There Was Always Water

Phoolo. I met Phoolo in the metro station in Gurgaon on my way to work on the morning of April 6, 2017. As I was preparing to make a frantic dash across the station, I heard a soft voice asking me for help to swipe a token. I turned to see a middle aged woman. Frail and thin, with her saree wrapped tightly around her, clutching onto a small plastic bag. I showed her how to slide the token over the sensor. Then, because I did not feel like leaving her, I walked with her to the escalator. She hesitated, so I reached out to hold her hand. As soon as I held her hand, she looked at me and started to cry. I held her close to me and let her cry. Her shoulders shook with her quiet sobs. In between her sobs she tells me “Mujhe maarte the… mujhe gaali dete the… khaane ko bhi nahin dete the (They beat me, abused me and didn’t give me food)." She told me it would have been better to die at home than come here. Confused, I ask her to start at the beginning. Phoolo told me her story. [caption id="attachment_3579" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Commuters take the escalator at a Metro Station in New Delhi. Image for representation only. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.[/caption] Phoolo was 35 years old (though she looked much older) when I met her. She had left her two children with her mother before coming to the city. She told me she loves her village but there are many problems. The water sources are drying up, fields are barren, and animals are dying. Even the children had begun to die. There was a lot of disease and sickness in her village. That year, a few months before I met her at the station, her husband left for the big city in search of work and she had not heard from him since. She did not know where he went or if he is dead or alive. Desperate to save her children from the impending threat of illness and death, she agreed to leave for the big city when two ‘recruiters’ arrived in her village. Since then, Phoolo had cried herself to sleep on an empty stomach every night and has never heard from the ‘recruiters’ again. On the day I met her, she had been beaten, abused, and tortured—she was running away from the big city in the same condition she had arrived, only this time she was humiliated and heartbroken as well. Water resources are depleting rapidly. This is a global concern. But the burden of this scarcity on men and women is different. Water scarcity is often a source of shame, humiliation, and physical discomfort for women, especially during menstruation and child birth. In times of crisis, it is expected that men will migrate and women will have to travel longer distances in search of water. It is estimated that women spend up to six hours a day fetching water, 150 million work days per year, equivalent, on average, to a national loss of income of 10 billion. Yet, women are often found to be missing from conversations around decision making on the management of water. It is said that the success of water projects increase six to seven times when women are involved. The importance of involving both men and women in access to and management of water was first recognised at the global level at the United Nations Water Conference at Mar del Plata in 1977. This was further reiterated during the International Decade of Water and the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin in January 1992. Take for example Sahibganj, a district of Jharkhand. It faces not only acute shortage of water but the water of several blocks is contaminated with high levels of arsenic. Using this as an entry point, PRIA has been working in 94 villages of the district with a focus on community led planning for management of local water resources with the eventual goal of addressing the larger issue of community based water security by improving gender sensitive WATSAN governance systems. Women are at the forefront of the planning process. [caption id="attachment_3580" align="aligncenter" width="800"] A tradition well and pulley system from Kerala. Image for representation only. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.[/caption] Water security plans have been made in six gram panchayats. Sriram Chowki Santhali village is one of three female-headed gram panchayats among these. It is headed by Anita Devi. In this village, the intervention is led by an all-woman team made up of a Jal Sahiya (appointed by the government), PRIA’s own animator and Anita Devi. After being trained to test water, this team has gone ahead and trained the others in their village, particularly its women, to test the water sources in the village. Anita Devi has called several special gram sabhas on the issue of water to discuss the finding of the tests. When the water security plan was being made, this team ensured that a women’s sabha was first organised in order to include women’s perspectives in the plan. Phoolo is from Odisha, which is experiencing drought. Before Phoolo left home, she would often picture happy days with her family when she returned–and there was always water.

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