Infrastructural Violence: Five Axes of Inequities in Water Supply in Delhi, India

Abstract

Inequity is deeply embedded in the supply of drinking water in Delhi, India. Using the concept of infrastructural violence, this paper exposes how past and present governance of water has resulted in unequal distribution of supply across the city to exclude vulnerable communities from accessing drinking water. This perspective broadens the gaze away from a narrow gaze on the technical and structural aspects of infrastructure to encompass the socio-political dimensions. This paper starts by outlining the history of the water supply in Delhi. We then outline five axes of exclusion which can be read as infrastructural violence and explores how aspects of water policy, legislation, and planning uphold these injustices. Our discussion centers on how economics, political ideology, and power infiltrate governing mechanisms to influence water infrastructure to entrench poverty and marginalization. Attempts to improve water security for Delhi's residents face minimal impact without addressing these embedded inequities. Therefore, our analysis offers a framework to systematically create awareness of the factors to be addressed to enable a more equitable governance of water supply.

Disrupted water governance in the shadows: Revealing the role of hidden actors in the Upper Cauca River Basin in Colombia

“…Contrary to the functionalist approaches and normative notions of good water governance, which tend to overpass the operations of those in power, the critical water governance perspective (e.g., Warner et al, 2008;Perreault, 2014) attempts to carefully elucidate the political nature essential to the institutional arrangements and historical socio-environmental relationships in question. This paper takes a critical water governance perspective (Castro, 2006;Swyngedouw, 2009;Zwarteveen et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2021;Rudolph and Kurian, 2022), in which governing procedures take place in pre-existing societal and physical landscapes and in diverse complexities.…”

Emotionality in domestic water use in the global south: Who cares who is deprived of?

“…Within the field of sociology of emotion, infrastructure, e.g., the water supply network, construction of water canals, etc., becomes a dynamic force through which urban citizens, particularly powerful and influential elites, shape and co-shape the governance of water supply and water access within the city. While the scholarship of citizens' everyday experience in access to services, water for domestic use, has largely been documented in the anthropological research, less research has been conducted to assess how marginalized and underserved communities experience political space and power associated to urban water infrastructures [44] , particularly in the Global South where elites and upper class (the ones with more power) influence government's decision-making policy concerning water supply distribution and provision [33,45] . Thus, sociology of emotion, a subfield of sociology is concerned about the emotions and how emotions are shaped, experienced, and expressed in the realm of social interactions in a community.…”

“…In fact, the current urban policies are designed to push economically disadvantaged communities toward the outskirts of both physical and societal realms. The majority of informal urban settlers reside in cramped 6-10 m 2 huts within slums, obtaining water from public taps, tankers, and tube wells [33] . Centuries of entrenched caste-based discrimination have contributed to higher levels of poverty among the lower castes.…”

“…Finally, the low-income residents had access to public wells, ponds, and canals. However, a significantly high portion of the population was deprived of access to reliable and safe flow of water [33] . This argument is in consistency with the findings of the New York Times [47] highlighting how India's Jat Caste-the large-scale irrigators and farmers-influence the flow of water through water infrastructures, e.g., water canals.…”

“…It has also been asserted that only elites have the right to access to abundant water while marginalized communities are punished and abused if get access to water for their daily consumption. Truelove's [31] argument is augmented by the findings of Kumar et al [33] who contend that policies and regulations on water allocation and water supplies have been influenced by the elites in India. Such marginalization and segregation of communities into wealthier versus poorer has triggered the negative emotions, e.g., access to extra-water is associated with public abuse, harassment, shame, fear, and sometimes sextually victimized [34] .…”