Water wars are not a figment of sci-fi imagination. Access to water will define the gap between the rich and the poor.


Can you manage a family of five or more on four buckets of water day? That is a maximum of 80 litres a day. Not per person but for five people. Therefore, 20 litres per person per day. And then there are days when there is not a drop of water. This is the challenge facing millions of people, not in a water-deprived desert area but in Mumbai, the city with the best supply of water of any city in India.

So if people predict that the next water wars in this decade will take place not between nations but between communities in our cities, they are not far off the mark. The wars will be between the poor, the most deprived, and between the rich and the poor. The rich will also suffer water cuts, as they already do. But they will manage without having to face too much hardship because they will always have the ability to hoard, store and buy water. The poor, on the other hand, will get less than they already do, which is little enough. And without permanent housing, they will never have the same ability to store water, as do those who live in puccabuildings. So the gap between the rich and the poor will be defined through access to water.

Increased burden

With this scarcity, the burden on women will increase, as it already has. Receding water tables and decreasing snow melt have forced millions of women, in deserts and mountain regions, in villages and towns, to work harder to find water. Somehow they must fulfil their principal duties of washing, cleaning, cooking — and so they scrounge and beg, and walk longer distances to fetch that one, two or three buckets of precious water.

The other reality that is emerging is how, in times of scarcity, no one wants to share, be generous, least of all those who have enough. Housing societies in Mumbai, for instance, are making rules not allowing “outsiders” from taking out water from the buildings. These “outsiders” are actually the “insiders”, the domestic help in all our homes without whom our lives would be really difficult. They are the people who cook and clean and wash. They do this in homes where water flows through taps. And then when they finish work, they go out of the buildings to their homes in a slum where there are days without a drop of water. Yet, we feel justified in denying such people water at times of acute need. There is no culture in the world that defends the denial of water to a thirsty or needy person. Yet, the urban middle class ethos is defending just this.

Read More on: The Hindu