[Reader-list] Pani Ki Kahani

[lalit batra]

Pani Ki Kahani: Shehri Garibon Ki Zubaani
Lalit Batra

Indian cities are facing a severe water crisis today. From experts of the
international agencies like the World Bank and the UNO to the officialdom
in India, everybody is talking about the impending water riots. All trends
point to the fact that, slowly but surely, water is becoming a political
issue. This concern about disappearing water seems quite legitimate if
viewed in abstraction. But if we locate this concern in the
socio-political context of our times, then it comes across as an
inalienable part of the project of the bourgeoisie environmentalism to
discipline the city. It is no surprise then that the concern about
vanishing water is being expressed almost exclusively in the context of
the actual or perceived needs of middle and upper-middle classes. The
needs of the urban poor, which consumes lowest quantities of water and
that at highest prices per unit, are completely absent from the discourse
on the scarcity of water. In fact even their minimum water needs are
considered as a burden on water infrastructure and presented as the main
reason behind water scarcity in cities. One of the logic in the package
offered as the reason for evicting slum dwellers from the city center is
that they are water thieves who steal the water meant for the consumption
of ‘citizens’. Whereas data and experience show that the urban poor are
not creators but victims of water crisis. More than any other city, the
above mentioned process is most clearly visible in Delhi, the capital city
of India. One of the reasons for this being that over the last decade and
a half, bourgeoisie environmentalism has emerged as a formidable force in
the city. 
In this context it becomes important to explore how the poor in the city
look at their situation in terms of their relationship with water. It
would be interesting to explore the situation of first generation migrants
and see if they shared a different relationship with water when lived in
villages to the one they are forced to get into in the city. If yes, then
what was the nature of that relationship?
One useful hypothesis to start this research could be that in large parts
of rural India, until recently, or even now in some pockets, the
relationship of people to water is negotiated largely through
socio-cultural and geographical factors, whereas in the context of a city,
where water is a commodity to start with, it is based primarily on one’s
positioning in the overarching class structure and access to political and
administrative power networks. It would be worthwhile to find out how this
change in setting gets registered on the consciousness of the poor, how
they cope with it and what implications does it have for their sense of
collectivity and collective struggles.
         


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