Whose water ? Whose land ? Water rights, equity and justice in a periurban context

1. Whose water ? Whose land ?
Water rights, equity and justice in
a periurban context
Vishal Narain

2. Overview of paper
• Conceptualizing periurban
• Significance of studying periurban water
issues from a water justice perspective
• Research design and context: the growth
of Gurgaon city
• The case studies of Budheda and
Sadhraana
• Inferences and discussion from a water
justice, equity and rights perspective

3. Conceptualizing periurban
• No consensus definition
• As a place
– Villages around cities
– Most commonly used connotation of the term
• As a process
– Process of transition from rural to urban
• As a concept
– An analytic construct to study rural-urban
relationships and flows of goods and services

4. Features of periurban
• Mixed and changing land use
– Agricultural lands, mining, farmhouses of urban elite,
conservation and recreation centers
• Natural resources under stress: land acquisition
for urban expansion, receive urban wastes
• Social heterogeneity and flux
• Erosion of social capital
– Migration, acquisition of CPRs

5. Why do periurban areas need
attention?
• Urbanization a fact of life in the developing
world
• Periurban areas will grow in importance;
will shape the nature of urbanization
processes
• Receive scant attention because of
fragmentation between rural development
and urban planning

6. Emerging interests among periurban water
scholars in South Asia
• Sewerage water for agriculture
• Rural-urban water conflicts
• Chasm in water access between core and
peripheral areas
• Potential of multiple stakeholder platforms
• Industrial water pollution lowering agricultural
productivity
• Limited attention to issues of water justice or the
relationships between water rights, equity and
access

7. Research context: the growth of
Gurgaon city
• Projected as a millenium city
• Major outsourcing hub of northwest India
– most preferred outsourcing and high-tech destination in North
India
• Drawn a large number of MNCs and corporates
– Hero Honda, Maruti, Alcatel, IBM, General Electric, Nestle,
Pepsi, Coca-Cola
• Visual landscape
– tall skyscrapers co-existing with village settlement areas and
agricultural fields
• Frontiers of the city still expanding
– 56 residential sectors exist, another 56 on the anvil
– enormous implications for water and land resources

8. The growth of Gurgaon city
• Three major reasons behind its growth
– proximity to the national capital and
international airport
– initiatives of state government
• policies for SEZs (special economic zones)
– real estate boom since the 1980s

9. Periurban water issues in Gurgaon
• Falling water tables:
– 70% of Gurgaon’s water needs are met through groundwater
• Rural-urban water conflicts
– farmers breaching the Gurgaon channel that brings water to the
Basai Water Treatment Plant
• Rural-urban water flows
– water tankers a common sight
– groundwater used for irrigation now transported for nurseries to
cater to urban residents
• Urban-rural water flows
– sewerage irrigation common in periurban Gurgaon
• Pre-emption of water by farm-houses using expensive
technologies, depriving locals of access
• Drying of lakes and water bodies

10. The research questions
• How does urbanization affect water use
and access of periurban residents ?
• How do they adapt to the changes in
water availability as a result of the above
processes ?
• What are the implications for water
access, equity and justice ?

11. Research location and design
• Two villages
– Budheda and Sadhraana
– Periurban Gurgaon
• Qualitative research design /ethnographic
approach
– case study method
– semi-structured interviews with residents
– key informant interviews
– focus group meetings
– direct observation
– secondary sources of data

12. Sadhraana Village
• Population of 3500 people
– 425 households
• Ahir, Pandat, Rajput, Lohaar, Nai, Harijan,
Balmeek
• Major crops grown
– wheat, mustard, sorghum, pearl-millet, vegetables
and lentils
• No irrigation canal or sewage based irrigation
– only groundwater

13. Land use change over the last two
decades
• Gradual Process of land use change
– 80 acres acquired for the Sultanpur National
Park
– 600 acres sold off to farm-houses
– 150 acres acquired for Reliance SEZ
• Left with about 40% of the net cultivated
area recorded in the 1960s
• Land and water appropriated by the urban
elite

14. Major pressures on groundwater
• Tubewells dug for Sultanpur National Park
• Farm-houses major appropriator of groundwater
– extract water using high powered submersible pump-
sets not affordable by locals
– acquire the land over the ‘fresh’ groundwater
– transport water over 3-4 km to their farm-houses
using underground pipes when the farm-houses are
located over saline groundwater
• Results of a legal framework and water rights structure that is
inequitable

15. Impacts of growing pressures
– Fall in water table over last decade
• 60 ft to 100 ft
• 20 ft to 60 ft
– Farmers accessing saline groundwater
• unfit for agriculture and livestock
– Small and marginal farmers unable to afford
the high costs of extraction
• a submersible pump-set: Rs 100000 to Rs 125000

16. Adaptation to water scarcity
• Technological adaptation
– From lao chedas, rainth to tubewells and submersibles
• small and marginal farmers left out
– Use of sprinklers
• water scarcity
• Sandy soil and undulating terrain
• less labor-intensive irrigation technologies
• Leave land fallow
• Take only one crop per year
• Switch to rain fed crops
• Buy water based on social relations
– Social capital eroded in periurban areas

17. Budheda
• 725 households and 5500 people
• Rao saab, Jaat, Nai, Dhobi, Khaati, Jogi,
Harijan, Balmeek, Kumbhaar, Ahir and Pandat
• Crops grown
– wheat, mustard, sorghum, pearl-millet, vegetables
• Many sources of irrigation depending on location
of fields
– tubewells/submersibles/ urban sewage

18. Land use change: bearing the
ecological foot-print of urbanization
• Major source of land to supply water to the city:
– 129 acres of land for a WTP for Gurgaon city
• 30 acres in a second round of acquisition
• 12 acres of grazing land for the same plant
– Livestock dependent village with strong reliance on grazing
lands
– 17 acres for each of the two canals to carry water for
WTP at Basai
– Left with just about a fourth of its net cultivated area

19. The rural-urban water nexus
• The Gurgaon Water Supply Channel passes
through the village to carry water to Basai WTP
for Gurgaon city
– source of opportunity and conflict
– raised local water table
– pipe outlet installed for village pond
– tube wells installed to benefit from water table rise
• Had to be removed when the NCR channel was dug
• Highlights vulnerability of farmers to uncertain water supply

20. Use of urban wastewater
• The Gurgaon Jhajjar canal passes through the
village, carrying the city’s waste
– Untreated sewage
• Rich in nutrients, removes the need for costly application of
fertilizers and water pumping
– Farmers irrigate paddy and wheat
• Pay irrigation department for its use
– Results in conflicts on account of over irrigation
– Long-term adverse health effects
– Now the only source of irrigation with the removal of
tubewells
• Highlights vulnerability to an uncertain water supply

21. The gender implications
• Sadhraana
– Intersection of caste and gender
– A pandaton ka gaon, Vashisht women do not collect
water
– Falling water tables and eroding social capital hit
lower caste women
• Budheda
– As source of water, fuelwood and fodder become
more distant, reversal of gender-based division of
labour
– Often carried by men on their bikes newly acquired
from the sale of land

22. Wider implications for discourses
on water rights and equity
• Urbanization processes sustained by a process of land
acquisition from peripheral areas
– This will be a fact of life in South Asia in the coming years
• Rights to water are tied to rights in land
– With land gone, so is water
– Much media attention on land acquisition, but not so much on
changing water access
• Water insecurity is tied to insecurity of land tenure
• Implicit in planning processes
– certain assumptions about who these cities are meant for
– Politics of urban planning

23. Implications for governance
• Current processes of urbanization bear well
neither for equity nor for sustainability
– Cities growing beyond the carrying capacity will
compromise periurban residents’ access to water
• As urbanization advances, periurban areas (and
issues) will rise in significance
• Rural-urban conflicts over water will increase
– seeing “rural water supply” and “urban water supply”
as distinct conceptual and planning entities, ignoring
the relationships between the two

24. To conclude…
• Periurban water issues constitute a ripe area for
water justice research in South Asia
– Issues will increase in significance
• Need for research, advocacy and capacity-
building will grow
• Areas for research
– Politics of urban planning
– Understanding institutional relationships
– Dimensions of periurban water (in) security
– Identifying the most vulnerable groups