Water taps’ and the politics of access and control in a caste society empirical evidences from purulia district west bengal india

‘Water Taps’ and the Politics of Access and Control in a Caste Society: Empirical Evidences from Purulia District, West Bengal, India Soma Sarkar Abstract Struggle for water, in a caste

‘Water Taps’ and the Politics of Access and Control in a Caste Society: Empirical Evidences from Purulia District, West Bengal, India

Soma Sarkar Abstract

Struggle for water, in a caste-based society like India, is simultaneously a struggle for power wherein people (mostly women) negotiate the social cleavages clustering around the dynamics of water, gender and caste in their daily lives But water, in a caste society, is not just a physical entity Though in absolute space, water, has a boundary but at the relative and relational level, caste subjectivities and consciousness challenge these boundaries This paper is an exploration of the “spatiality of water” in a caste society and the many registers through which water becomes both the producer and carrier of caste – its principles of discrimination, ordering of bodies vis-à-vis nature, ability to navigate newer technological artifacts such as the water tap into its extant system In doing so, the paper problematises the ‘tap space’ in two ways: firstly, the spatial distribution of water taps itself vis-à-vis the social setting; and secondly, the ‘tap space’ becoming a space of discrimination which translates in to encountering water as a ground of contestations over dignity, justice, (caste) honour, democratic and civil rights, and

as an object that enables acts of caste humiliation The arguments are based on empirical evidences from Purulia District, West Bengal, which is one of the most backward districts in the country The research draws insights from a political ecology framework and in addition to using GIS techniques to map the distribution of taps, it adopts a story-telling methodology to present multiple accounts of people’s experiences of water and tap spaces and its entangled nexus with caste

Key Words: Water, Caste Society, Access, Control

Introduction

Water is essential for human existence But its availability and accessibility is not the same everywhere and for every section of society Scholars have already established that the complexities of social and environmental change can only be understood when we see it as something produced by intersecting and conflicting economic, social, and ecological processes operating at different scales (Robbins, Political Ecology: Critical Introductions to Geography 2004) An in-depth examination of the power relations within and between different social actors cutting across the categories of class, ethnicity or gender is, therefore, central in describing the unequal patterns of access and control over nature (water, land, forest) in our societies (Robbins 2012) But the concern that then arises is that, in a country like India, where caste is not just a simple gradation but a graded inequality and the structuring principle of access and exclusion, why it is so that a caste lens was never used to understand the unequal patterns of nature-society relationships in our country Therefore, this study aims to explore the spatial relationship between caste and water and the ways in which it informs the underlying politics of distribution, access and control of water in Purulia District in West Bengal By

contextualising caste within the politics of nature, I analyse and contrast the physical geography with the social morphology of the region to see the influences of caste in the usage of water in the caste society of Bengal

Caste1 is intrinsic to the social and cultural life of the Hindu society in India which controls and regulates people’s access to nature by stratifying the society into watertight compartments with series of rituals, customs and rules (Senart 1930) The available literature approaches the question of caste in many ways While some observe caste as an important social institution determining social order and patterns of social interaction; some others consider caste as a hierarchical set-up that perpetuates active discrimination and marginalisation of the lower castes by the higher castes But overall, the caste system is a form of social ordering of people into castes at the core of which is the doctrine of inequality This ordering fixes one's identity

at birth The Dumontian (1980) notion of caste is based on the concept of purity and pollution where hierarchy is central and proposed the uniformity of such structure overall Hindu populations The hierarchy, according to him was deep-rooted in religion According to Ambedkar (1990), Indian society is a Hindu society based on a caste system which is the governing principle of individuals in India The caste system embodies in itself an elaborate economic organizational structure ensuring that the three upper Varna (Caste) people have complete control over the physical labour of the Shudras Both Dumont’s and Ambedkar’s arguments on caste has helped me immensely in understanding the caste relations in my study areas

Beteille’s (1965), on the other hand, presented a Marxist approach to the study of caste where

he proclaimed the caste system to be a hierarchical system but at the same time asserted that the lower castes also had some political and economic power which complicated the nature of the hierarchy Within the same caste, there were landowners, tenants and agricultural labourers, the hierarchical positioning of whom made ascertaining the overall hierarchy difficult beyond certain terms.2 As Jodhka (2012), exposed the neglect towards a political economic understanding of the caste dimension in the country, he also pointed to the disregard for how caste had shaped economic and political life in the country and in turn been shaped by the regional histories of economic and political processes

1 The English term ‘Caste’ is derived from the Portuguese word ‘casta’, which signified the breed of the people

2 See, Beteille, A (1965) Caste, class, and power University of California Press p.4

The relationship between caste and nature is so intimate in India but still, its interconnectedness has still, rarely been taken up for any academic scholarship Any study on nature-society relationships in India will, therefore, be highly flawed if the interlinkages of caste, which forms the governing principle of Indian Hindu society, is not explored This research is an attempt to re-negotiate this issue In a caste society, water in absolute space has a boundary, but at the relative and relational level, the introduction of caste subjectivity and consciousness challenge these boundaries.3 Therefore, in this research, I explore the connections between these spaces While I explore the physical layover of my study area in terms of the sources of water, water distribution systems, issues of water stress and the technicalities of the problems of the water sources, I also map the morphology of the settlements and other divisions of the physical space

to understand the connections between the physical and social geographies of the region which shapes peoples experiences of water

Bearings from Political Ecology

My interest in understanding the politics of water in caste societies emerged from my prior readings of the debates within political ecology related to nature and domination where the scholars had invariably polarized themselves as Marxists and Liberals in their understanding

of nature The root of the disaccord was their point of departure for research As for example, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) have blamed the process of capital accumulation by elite class interests in a critique of neo-Malthusian explanations of rural soil erosions by combining ecological concerns with political economy They explain environmental problems as the phenomenological interaction of biophysical processes, human needs and wider political systems

Rooted in this tradition, later scholars like Bryant and Bailey (1997) also focused on examining the different actors involved in land use (state, business, multilateral institutions, NGOs, grassroots actors) and their motivations, agency and the limitations to their actions Their approach to nature and politics is an inquiry into “the political forces, conditions and ramifications of environmental change,” which may include studies of environmental impacts from different sources; location-specific aspects of ecological change; and the effects of

3 David Harvey proposed a three-tier way of understanding spaces as: absolute (space unto itself), relative (objects existing because they exist with relationship to other objects), and relational (existing only insofar it contains and represents relationships to other objects) While the absolute space is fixed, the relative space involves firstly, the measurement (both the scale and the means) and then the consideration that all forms of measurement depend upon the framework of the observer See, Harvey, D (2006) Spaces of global capitalism Verso p.120

environmental change on socio-economic and political relationships These approaches were called ‘neo-Marxist’ for their emphasis on social stratification, class and social movements as

a unit of analysis for analyzing resource conflicts (Peet 1996) While the Marxists talk about conquering nature, they are critiqued by scholars who anchor their “politics of ecology” in deep ecology’s critique of modernity (Naess 1990) and capitalism and believe that humans should not dominate nature at any cost In a firm critic of anthropocentrism, Leopold (1949) delivered the concept of ‘The Land Ethic’, where he viewed people as a part of the land community who bears moral responsibilities that extend beyond the realm of the human to include the non-human parts of that community In a similar perspective, Thoreau (1854) emphasized on the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the desperate existence of men Bookchin’s (1982) social theory, on the other hand, developed through a critical engagement with liberalism and Marxism but went beyond Marx’s concept of class in theorizing “social hierarchy” According to him, this hierarchy of domination of man by man

reflects in the human-nature relationship where there is domination of nature by man (ibid)

Therefore, harmony in society is essential to attain harmony in nature

But the question that arose in my mind was whether politics was to be understood only by liberal and Marxist frames (i.e politics which is and can be conceived only in the context of man's domination and use of nature - nature as a resource)? If so, then how would I study the nature-society relationships that exist beyond capitalism like - caste? At this conjecture, when

I take a look at India’s unique social structure which is characterized by the caste system, I wonder how a caste-based approach towards understanding nature in modern times would be But since caste relations are not uniform across the country and Dalit cannot be contained as a geographically undeviating conception due to its distinctive social and cultural undertones, it

is only fair to discuss the complexities of caste in the state of West Bengal before embarking upon this journey

The Curious Case of Caste in Bengal

The existence of caste is a very debatable topic in West Bengal But the question of whether there is caste in Bengal in present times probably arises because unlike colonial Bengal and many other states of India, there has not been a caste embodied political assertion in Bengal There have not been any political movements with caste demands What is strange here is that talking about caste in Bengal is a virtual taboo Bringing up a caste question is considered exceptionally rude in a polite urbane conversation Personally, I have experienced moments of

severe embarrassment while interviewing people about caste issues not only with the upper caste people but with the lower caste too People react in a way as if a forbidden question has been asked But not talking about caste does not mean that caste practices have vanished from Bengal One must also not forget the chaos created by the introduction of mid-day meal scheme

in the schools whereby students, irrespective of caste, were expected to dine together the food cooked by cooks irrespective of caste A casual browse through the internet will flood you with newspaper articles condemning this scheme that year But why is it so?

This complexity around the question of caste in Bengal is also reflected in the existing literature which shows a clear polarization between scholars who, either try to establish the absolute absence of caste in Bengal; or else, explore caste in the context of colonialism and the partition

of Bengal, although simultaneously, acknowledging the dilution of the category in contemporary times As Bhattacharyya (2009) argues, that due to the governmental intervention in the form of land reforms and democratic decentralization in the last three decades (1980-2010) the political economy of rural Bengal has become different from the rest

of the country It is believed that under the influence of the political parties, West Bengal has almost transcended the social institutions of caste, religion and ethnicity, which are still relevant in the other parts of the country This Bengali exceptionalism argument is refuted by Bandyopadhayay (2014) who has established that the essence of the caste system is sustained

in Bengal although the forms might have been adjusted Therefore, any study in West Bengal,

be it on caste or class, is always a challenge compared to other states because of its unique history In Bengal, the phenomena of caste is mediated through three historical processes: the

Bengal Renaissance (bhadralok-chotolok), the partition of Bengal and the Left.4

However, the western districts of West Bengal, which are often referred as ‘Rarh Bangla’5 were outside the ambit of the partition story The major movement that altered the demography of this region was the ‘bhasha andolan’ which was spearheaded by the bhadraloks During the partition of Bengal, the Manbhum district of Bengal, which had a majority of Bengali speaking population, was included in Bihar Then after the independence in 1947, the Bengali people in Manbhum started feeling restricted due to the imposition of Hindi language And therefore, the people started demanding for the inclusion of the district into West Bengal This movement

4 See, Bandyopadhyay, Sarbani "Caste and Politics in Bengal." Economic and Political Weekly (2012): 71-73

5 Rarh region refers to the area that lies between the Chota Nagpur Plateau on the West and the Ganges Delta on the East

was led by the Manbhum Lok Sevak Sangh and the agitation was started in multiple levels – Satyagraha Andolan, Hal Joal Andolan and the Tusu Satyagraha Andolan (De 2007) The

slogan of the movement was “Shun Bihari-bhai, Tora Rakhte Larbi Dang Dekhai” (Listen

Bihari brothers, you cannot forcibly keep us by showing sticks) The movement was successful and in 1956, Manbhum district was divided into Purulia and Dhanbad districts among which Purulia was ceded to West Bengal

Although the movement was successful in its objective, it is often questioned now that whose objective was it The movement was led by the upper caste bhadraloks which included well-known people like Nibaran Chandra Dasgupta, Atul Chandra Ghosh and the members of the Bar Association including my own great-grandfather Suresh Chandra Sarkar.6 While the bhadraloks took the decisions, the lower caste population and the tribes were the ones who went to jail and faced the physical wrath of the British.7 Though they did not relate to the bhadralok Bengali culture, they were used by the upper caste people of Manbhum to fulfil their

agendas (ibid) With this background of different mediations of caste through different phases

of the history of West Bengal and my study area Purulia District, my research takes up one municipal ward of the Purulia town to see the spatial manifestation of the politics around water taps This ward of the Purulia municipality is the biggest of the twenty-three wards both in terms of population and area and is located close to the centre of the town The total population

is 6065.8 According to Census 2011, out of 23754 households under Purulia subdivision of Purulia district, people of 8359 households go out for open defecation The ward was purposively chosen primarily because of three reasons: its political positioning in the municipality, the extremity water crisis in the region and its strategic geographical location which renders the water question more problematique

Structure of the Settlements

The spatial structure of settlements has for long intrigued geographers who have studied settlement patterns to explore the natural and social factors behind it In most cases in India and in my study area too, caste acts as the governing principle of the settlements There is different layering of the settlements based on caste Findings from Beteille’s (1965) study of Sripuram village of Tanjore district in Tamil Nadu revealed that the morphology of the

6 See, De, Gautam (2007) 1956 Manbhum Theke Purulia Punascha Publication p 45-46

7 This region has a significant tribal population

8 The ward specific population data was provided by both the Municipality and the District Statistical Office, Purulia

settlements reflected the social distance among the people where people close to one another

in the social system lived together in compact settlements The agraharam, as he mentioned, represented the social space of the Brahmins A similar argument can be traced in Singh’s (1971) elaborate study of the geography of India, where he has argued that the castes which are at the opposite ends of the hierarchy never live close to one another The lower castes like the Harijans (scavengers) and Bhambis or Chamars (leather workers), always occupy the outer fringe of the settlement whereas the Brahmins occupied the core of the settlement They will

be followed by the castes in between like Rajput’s, Darji, Lohar and etc This residential location expresses the social distance between the lower and upper castes Similar observations have come up from my study area where multiple layering of caste over the morphology of the space has resulted in a highly skewed distribution of resources like water taps in the area Two such layers are:

People prefer to live within their own community These localities are locally known as

‘paras’ In contradiction to what the elite urban population would believe that the town life is

above caste functionalities, I argue that the caste segregation is more prominent in the towns

The entire town of Purulia is divided into numerous paras or localities which are named after

caste Hence, there are Muchi para, Bauri para, Bodyi para and so on In the ward number one itself, there are separate Bauri para and Shohish para These are marked as area 3 and area 4 in pink and yellow respectively in the map And the localities of these lower caste people are often

referred to a bastis

In addition to the clustering of settlements based on caste, there is another spatial segregation

as uch dik and nich dik of the settlements Here, ‘uch’ means high and ‘nich’ means low and

‘dik’ means direction This classification is often misinterpreted as an altitudinal division based

on higher and lower ground But that is not the case The ‘uch’ and ‘nich’ refers to the upper and the lower castes respectively The localities inhabited by the upper caste people are referred

to as uch dik and that of the lower castes as nich dik This one phenomenon was in all my three study areas Throughout my conversations with people of these areas, I received several references to these terms in different contexts For some, it was as casual as referring to

someone as “that woman from the nich dik… ” For some other, it was used to express their grievance like “because we stay in the nich dik, there are no facilities… ” Yet for some other, the expression was like “the babu ghar of the uch dik do not give us water…” There are

multiple versions but all are indicating to caste embodied division of the space

Understanding Water stress: Natural or Created?

Although water crisis is not something which is new to Purulia town, yet, variations of that crisis across the town is questionable for sure Compared to the rest of the town and the neighbouring wards, ward number one has very less municipality supply water points A majority of the people fetches water from the neighbouring wards The authorities would like

to say that water connection cannot be given in that area because of the rugged topography But a talk with the geologist at the geological survey of India office at Purulia confirms the contrary There is no such topographical difference in altitude in the area that water cannot be sent The question that arises then is that whether this crisis of water is solely a physical geography question? Or, there is another aspect to it Had it been solely a natural factor, the crisis would have reflected in the entire town Clearly, that is not the case

Now, there are two layers in this case Firstly, there are comparatively much fewer water connections in Ward One in comparison to other wards And secondly, whatever connections are there in the ward are not evenly distributed The map showing the distribution of water

resources as per locality in Ward One clearly shows the skewed distribution of the taps The two demarcated regions where there are less municipality water points and tube wells also happen to be the places where the scheduled caste population resides The area 3 comprises of the Bauri settlements and the area 4 comprises of the Shohish settlements

An attempt to unravel the underlying processes leading to such skewed distribution, three aspects were discovered Firstly, there is a political tension both within Ward One and between Ward One and the municipality which might be having an impact on the water distribution as the patterns tell us This is in the case of Purulia town only Secondly, I found that one section

of the society who claimed to be ‘bhadraloks’ had made it incumbent upon them to access the needs of the ‘other’ And thirdly, since the localities embodied caste identities, there was a marginalization through naming Let us embark upon a detailed discussion of these three aspects

The Political Blame Game

Since the inception of this Municipality, there has been a poor condition of water supply in Ward One No new water pipelines have been laid since then If at all, some water connections were given, those were extended from the main line Nobody has ever shown a keen interest in solving the water issues of the ward The authorities always blamed the topography for this discrepancy which is clearly not true The problem is that water is not distributed properly and evenly in the town In some places, you will see that there are many taps but in the Ward One, there are very fewer taps As for example, the place near Rathtala9 has a lot of taps located without much spacing between them In some places, there are taps in every ten-meter distance and so much of water is being wasted there because most of these taps do not have an open-close regulator Therefore, during the time of supply time, water simply flows out whether or not somebody is using it On the other hand, the people of Ward One are forced to fetch water from outside A major reason behind these inequalities is rooted in the political weather of the region

The Ward One has a legacy of being a CPIM majority ward from the beginning CPIM always won the elections in that ward Even now, although the state and the town municipality, is under Trinamool Congress rule, Ward One still remains a stronghold of the CPIM But since the last two terms, the opposition has also grown strong The present councillor of the ward is

9 Rathtala is a locality which is little away from Ward One Some of the people from Ward One goes there to fetch water during the summer months

a woman who is a representative of the Left There is a polarization between the people of the ward regarding the political parties One argument coming from the supporters of the Left is that this Ward One is intentionally neglected because that is the only ward represented by the Left while all others are won by Trinamool Congress Since the chairman is from TMC, the proposals sent by the people of Ward One is not acted upon Another argument, coming from Trinamool’s side, is that the councillor is willingly not doing anything and simply playing with the emotions of the people She is supposedly not approaching the municipality chairman regarding the water problems of the ward But according to the Councilor, she is been marginalized for being the sole representative of the Left which is why the neighbouring ward

is are given ample water but this water is neglected Owing to the scarcity of water in the ward, the present councillor, Moumita Choudhury10, points out,

“The whole of ward no 1 is dry They came here for soil testing from Kharagpur to see that if by doing deep boring water is available Three times this soil has been tested but no result The only remedy here is to supply water from outside through pipelines like your whole town is supplied from Kasai But those pipelines for the municipality time taps where water comes twice a day are not sufficiently provided here There is a very big area under me with five thousand voters but for all of them only 35 points of water or less even Where there are thousand people for them only five taps are provided That also all the taps are in concentrated in one area but the other areas don’t have any No new water pipelines are made till now I am fed up of writing letters but get no response I don’t know why they are not responding, maybe because I am an opposite party member I am experiencing this for consecutive two elective years Last time also nothing was done and this time also they are not doing anything, they do this on purpose.”

Moumita, who is also the headmistress in the Girish Chandra Higher Secondary School, informs that she had been successful in constructing concrete roads in the locality and has helped the needy people avail certain government schemes liking constructing houses, providing tripols in need, some old age and unemployment schemes and so on But when it came to the question of water, she failed She believes that it is out of her hand because the fund allocation for water happens only through the chairman and vice-chairman of the municipality It is they who distribute the money to all councillors For all other things, she could manage funds from outside but for water, she had to depend on the chairman She blames the chairman of Purulia municipality for the lack of progress in her ward for the past ten years

10 Pseudonym used Interviewed thrice in Ward One, Purulia town, on May 16, August 13, and December 24,

2017

The scenario of underground water is not promising in the area as the soil testing which was done by people from Kharagpur revealed the lack of water in the area Therefore, the municipality supply of water is the only solution

A few years ago, during the visit of the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, some new taps were made But they were made through an extension of the main line and no new line connections were given Also, the taps were given in the areas which already had taps Most of the taps were given on the western side of the ward The Left has a strong support group from some of the Upper castes and a section of the Bauri population of that area They claim that it is Trinamool’s conspiracy that they are not given water As, Prosenjit Mahadani11, aged 75+, who is a staunch supporter of the Left and a retired Group ’D’ employee who has been a resident of Ward One for a long time, comments,

“Our councillor who is from CPM has become a minority there So, our concerns are not heard In the areas where the councillors are asserting their rights, they are getting water During CPM’s time, we used to get water But back then, there were also fewer people and fewer bore wells We used to have water in our wells Also, 1-2 tube wells were there

a little away which later stopped functioning Slowly, the pressure increased as more people settled in and exhausted the underground water We have complained to the councillor several times about the water problem but what could she do if they don’t listen

to her She alone can’t do anything.”

What is interesting in his argument is that he fails to realise that during CPM time also, there were only 2-3 municipality water tap connections The water sufficiency that he talks about was underground water As many people have said that earlier that place had very fewer houses and the settlement grew as people started settling in more and more after the year 2000 So this

is basically an argument of the underground water which has nothing to do with the involvement of the political parties because municipality water supply in that region was never there The section of the population among the lower castes who favour the Left front also argued that their Councillor has been trying her best to help them with all the facilities like helping them in medical need or providing them with the government schemes and so on But when it comes to the water question, they also argue that it is because of the opposition of particular groups that she is failing to ease their problem of water They appear to parrot

11 Pseudonym used Interviewed thrice in Ward One, Purulia town, on July 17, August 12, and December 23

2017