poor with urgent action — as a demographic that directly relies on water-dependent agriculture, they are most affected by dwindling water resources. It would bear remembering here, that the rest of country’s population depends on these rural farmers for food supply.
Over 163 million people in India live without access to clean water. The national apathy towards the unequal burden of climate change is only likely to aggravate the situation. Some organisations have, however, taken the onus of social change and equitable progress in the absence of finance and political will. WaterAid India has been working with several rural communities and the local sarpanches to help secure better access to water. In the Bikhampur village in Bundelkhand, WaterAid India provided each household with a tap connection via a mini piped water supply system, drastically improving the physical and mental health of local inhabitants. Naandi Community Water Services operates water centres across the country and currently provides safe drinking water to around 2.3 million people across 400 villages.
On a more local level, Dalit women farmers of the Cauvery Delta in Tamil Nadu, which is predicted to be underwater by 2050, have turned to collective farming, pooling labour and financial resources to safeguard the community against increasingly unpredictable weather. The disaster-prone Bay of Bengal has faced unprecedented cyclonic activity and alternative years of drought and flooding, making it impossible for farmers to ensure a good crop turnout. While their efforts cannot impact rapidly rising sea levels and temperatures, it does provide some respite to small and marginal farmers giving them a semblance of autonomy and agency from landowners.
The complex link between caste and climate change in India is a human rights issue, one that mainstream climate journalism needs to examine more closely. Water inequity needs to be approached in a two-pronged manner, to encourage excluded groups to engage in water management policies while tackling issues of systemic and socially embedded inequalities. With pressure from local communities as well as the NGO sector, refurbishing the structure of policy making could produce favourable results and reform with a micro and macro impact on the future of our country.
India continues to struggle with ideas that Ambedkar tried to undo nearly a century ago — to fight for the eradication of archaic traditions and for the establishment of a new, egalitarian world. Yet, we only seem to be stuck in time, focusing on trivialities and ritualising antiquated ideas instead of looking for collective, sustainable and equitable solutions to India’s terrifying water crisis. “Turn in any direction you like; Caste is the monster that crosses your path,” Ambedkar wrote. “You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.” Perhaps, it’s time we take note.
Vaishnavi Behl is a young Sciences Po, Paris graduate exploring the politics of gastronomy. She writes about food and culture by day and by night, pursues her passion for analog photography and whips up experimental cocktail bitters.
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