“How Gender Inequity and Environmental Degradation Are Intertwined: Women of India and the Ramifications of Water Privatization”

The water crisis is a far-reaching situation throughout the world, affecting particularly those in the Global South.  Water is the most immediate emergency facing India in terms of the large spread and severity, affecting one in every three persons.  Even in Chennai, Bangalore, Shimla and Delhi, water is being rationed by the liter.  My analysis focusing on the marginalization of women in this water crisis will incorporate worldwide statistics of the water crisis and the neocolonial framework used in the West’s exploitation of this rich natural resource.  Further, I will incorporate scholars in the field of water security, primarily Vandana Shiva; Michael Goldman’s critique on the privatization of water in the name of world aid organizations; and V. Spike Peterson and Anne Runyan’s analysis of the gendering of resources in globalization.  I will argue for including women’s voices in the allotment of maintaining necessary resources, particularly in my case study of India, where a non-governmental organization (NGO) is facilitating women’s agency.

Western modernization techniques and corporate interests are vying for water reservoirs in many of these countries, affecting the lives of women in these areas.  Water has become the most commercial product of the 21st century.  This may sound bizarre, but it is true. In fact, what water is to the 21st century, oil was to the 20th century.  The stress on the multiple water resources is a result of a multitude of factors.  On the one hand, rapidly rising population and changing lifestyles have increased the need for fresh water.  On the other hand, intense competition among users – agriculture, industry and the domestic sector – is pushing the ground water table deeper.1   Once the water table goes deeper, the only water available is salinated water, non-potable for people or animals and useless for agriculture.  The present situation of water in the world strikes those who live in developing countries the worst: 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions and one out of every four deaths under the age of five are due to a water-related disease.2  India’s current water situation affects one out of every three people.

In the majority of rural communities in India women are the main water managers and water carriers, responsible for collecting and managing its use.3 Women bear a disproportionate burden of water scarcity and water pollution. Although women in the past have been the conservers and guardians of water resources along with land resources, it is presently essential that women participate in water management, mainly, to ensure provisions for safe and potable water. Policies must facilitate the voices of women to participate in this decision-making in matters regarding distribution, conservation and use of water in their region.  However, women are not consulted when issues of increasing water productivity or accessibility are addressed.

The issues that India is currently facing in regards to the water shortage are the issues of physical scarcity and economic scarcity.  Dry, arid regions in the northern states of India are facing physical scarcity, due in large part of water resources being shifted and rerouted through privatization methods in the urban areas.  The northern states facing such dry planting seasons are being left with empty wells or salinated water as the beds are drying.4  Thus, India is seeing physical scarcity becoming a man-made condition; not entirely at the fault of global warming.

Economic scarcity is the trumpeting factor in the water wars in India, with Western corporate influence looking for more and cheaper water sources.  Coca-Cola and Pepsi, respectively, have set up shop in India vying for the natural water resources, ignoring those displaced due to the pillaging.  Once the both of these companies entered the bottled water market, no country in the Global South was safe from their wealth of power and influence.  As the demand for clean water across the globe has increased, as have the manufacturing of the plants, resulting in a packaged-water market seeing profits of $104.4 million, doubling every two years.5  While the growing bottled water industry aids India’s free market, making it a key player in the globalized money market, its citizens are losing a very real source of survival: water.

The roles of women in the water wars in India, and throughout the world, are lacking, especially as the female workload is increasing.  Rural women in northern India are losing water for irrigation through the re-routing of rivers and dry wells, thus losing crops.  If no viable crops grow, the men go off to the urban sprawl areas for work, increasing women’s already hefty workload.  Besides managing water and finding water for survival, women must also look after the children, the elderly, the existing crops and cattle.  Thus, females are dramatically affected by environmental degradation through the complications of their roles increasing.  As caregivers they are affected when environmental disasters affect their communities; as food providers as lack of water results in lack of food in a vicious cycle of starvation and malnutrition, lacking agency to change the environmental degradation occurring.6  Women are continuously marginalized, leaving them ignored as their entire livelihoods and ways of living are impacted.

The gendered divisions of power are directly related to the gendering of resources, as the power of gender is not merely a position but is a result of them.  The lenses of power are based on inequalities with the assumption that they are inevitable, thus as resources are being treated as disposable, as are women in the grand scheme.   Peterson and Runyan consider this premise of disposability in relation to women as those who are less visible in the conversation are lost and disregarded.  The divisions of resources and labor expose who is valuable, with women being further marginalized, losing the resources that are theirs to be claimed.  The dominations of influence can be due to the capitalist patriarchy that has opened up among these marginalized groups and its dominating patterns.  The intrinsic power of thought in the struggle over resources in the capitalist sense further “others” those who are justified as disposable.  Therefore, not only are women losing their representation in the conversations over resources, but are turned into disposable resources themselves, negating their own existence. International aid agencies habitually park themselves in the gender debate, using the language of empowerment to facilitate women’s roles in the debate.  However, the language of empowerment can be empty if it is employed in a Western, colonial framework as a form of “protection.”  Gender and development studies analyze the best uses of empowering those through the context of female roles in their own community, but tend to do so in a colonial study, with the West deciding what is best for those in “need.”  The pedagogical approaches exacerbate the lack of agency women have by trying to “speak” for the women who have been “othered” and seen as disposable.  In order to find a solution of such issues, one must go the root of these gendered divisions and acknowledge that, as women only own 2 percent of private land, they are already unequal in the fight over global substance.

This issue is further assessed in the struggles over the privatization of water in India.  As Eurocentric ideas of progress have been influenced through globalization, water efficiency has been greatly affected in the debate.  Modern ways of using such resources are seen as being progressive through “man-made” means, such as dams and pipeline routing, hold masculine ideology above female ideology and need.  The most influencing method of privatization in the water wars the pressure faced by the Suez Group, which is a global player in the new booming water industry and goes by the name of Suez Environment.  The Suez Group is a French multi-national corporation that invests strictly in natural resource products – gas and water.  As it spun-off as Suez Environment, it was attempting to capitalize on the Green Movement.  According to its own website:  “Suez environment and its subsidiaries are committed to the challenge of protecting resources by providing innovative solutions in the water and waste management fields.” 7

However, as the idea of environmental sustainability is continuously tossed around in capitalist enterprises, one cannot assume that all ventures are innocent.  What Suez is doing, essentially, is green-washing its company to hide the fact that its classist and gendered privatization plans benefit those who are in danger of their very survival.  Suez contracted with Delhi in the early 21st century to build a water treatment plan.  The contract was between the Delhi board and a smaller Suez subsidiary, thus deceiving Indians of the giant corporation’s monetary interest in the water.  The Sonia Vihar water treatment plant opened in 2002 with the assumption it would provide safe drinking water for every Delhian.  Yet, the water needed to serve the water treatment plant and to clean the wastewater was water pipelined in from an outside source from the far northern regions of India.  Besides stealing the water from the Upper Ganga Canal, which is the largest source of irrigation for the region, a dam had to be erected to attain even more water.8  The Tehri Dam, completed in 2006, is south of the Himalayas and is the fifth largest dam in the world.  It is also a source of intense debate among environmental groups and the Indian citizens who live in the area.  The dam was built on an active fault line, thus if there is an earthquake the dam’s reservoir of water will flood the Tehri-Garwhal district, further displacing the people who had to relocate during the construction of the dam.  Continuing on the people of the area being displaced, the construction of the dam affected the citizens’’ livelihoods, stripping them of their own water rights.

The privatization method of garnishing water is built upon many myths in the Western capitalist jargon of sustainability: for both the people and their resources.  However, in order to justify such ventures, it is couched in the rhetoric of empowerment through improvement.  Goldman debunks these myths using the case study of the Sonia Vihar plant, revealing the actual water that is pipelined into Delhi does not even go near the slums of the city, but to the rich South Delhi.  While doing this method of supplying water to the wealthier investors, the poor slum dwellers are still charged a flat rate for their water on the promise that water tanks will visit, which does not occur.  This is another case of viewing those not rich in natural resources or agency as disposable, with the poor now being the focus as such in the urban areas.  A second myth of privatization is the idea that there will be a reduced waste of water, yet those in the urban, wealthy areas have such access to water that this is completely false.  The women who do not waste a drop of water are women who know how to properly conserve and manage water: the women of the dry, arid areas and those who have to travel such a distance to collect water.  When a water pump is ten miles away, a woman with a jerry jug will hesitate to even lose a drop of precious water.9  The third myth of privatization is the cost to the public.  When the Sonia Vihar water treatment plan was inaugurated, the idea was the tariff increases for water raised by the government would pay for the construction, but the cost to benefit ratio was outweighed by the benefit to the public.  The argument against this idea is that the public is actually paying ten times more than needed, thus the “public” investment in water is actually a commodity they are purchasing as outsidecountries are profiteering.  As this water becomes a public investment, it must stay in the public sector, resulting in repercussions as rates are increased without public agreement.  Water also becomes a mere economic commodity to consume, not to sustain.

Policy changes, such as water, have become globally decided for the majority of the countries comprised of the global South.  The UN Millennium Development Council established Millennium Goals, one of which was potable water and proper sanitation.  Due to this, policies throughout other global South countries were decided in a global consensus, with Western and Eurocentric companies making the policies.10  The transnational frameworks used to decide how to “sustain” natural resources and empower those citizens through development have become very effective in the global scheme.  In deciding how to solve the water scarcity issue, the global consensus has shifted to a global development ideology, with free market capitalism “saving” the natural resources, claiming efficiency and access to all.  Goldman shifts the focus of this progression on the growth of the World Bank.   When the World Bank began to grow in power, it was merely to help Southern countries borrow money to strengthen their own infrastructures through Northern development.  In the late 1970’s the World Bank shifted is monetary power once the president of the Bank was a US citizen, Robert McNamara.  This move transformed the World Bank into a powerful force, collaborating with private corporate sectors in the North.  Thus, the “development” movement intensified and the rhetoric of development as aid came to light and the Bank financed some of the costliest projects for private corporations, as the untapped resources of the global South were opened.  The Bank at this time became its own corporation, training its own staff and other elite citizens of the global South on the economics of development projects in the Southern states.

Once the world debt crisis hit in the 1980’s, the World Bank posited itself as the “global arbiter of debt,” 11 revamping itself as a new development regime, deepening its power and strengthening its neoliberal influence.  The Bank and its borrowers are not the only global actors spreading neoliberalism, but are joined development consultants and NGOs.  Once this transition occurred, water became a moneymaking scheme to privatize and exploit such resources in the neocolonial perspective.  As the current situation exists, exceedingly indebted countries, such as Haiti, cannot borrow from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund without development plans for a water privatization policy.  Thus, water continues to be one of the most lucrative investments in a transnational capital market.

The issue to consider with foreign aid initiatives in countries of the global South, such as India, is the lack of agency citizens have in the decision making process, particularly the women.  In order to regain control over India’s own resources, starting with reforming the conditionalities on World Bank or IMF loans would be an imperative place to start.  Selling state owned services and utilities to foreign investors is a short-term goal for a growing country, such as India, and struggling countries, such as Haiti or Nepal.  Southern borrowers have and will continue to spend more on interest repayments than on their own basic services.  Further, the “Water for All” campaign by the UN Millennium Goals Project had collapsed, failing to supply water to the almost billion deprived people.12  Throughout the region of South Asia, no new contracts to extend services to the poor had been formed, treating the poor, again, as disposable.  The shift extends as we see resources becoming commodified, directly causing the commodification of women as well.  The disposability factor can be furthered as we see women’s health declining with increased cancer rates, arsenic poisoned wells and toxic runoff into potable water resources from large globalized corporations, such as Coca-Cola.

Destabilizing aid and development networks is essential for countries of the global South to develop in respect for nature and the role of women in nature.  But in order to destabilize such predominate networks is to resist the economic globalization decorating itself in sustainability movements through Western women’s “empowerment” rhetoric.  Women-in-development programs, again, neglect the actual women who are affected by such capitalist laden frameworks of what constitutes “good” development: “development mistakes…might have been avoided if women farmers in the global South, who are more reliable ‘natural resource managers’ had been consulted.”13

Further, the poor-rural female farmers of the global South publicized the “food-fuel-water crises” of the 1980’s, as women were the subsistence farmers who remained on the front of these crises, as women were, and are, the main food producers.  Ignoring the voices of the women in this sector is ignoring the sustainability of the environment as global warming continues to threaten our environment, and, our resources are further depleted.

Continuing on the theory of destabilization of global policies enacted in the global South, it is essential to refrain from ignoring the colonial frameworks enacted and referenced.  The actors of the North portray those of the global South and their policies as being corrupt, allowing the public resources to be controlled by private countries: exactly as such occurred under colonial rule as private trading companies enacted similar contracts with their public imperial states.14  Similarly, present day contracts negate such existence of colonial-imperial history, believing that public ownership has failed in global South countries.  This has further legitimatized the pervasive transnational networks, exacerbating the spread of globalization and furthering the schism of the private/public divide.

A simple solution to true gendered empowerment in the water crisis debates is facilitating a grass roots approach of inclusion, losing the women-in-development jargon.  Women in the global South have been “developing” their own rules and ways of life, respecting and conserving the Earth’s resources prior to the “internationalized imperialism”15  governing policies dictating the definition of “development” and progress.  As water in India has previously been regarded as a community resource, the Pani Panchayat movement stepped in to defend those were lacking in this community based “product.”  The goal of the movement is to create ecologically sound and sustainable methods for water use and conservation.  Part of the scheme to subvert the language of privatization is the formation of local water councils (panchayats).  Through small, community based associations, the citizens begin to form a voice, reacting to the imperialist forces threatening their very existence.  Further, the Pani Panchayat movement reinforces the logic for community-controlled resources in democratic planning systems for public resources: Water sustainability can emerge only from democratic control of water resources. Community control avoids ecological breakdown and prevents social conflict.  Over the centuries, indigenous water management systems have relied on ancient knowledge an devolved into complex systems that ensure the equitable distribution of water…Water conservation movements are also showing that the real solution to the water crisis lies in people’s, energy, labor, time, care, and solidarity (Shiva 2002).

Yet, how does one form a panchayat and resolve the gendered conflicts over natural resources, such as water?  In the past, such world aid organizations have involved the “add women and stir” approach to “giving” women a voice in policy-making decisions.  However, this approach actually limits women’s roles, further marginalizing “them” and their needs and interests, treated as abject, under this precipice of finding “solutions.”  This ideology directs attention away from the actual problems:  capitalist patriarchy, imperialism, neocolonialism, racism and neoliberal governmentality that lie at the root.

The movement for panchayats facilitating such agency for women in water management is a simple solution, treating such realistic approaches as viable government representation from those who are marginizalized.  Communities have their own “good governance” programs, without calling them as such, yet lack a voice in policy making.  This is how NGO’s unaffiliated with such profiteers as the World Bank and IMF can aid the complex systems, negotiating the power intrinsic to such systems.  An NGO I studied to incorporate Shiva and Goldman’s solutions for female agency in the water wars is one based out of the Haryana state of India, northwest of Delhi.  The Institute of Rural Research and Development (IRRAD) focuses specifically on finding sustainable and ecologically sound solutions for rural communities in Haryana.  IRRAD’s objectives focus as such on this goal:

Develop need-based strategies and programs for poverty alleviation through a sustainable model for rural development (ISVD). Undertake research and create knowledge on sustainable and replicable models of rural development.  Build capacities for rural development through training programs and a network of partner organizations.  Analyze the impacts of local, state and national policies on rural development, helping the rural poor make best use of policies intended to benefit them; and advocate for policy reforms when needed.16

Focusing on sustainability is not simply speaking environmental sustainability, but community sustainability as a whole.  The Sehgal Foundation, founders of IRRAD, made a mission to figure out solutions for the rural farmers, but listening and not speaking or deciding for the rural farmers.  The Sehgal Foundation’s critique with international aid organizations is the “aid” is indebting the recipients, forcing them to rely on outside forces and agencies.  Further, such agencies use a Western, neoliberal framework believing their solutions to be the only and most progressive.  IRRAD’s goal is not to “fix” the needs of the farmers, but to give the farmers, specifically the women, the “tools” to enact such change: not private projects which will redirect their resources, negating the entire sustainability movements.

IRRAD is an interesting case study that incorporates the arguments of Shiva, Goldman, and Runyan and Peterson.  True sustainability is not simply fostering better uses of limited resources, but finding viable, long term solutions to such key issues.  In some of the villages in Haryana, a chief complaint is the lack of potable water.  Thus, IRRAD instituted rain barrels and check dams to garnish the water while employing a simply method of filtering the water, through the use of the water flowing down through layers of rocks, losing the sediments.  For the citizens who live even further out from the village with the large water supply, IRRAD supplied smaller filter that were made for merely 50 rupees that could supply single family homes with their own small water filter for potable water.

Further, in order to keep their water supplies clean, sanitation services were addressed.  First, the services were improved by merely adding more squat toilets and access to them for the women of the village, but to keep the waste from spoiling the water sources, the runoff was redirected to help compost and yield rich soil.  Simply, better methods were spread to the community, not forcing the community to choose such methods, but showing them how it could work.  The main factor forcing the fruition of IRRAD’s ideas and objectives is the use of the “good governance” programs it employs.  In order for the farmers to have a hand in the decision making process, certain villagers are trained by IRRAD’s governance programs, which simply teaches the marginizalized Indians their rights from the government and how to have a voice in policy making.  These trained villagers return to their separate communities and employ the tactics with other people joining the governance associations, encouraging everyone to have a voice, specifically women.  IRRAD had to slowly incorporate their own objectives for empowering women, but did so slowly through such programs, avoiding the “add women and stir” method the West is so fond of in development.

By NGO’s operating on a different framework of values (sustainability versus profiteering) the methods to “help” global South recipients can actually aid those who are affected the greatest by environmental degradation: women.  Creating long-lasting solutions is the key element into destabilizing the networks of transnational policy making.  Simply put, “aiding” a sector of disenfranchised citizens is not employing Western ideas of disposability and dependability.  Sustainability is truly about dependability to the “international imperialists” who enforce the global policies, profiteering off of disposable resources: water, oil, and women.  In order to facilitate agency for the displacement of women in the global South due to environmental degradation, we must work outside of such Western, neocolonial notions of what constitutes a “solution.”  As Western capitalists have contributed so highly to environmental degradation, it seems natural for the North to further profit off of this dire environmental situation.   To truly sustain, however, we must look for solutions that have existed as the political and environmental stakes have never been so eminent.