A recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report confirmed other predictions that diminishing water resources will be a major cause for conflict in Asia by 2050. However, as is clear to many urban Indians living on the margins, a smaller version of this conflict has been playing out in Indian cities for decades.
For the past four months, Janki Gupta, a resident of Baiganwadi in Govandi in north-eastern Mumbai, has been able to get water from a basic pipeline outside her house for merely one hour each morning. That's more than her usual quota, but an election season can always be counted on to ensure a steady, if scant, supply of water.
“Look at these cycles,” she said, pointing at sturdy old two-wheelers parked outside each door in twos and threes in the lane – and at every other door in the basti as well. “If people believed that they were going to get water regularly, they might have sold their cycles or rented them to others. I give you my word: you come back in October and see if we get any water at all.”
Before they got basic access to water, Baiganwadi resident would mount containers on their cycles and wheel them all the way to the highway about a kilometre away, or to neighbouring Chembur four kilometres away, to collect water from private tankers or from people who sold water from their own connections by the litre.
Much of Baiganwadi, which abuts the Deonar dumping ground, the country’s largest land fill, was built on garbage from the 1970s when people from other parts of Mumbai were relocated to the area. Over the years, the basti has not grown away from the dumping ground, but onto it. Each parallel line of homes reclaims more of the garbage heap and in turn gets less access to basic utilities, as they cross the line from regular to irregular, legal to illegal.
“We didn’t bathe for nine or ten days at a time [before the pipes came],” said Shazia Farooqui, a neighbour to the Guptas. Like them, she only got access to water four months ago. “We had to pay up to Rs 60 for each drum and even then there was no guarantee that we would get water.”
Farooqui and Gupta live in the Muslim-dominated part of Baiganwadi, which is closer to the dumping ground, and did not have even a basic pipeline until two years ago. Both Farooqui and Gupta said that there used to be regular spats between people queuing for water from the tankers on the highway. There are no fights now, they say, because of this daily poll-season hour of water. Of course, more affluent areas in Mumbai further from the city’s lakes regularly get 24 hours of water and complain if this is reduced.
Conflicts like the one in Baiganwadi play out all over India, and are in some way representative of the water wars the UN predicts will engulf entire regions in the decades ahead. “These micro disputes are very multi-faceted and difficult to give one reason for,” said Vinod Goud, a scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. In 2006, he was among the first Indians to predict water disputes in a book on the topic. “You can’t say it is just religious or just political. At the end of the day, everyone wants water, but the government can’t solve everything.”
Shantaram Patil, Baiganwadi’s representative in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, said that the authorities laid pipes in each lane in the slum two years ago, and widened the main pipe. “The problem is that for water to reach inside, we also need that much extra water pressure,” he explained.
Much of the 12 million litres per day alloted to the area gets sucked up by the city's only cola manufacturing unit, Duke’s, which is about four kilometres south of the slum, said Patil, a member of the Samajwadi Party.
“The BMC allotted this amount of 35 litres per head based on the population in 1995, which was even then too little,” Patil said. “Now the population is about 10 lakhs, but still they haven’t increased the amount of water.” He added that despite the shortage, he does not differentiate between residents who arrived in 1995 or 2014 and attempts to give all his constituents access to at least some water, if they have installed pipes, legally or otherwise.
But Bhagwat Kamble, a dalit politician in his 40s whose parents grew up in Baiganwadi and who lives in a relatively pukka house near the outer border, scoffed at this claim. “Let me tell you one thing,” he said. “This is a political issue from start to finish. If politicians wanted to give us water, they would. But they make this issue of water shortage so people become distracted and don’t think about other more important things like ration supplies.”
Kamble is the vice president of the Maharashtra-based Republican Paksha (Khoripa), and has been a keen observer of water spats over the years. He has had access to a daily hour of water at his house since 1985, when the BMC first approved services to the area.
That does not mean he is satisfied. The latest protest in which he was involved happened six months ago. “Some people decided to stage a rasta roko [road blockade] to demand better water supply,” said Kamble. “We all interrupted our work, left our children at home, and went to see what was happening.”
But when the police came, the protestors, who were supporters of the Shiv Sena party, panicked and said they would allow cars to back out from the other end of the road.
“You tell me what the point of a rasta roko is,” said Kamble. “First of all, I don’t agree with these tactics, but if you are doing it, at least do it properly. Route by route nahin jaoge, toh ek bhi chance nahi hai.”
Kamble roused a few of his own supporters to ensure that the blockade continued. They refused to let vehicles move until a BMC representative came and promised them better access to water. Despite this, nothing changed.
“Of course it did not work, but that does not mean we should not do it properly,” said Kamble. “There will be fights between us, but the real people at fault are in the government.”
For the past four months, Janki Gupta, a resident of Baiganwadi in Govandi in north-eastern Mumbai, has been able to get water from a basic pipeline outside her house for merely one hour each morning. That's more than her usual quota, but an election season can always be counted on to ensure a steady, if scant, supply of water.
“Look at these cycles,” she said, pointing at sturdy old two-wheelers parked outside each door in twos and threes in the lane – and at every other door in the basti as well. “If people believed that they were going to get water regularly, they might have sold their cycles or rented them to others. I give you my word: you come back in October and see if we get any water at all.”
Before they got basic access to water, Baiganwadi resident would mount containers on their cycles and wheel them all the way to the highway about a kilometre away, or to neighbouring Chembur four kilometres away, to collect water from private tankers or from people who sold water from their own connections by the litre.
Much of Baiganwadi, which abuts the Deonar dumping ground, the country’s largest land fill, was built on garbage from the 1970s when people from other parts of Mumbai were relocated to the area. Over the years, the basti has not grown away from the dumping ground, but onto it. Each parallel line of homes reclaims more of the garbage heap and in turn gets less access to basic utilities, as they cross the line from regular to irregular, legal to illegal.
“We didn’t bathe for nine or ten days at a time [before the pipes came],” said Shazia Farooqui, a neighbour to the Guptas. Like them, she only got access to water four months ago. “We had to pay up to Rs 60 for each drum and even then there was no guarantee that we would get water.”
Farooqui and Gupta live in the Muslim-dominated part of Baiganwadi, which is closer to the dumping ground, and did not have even a basic pipeline until two years ago. Both Farooqui and Gupta said that there used to be regular spats between people queuing for water from the tankers on the highway. There are no fights now, they say, because of this daily poll-season hour of water. Of course, more affluent areas in Mumbai further from the city’s lakes regularly get 24 hours of water and complain if this is reduced.
Conflicts like the one in Baiganwadi play out all over India, and are in some way representative of the water wars the UN predicts will engulf entire regions in the decades ahead. “These micro disputes are very multi-faceted and difficult to give one reason for,” said Vinod Goud, a scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. In 2006, he was among the first Indians to predict water disputes in a book on the topic. “You can’t say it is just religious or just political. At the end of the day, everyone wants water, but the government can’t solve everything.”
Shantaram Patil, Baiganwadi’s representative in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, said that the authorities laid pipes in each lane in the slum two years ago, and widened the main pipe. “The problem is that for water to reach inside, we also need that much extra water pressure,” he explained.
Much of the 12 million litres per day alloted to the area gets sucked up by the city's only cola manufacturing unit, Duke’s, which is about four kilometres south of the slum, said Patil, a member of the Samajwadi Party.
“The BMC allotted this amount of 35 litres per head based on the population in 1995, which was even then too little,” Patil said. “Now the population is about 10 lakhs, but still they haven’t increased the amount of water.” He added that despite the shortage, he does not differentiate between residents who arrived in 1995 or 2014 and attempts to give all his constituents access to at least some water, if they have installed pipes, legally or otherwise.
But Bhagwat Kamble, a dalit politician in his 40s whose parents grew up in Baiganwadi and who lives in a relatively pukka house near the outer border, scoffed at this claim. “Let me tell you one thing,” he said. “This is a political issue from start to finish. If politicians wanted to give us water, they would. But they make this issue of water shortage so people become distracted and don’t think about other more important things like ration supplies.”
Kamble is the vice president of the Maharashtra-based Republican Paksha (Khoripa), and has been a keen observer of water spats over the years. He has had access to a daily hour of water at his house since 1985, when the BMC first approved services to the area.
That does not mean he is satisfied. The latest protest in which he was involved happened six months ago. “Some people decided to stage a rasta roko [road blockade] to demand better water supply,” said Kamble. “We all interrupted our work, left our children at home, and went to see what was happening.”
But when the police came, the protestors, who were supporters of the Shiv Sena party, panicked and said they would allow cars to back out from the other end of the road.
“You tell me what the point of a rasta roko is,” said Kamble. “First of all, I don’t agree with these tactics, but if you are doing it, at least do it properly. Route by route nahin jaoge, toh ek bhi chance nahi hai.”
Kamble roused a few of his own supporters to ensure that the blockade continued. They refused to let vehicles move until a BMC representative came and promised them better access to water. Despite this, nothing changed.
“Of course it did not work, but that does not mean we should not do it properly,” said Kamble. “There will be fights between us, but the real people at fault are in the government.”
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