ALEXIS FOUNDATION

RESEARCH INTERNSHIP: ANUSANDHAN

EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF POOR

ACCESS TO WATER IN INDIA
USING KUSUMPUR PAHARI AS
A CASE STUDY
Anushka Siddiqui
Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi

Anubhav Mangal
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

- Research Paper: Anushka Siddiqui

- Photos: Anubhav Mangal
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2. INTRODUCTION: WATER AVAILABILITY IN INDIA

3. KUSUMPUR PAHARI

4. POLICIES REGARDING WATER SUPPLY IN SLUMS

5. REFERENCES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Despite India claiming to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) of halving the proportion of

population without access to safe drinking water, a lot still needs to be done. The 2011 census figures

report that only 47 percent of households have source of water within the premises while 36 percent of

households have to fetch water from a source located within 500 m in rural areas and 100 m in urban

areas 1. However what cannot be gauged from these statistics is the harsh reality of life for the people who

suffer from these problems. Poor access to water has innumerable obvious implications which in

themselves are hard, for example lack of drinking water and problems in bathing, washing, cleaning etc.

However besides these, there are various social and economic implications too as will be examined in this

paper. Spending innumerable hours in the pursuit of water has a high opportunity cost in terms of forgone

time and wages. Also, this problem shapes the social fabric of a community, shaping relationships and

lifestyles. It is not uncommon for fights to break out over the most precious yet the most basic commodity

on earth- water. Furthermore the lack of accessible water facilities and struggle for every drop increases

the domestic burden and leaves no time for anything else. Following Amartya Sen’s definition of

development being ‘expansion of real freedoms that the citizens enjoy to pursue the objectives they have

reason to value, and in this sense the expansion of human capability can be broadly seen as the central
2
feature of the process of development,’ it is clear that India is rather far from its dream of being a

developed nation. The water problem has an implication not just for those who suffer from it but also

shapes the future of the nation as a whole. As India stands on the precipice of a great demographic

dividend, it is imperative to educate and impart skills to the children so as not to make the demographic

boon a bane. However, as is observed in Kusumpur, external interventions to educate children are

ineffective when the children, primarily girls are burdened with increased domestic responsibility and the

task of queuing up for hours to fill up a container with water. Another necessity to realize the

demographic dividend is good health. However lack of water affects personal and community cleanliness

leading to a breeding ground for diseases. Consumption of bad water also leads to various ailments. In

this paper I will use Kusumpur Pahari, an urban slum in the Vasant Vihar area of Delhi to elaborate on the

aforementioned effects of water unavailability.

INTRODUCTION

Defining the Issue: Water availability in India

India is urbanising very fast and along with this, the slum population is also increasing. India's urban

population is increasing at a faster rate than its total population. With over 575 million people, India will

have 41% of its population living in cities and towns by 2030 from the present level of 286 million and

28%.3 however, most of them do not have access to basic facilities like drinking water and sanitation.

Census 2011 data shows that 20% of Indian households have to travel more than half a kilometer for

drinking water, and that this figure has actually grown in rural India. Taps (43%) and handpumps (34%)

are the two main sources of drinking water, followed by wells and borewells. While taps are the most

common source for urban India (71%), handpumps are most common for rural India (44%). In ten years,

however, there has not been an increase of even 2 percentage points in the proportion of urban residents

with access to a tap. Over 20% of Indians get their water from unsafe sources including untreated sources

for tap-users and uncovered wells. 4

Also, while 87 per cent of the households now use tap, tube-well, hand-pumps and covered wells as the

main source for drinking water, only 47 per cent have the source of water within the premises. A good 36

per cent households still have to fetch water from a source located within 500 metres in rural areas and

100 metres in urban areas.

Experts say Government spending on water and sanitation is grossly inadequate. According to the Centre

for Budget and Governance Accountability, Government spending under these heads has been on the

decline, from 0.59 per cent of GDP in 2008-09 to 0.54 per cent in 2009-10 and further down to 0.42 per

cent in 2010-11. 5

But the most serious malfunction in India’s water-supply system is its hazardous quality and gigantic cost

to human health and our exchequer. India ranks 120th out 122 countries in potable water-quality. In 2005,

a Central Pollution Control Board countrywide survey found 66 per cent of samples had unacceptable
organic values, while 44 per cent had coliform, occurring generally from faeces. Chemical contamination

through over-exploitation of groundwater, resulting in excessive iron, nitrates, arsenic and fluoride is

equally widespread. Even more disturbing is that 80 per cent of the government’s supply is dependent on

this groundwater. Arsenic contamination is now grim reality in, ironically, almost the entire Gangetic belt

notwithstanding its ample rivers while fluoride contaminated drinking-water similarly affects 20 States. 6

KUSUMPUR PAHARI

The urban settlement of Kusumpur Pahari comes under the category of a Slum Colony or JJ Colony and

has had evolved over the years mainly through a process of migration and networking of poor families

from the relatively more backward regions of some states in India. 7 The residents work as auto drivers,

manual labourers, domestic help, mistrys etc.

As you enter the narrow winding lanes of Kusumpur, the most ubiquitous and thus striking feature are the

blue cans scattered in every nook and corner. They are guarded by anxious women who have been

waiting for the Jal Board tanker. A women I met told me that she said been waiting for the tanker for

hours, it had no fixed time and her daughter had already made several calls to the local Jal Board office to

speed up the process.

There is a carefully laid out system for access to water in this locality. Kumsumpur is divided into several

blocks, each of which is visited by the Jal Board tanker separately, with the frequency varying from twice

a week to once in fifteen days. The residents, mostly the womenfolk and children, line up with blue cans

to fill up water. They have to carefully ration this water, which is used only for drinking purposes, till the

next visit of the tanker.

For other purposes such as bathing, washing, cleaning etc, they use water from the bore wells installed by

the government. However, alluding to the inequality referred to above, one woman related how those who

had managed to fill up excess water used the clean water even for non drinking uses while the rest

struggled to save every drop. Concerning the bore wells, even they had designated slots when specific

people could fill their share of water. Also, they often went out of service, inconveniencing the afflicted

residents further.
Social

During my visit at the onset of March, the residents were dreading the coming summer when water usage

understandably increased. It is not uncommon to see fights break out over water in such extreme weather

conditions. Thus one can see how, besides issues in the primary uses of water, other aspects of life are

also affected direly. Spending hours waiting in line for water and then rationing every drop also increases

the domestic burden faced by the female residents. On the other hand, in a testimony to the human spirit,

residents narrated that they often borrowed water from neighbours in event that they ran out of it. They

then repaid the neighbours when they next got their instalment of water.

Economic

Besides social, there are also economic implications of the water problem. The many hours that women in

Kusumpur spend, queuing up for and filling water, could be used for more productive pursuits. Some
women have to forgo their daily wage on days the tanker comes while some others cannot work at all, in

part due to the increased domestic burden.

Also, the relatively well off residents resort to buying water at the rate of Rs 5-6 per can in desperate

situations. Others still have to travel long distances to get water. The actual expenditure on water coupled

with the more prominent opportunity cost of the time spent in getting water totals a great economic waste.

Education

Kusumpur has a plethora of NGOs such as Ritanjali, Literacy India, AAMF who have taken initiatives to

educate the children. Certainly the literacy scenario has improved drastically over the years in the

presence of so many educational opportunities, both governmental and private.

As the teacher in Ritanjali narrated, education in general and of the girl child in particular, was tolerated

but in most cases no efforts were made by parents to encourage it. Girls often had to withdraw in the face

of household duties and even those who were studying could not devote adequate time and attention to

school. However, there was improvement. Though only 3 girls were pursuing class 12th, there was an

instance of a girl having made it to Delhi University. However, as mentioned above, these efforts are not

as effective now as they would be in the presence of basic water facilities. Often the students, primarily

females, have to miss entire days in order to stand in queue to fill up their share of water. Not just

students, teachers themselves have to miss classes when it is the turn of their block to receive a visit from

the Jal Board tanker.

The issues related to schooling of the children to a large extent are linked to the social and economic

context of the communities to which the school caters to. The schools in this area were originally

established to cater the need of families of the two residential colonies in which they are located. Over

time, parents living in the colonies began to send their children to the private (‘public’, in local parlance)

schools; at present the MCD school caters primarily to children from the poorer settlements, located at the

fringes of these colonies. The issue of water supply has adversely affected children’s attendance. In

Kusumpur Pahari children were often absent based on the tanker timings. Water logging and sewerage

systems in the area are serious concerns in these two areas. 8

It is important to appreciate how difficult education is for the females in this area when the burden of

housework is so increased due to the daily struggle for water. On a side note, sanitation is another major

issue for women in this area. In the absence of toilets, women often have to get up early in the dark and

go to relieve themselves in the outskirts, in order to protect their modesty with the presence of so many

strangers attracted to the malls nearby. Safety is another issue and they have to move in groups. The

wider implications of these problems are that females often find it difficult to continue their education

which closes the avenues open to them. This is one small part of the reason that it is not an uncommon

practice in Kusumpur to marry off girls at a relatively young age. As mentioned by the teacher in

Ritanjali, there have been instances of girls leaving studies midway due to early marriage.

Health

Our next stop was the health center run by ASHA- Accredited Social Health Worker. The incharge there

informed us that there are often check up camps held in Kusumpur by various hospitals. The government

and NGOs are both very active with regard to awareness and vaccination drives but people are still

hesitant. However the water scarcity obviously results in bad hygiene and dirty surroundings. Though

people build up some level of immunity over time and it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of

diseases, the local doctor admitted that there were various cases of upset stomach, diarrhoea, and even

typhoid which are caused in part due to bad water. Furthermore, consumption of inadequate amounts of

water is in itself terrible for one’s health.

Considering the national scenario, around 37.7 million people are affected by waterborne diseases

annually (viral hepatitis, cholera, jaundice, typhoid are examples) while 1.5 million children die from

diarrhoea alone every year. Ten million people are vulnerable to cancers from excessive arsenic and

another 66 million are facing risk of fluorosis, now endemic in 17 States. The health impacts of drinking-

water with other environmental pollutants such as industrial wastes have not even been properly studied

yet. 9

Conclusion

Two conclusions emerged distinctly from my trip to Kusumpur. First, unless the basic social

infrastructure pertaining to water and sanitation is in place, external efforts in the fields of health and

education will remain to a large extent, ineffective. And second, inequality exists in varying degrees

throughout the world. On one level we have the most luxurious mall in all of Delhi where people spend

lakhs of rupees on a handbag; and ten minutes from that mall we have a slum where people struggle daily

to get something as basic as water to drink. But even within the slum, there are hierarchies. The relatively

well off such as the doctor of the local clinic can afford to pay others to fill water for him, while many of

the disadvantaged women have to forgo their daily wage to stand in line since 4 am in the morning to fill

up their share of water. While some residents admitted, in extreme situations, to buying water from the

nearby Shauchalaya, some of the less fortunate have to cycle over to the R.K.Puram Jal Board in their

quest for water.

POLICIES REGARDING WATER SUPPLY IN SLUMS 10

GoI has been initiating targeted schemes and programmes to improve slum conditions since 1960s. But its

policy focus has undergone a change over a period of time. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Indian

government had a policy of 'no slums cities'. This warranted forceful resettlement and rehabilitation of

slum dwellers. However, this didn’t help in making cities slums-free. Then the Government started

implementing slum upgrade programmes under which infrastructure development was encouraged.

Since 1972 the Government of India initiated a programme called Environmental Improvement of Urban

Slums under which priority to drinking water and sanitation was given. Again in 1996 government

initiated the National Slum Development Programme with substantial fund allocation. It had a specified

focus on providing drinking water and community toilets. After spending close to Rs3,100 crore in nine

years, it was discontinued. It was estimated that 46 million slum dwellers benefited from it.

In 2005 government started the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), an initiative

to encourage reforms and fast-track planned development of certain cities. It has a financial commitment
of Rs1,50,000 crore during 2006-12. The larger objective of the mission is to integrated development of

infrastructure services; accelerating the flow of investment into urban infrastructure services; planned

development of cities including the peri-urban areas and universalization of urban services to ensure their

availability to the urban poor.

REFERENCES

1. “ -according to data released by Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh on 13 March 2012 “ -The Deccan Herald

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/234148/only-435-percent-indians-use.html

2. Dreze Jean and A.Sen 2002.India: Development and Participation. Delhi: Oxford University Press

3. http://www.wateraid.org/india/what_we_do/7518.asp

4. The Times of India 2012-03-14

5. The Hindu Business Line 2012-03-14

6. http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/19/stories/2008061955611100.htm

7. http://www.srtt.org/institutional_grants/pdf/Location_Deprivation.pdf

8. http://www.srtt.org/institutional_grants/pdf/Location_Deprivation.pdf

9. http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/19/stories/2008061955611100.htm

10. http://www.wateraid.org/india/what_we_do/7518.asp