How Women Have Changed India's Water Story

The concept of clean drinking water is still a novel thought in most rural pockets and urban slums of India. While on one hand the world is applauding us as the next big economy, on the other, we are yet to resolve issues related to the most basic needs of mankind.

India is faced with drinking water challenge when it comes to the quality of drinking water, it ranks a dismal 120 out of 122 nations and 133rd out of 180 nations for its water availability. Research by a leading consulting firm in water sector Everything About Water (EA Water) goes on to claim that the country is faced with an alarming prospect of becoming a water scarce nation by 2025. According to the World Bank study, millions of Indians currently lack access to clean drinking water, and the situation is only getting worse. While India’s demand for water is growing at an alarming rate, a rapidly growing economy and a large agricultural sector stretch is making India’s supply of water even thinner.

This abysmal situation continues to daunt many Indian villages and slums everyday, but the real ones living a nightmare are the women. They have borne the brunt of water scarcity from a long time. There have been anecdotes and tales of women and girls missing out on school to fetch water for their families, walking miles together at a stretch. Securing even the minimum amount of water for their everyday needs is a daily struggle faced by these women. Unlike in some of the metropolitan cities, where homes are supplied by pipe water systems, people living in rural areas and most of the slum communities are still reeling under the consequences of dry wells, hand pumps and highly contaminated ground and surface water. With the quality of groundwater fast deteriorating, it has led to rampant spread of water-borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and typhoid. Fluoride and arsenic are the other major pollutants. The former is a key threat in the southern and western parts of the country, while the latter affects the eastern part of the country most.

Evolution Of Community Initiatives
As a small step towards providing clean drinking water and sanitation for all, led to the fruition of community-driven water plants in India. Water Plants are small, self-contained water purification businesses that are located in centralized and convenient locations in rural villages and around urban slums. These are designed to achieve a macro objective of creating self-sustainable villages and communities, providing safe drinking water to masses.

These dispensing systems, customized basis the level of contaminants present in water, not only enable quick & easy access to purified drinking water to communities but also makes safe water affordable at as low as 10 - 50 paise per litre. Buyers can get the drinking water anytime (24x7), without any operator dependency at any of the dispensing units, using their unique identification card (Water Card).

This model is based on cross-sector partnership between gram panchayats, state governments, NGOs and local communities which aims to promote entrepreneurship in rural areas. Such initiatives give communities the opportunity to not only run the plants but also sell water and generate a business module while working closely with the city based water distributors and State and Central Government, thus making them important stakeholders in this development.

Women As Agents Of Change
Unless the transformation routes across the world involve women, they will merely remain "recipients" of change rather than becoming "agents" of change.

With the advent of water shops, the role of women living in these communities has undergone a positive transformation. A closer look into their lives depicts the real picture - most of these women belong to the lowest strata of the society with no formal education and heaps of social/ financial challenges. However, these plants have been able to successfully provide women with employment opportunities that eventually have converted into a long-term secure source of work, thus making them self-sustained and independent.

The plant has been a revolution in their lives as they have become the bread earners of their families, thus setting an example to others with their notable contribution to the society. Infact, some of these women have been trained to become water managers for better utilization of the water and trained in different techniques of water conservation.

Today, these women have taken to business like it always ran in their blood; they now own the filtration systems and generate revenue by charging the community for potable and safe drinking water. These community-driven water plants provide them a sense of dignity and achievement which they cherish and celebrate. They have been able to make a life for themselves and for the community in which they reside.

In this way, marginalized social women groups have not only become "budding entrepreneurs" but have been successful in eventually transforming India’s water woes.