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-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 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 The English term ‘Caste’ is derived from the Portuguese word ‘casta’, which signified the breed of the people 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 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 nonhuman 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’ 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 See, Bandyopadhyay, Sarbani "Caste and Politics in Bengal." Economic and Political Weekly (2012): 71-73 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 wellknown 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 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 See, De, Gautam (2007) 1956 Manbhum Theke Purulia Punascha Publication p 45-46 This region has a significant tribal population 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: i Caste Clustered Settlements 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 and area in pink and yellow respectively in the map And the localities of these lower caste people are often referred to a bastis ii ‘Uch Dik’ – ‘Nich Dik’ Space 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 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 comprises of the Bauri settlements and the area 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 Rathtala 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 not have an openclose 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 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 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 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 10 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 if they don’t listen to her She alone can’t 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 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 11 whatever is being told to them by the Councillor and don't apply their own brains to see what is going on underneath what is visible to them The masses adhering to Trinamool ideologies were very critical of the Left According to them, the main politics of CPM is to always maintain the needs of the people Unless they don’t create a need among people, their movement does not stand As some debated that sustaining the needs of Purulia as a whole was also the game of the Left and they wanted to shift the university to Bankura.12 By giving the bare minimum benefits to some people, they make them lead the movements at grass root level They actually don’t contribute to any development According to the Trinamool supporters of the area, the present councillor of the ward also employs these strategies The councillor exercises control over a large section of the lower caste population by creating a sense of fear As Purnima Mahato, who is also a teacher by profession and who contested in the election opposite the present councillor, remarks that, “There are around 5000 voters in this area Out of that, maximum women are in self -help groups They also have bank accounts for SHG’s The councillor has kept the account books of the people with herself So that she can manipulate them anytime She threatens to block their accounts if they didn’t abide by them Playing with fear is her biggest weapon It is like playing with the vulnerabilities of people.” The people of the opposition contend that some political awareness has been successfully created by them in the present years whereby people are, now, empowered enough to protest This freedom of resistance was not there earlier and people had to blindly follow what the councillor decided To discuss and organize themselves people had to meet secretly in the dark or else they were being threatened As Purnima Mahato further comments, “The councillor would say she had seemed that person meeting some other person of a different party which is why she wouldn’t give them any tripols But who is she to give or not give? It is their right and the councillor’s responsibility But the people don’t understand that.” The people not understand that what is been given to them is not an act of charity on the part of the councillor but their rights It was also found out that while the women of the basti 12 Sidhu Kanhu Birsa University, the first university in Purulia District was established in 2010 There were speculations about the university being shifted to Bankura It is a state university 12 struggle so much for water since they have to traverse such long distances to fetch water and simultaneously manage household work and their work as domestic help, the councillor gets a tanker full of water from municipality every day for her own use She doesn’t share it with anyone So, she meets her own needs and does nothing for the people While having an informal chat with some old residents of the area, I was informed that a scheduled caste man of Hanri caste who was active in Trinamool, stood up against this but he was indirectly threatened by the councillor that she would plunder that man’s dairy business That poor man had only two cows at home which she referred to as a dairy business The people of the opposition also contend that in the last ten years, the councillor had done nothing with regard to water She could have mobilized the women into a protest but she didn’t The Trinamool people, on the other hand, took the women of the Yuva club area of Ward One, for a protest for water and got some new connections made in their locality When the pipeline was being laid for their taps, the councillor demanded this connection be given elsewhere But the people who protested were adamant and got the connections done in their own locality When the opposition people were asked whether they agreed to the statement that the municipality is intentionally not giving water to them because their councillor has become a minority there as a representative of the Left, they didn’t buy that logic at all As Bimal Ojha13 remarked, “That’s a lie! Now TMC is in power but all this while it was CPM, why didn’t development take place then?” The question that arises then is that what it was like when the Left was in power in Purulia under the Left front rule in Bengal Ideally, the conflict of interest that is happening now between the Municipality and Ward One should not have happened back then Was the water problem of the people solved during that time? If not, what could have been the reason of neglecting people of their own party? This question made the people of the lower caste who were supporting the Left think for a while and they thoughtfully responded that their agonies were never heard, no matter who was in power because the people in power always considered that they were lower than them The upper caste bhadralok people, on the other hand, responded by saying that back then, it was the people of the Basti who were elected as counsellors under the banner of the Left Since 13 Bimal Ojha is a Brahmin by caste an active member of Trinamool congress in the ward He has been staying in rented places in the town before settling down in Ward One He is a businessman 13 they were uneducated and uncultured, they did not realise the needs of the people and could not place their demands They argued that those people were leaders just for the namesake because they did whatever their senior leaders asked them to Since the people of the Basti were mainly engaged in manual labour work in the municipality they were not in a position to place a demand or agitate in front of the municipality They always had the fear of losing their job This is why even though they were elected as ward leaders, they could not place their demands and get things done However, as long as the statement is restricted to this, it appears logical that there was a question of job security But it is problematic when the upper caste people say that because the people of the basti are of lower castes, they are not aware of such needs because the requirement of water is less than that of the upper caste Although they directly not refer to the caste, they address them as the Chotoloks This shows their typical Bhadralok complex where being upper castes, they enjoy all the privileges of the society (best education, job and so on), yet identify themselves based on their education and culture but not caste By virtue of this, upper caste bhadralok people like Prosenjit Mahadani14 comments that, “The water issue was not taken up during CPM’s time because at that time the issue was not placed in front of them The people who were elected were among the basti people and they did not realize the need for water.” It is problematic when they say that the basti inhabitants (the lower caste people) didn’t have a vision of development and that they had no requirement of basic services like water, electricity, sanitation, roads and etc because they were illiterate and uncultured and were content with what they had By this, they are trying to assess and establish what they thought were the needs of the lower caste people Since it is the bhadraloks who held the administrative decisionmaking posts, their opinions mattered Politics of Water Distribution In the case of Purulia town, there has been a politics involved in supplying water to Ward One If we look deeper into it, we will find that even within the ward, the distribution is uneven As the map depicts that the water points are clustered around some locations instead of spreading out From the map itself, two areas can be clearly identified which not have water connections These two identified areas are in fact the settlements of the scheduled caste 14 Pseudonym used Interviewed thrice in Ward One, Purulia town, on July 17, August 12, and December 23 2017 14 population and are often referred to as ‘bastis’ by the bhadraloks It was observed that water connections are extremely poor in the localities of the lower caste settlements which is why they are forced to traverse long distances over water It so happens that the decision making and the final say regarding water connections are made by people who are upper caste bhadraloks Therefore, their perceptions regarding the needs of the lower caste “Chotoloks” matters in the decision-making process While I was conducting my interviews in the town, I could sense the unpleasantness in the faces of the upper caste bhadraloks and bhadramahilas who were trying to make me understand that my point of inquiry was wrong While I was discussing the plight of the people of the bastis, due to lack of taps, they tried to assure me that it is not much of a problem for them According to the upper caste worldview, the lower castes are more resilient to the water scarcity because they are used to it or can manage by adapting to it This involves fetching water from far off places and going to the ponds for other requirements and also practising open defecation Since the upper caste people cannot all these because these are below their dignity, they are supposedly more vulnerable to the water crisis In an overarching manner, the councillor of the ward, Moumita Choudhury15, explained to me how the demand for water is more among the upper castes because their requirement of water is more, by saying, “The Chotoloks have a very different lifestyle They don’t need much water and could manage their minimum needs of water from here and there They could never recognise the need for water because there use of water was limited Since the time I am here, I have seen then doing all their works of bathing and washing at the ponds They were comfortable with this set up that is why they didn’t feel the need of water connection The drinking water was fetched from taps from other areas There was no issue In our houses, on the other hand, you need a lot of water to clean the house itself ‘Poriskar, Porichanno Thakte Bhalobasi.’ (We prefer to stay clean) For that, you need water We need a lot of water to wash and keep ourselves clean But we cannot go to the pond That is why we are very vocal about our demand for water.” In a nutshell, this shows the construction of the civilized ‘self’ and the savage ‘other’ where the self-proclaimed bhadraloks have created an image of the lifestyle of whom they call “chotoloks” What in reality is the agony of the scheduled castes is portrayed as the comfortable lifestyle of the people? This is a strategy to maintain their same historical dominance over the 15 Pseudonym used Interviewed thrice in Ward One, Purulia town, on May 16, August 13, and December 24, 2017 15 elements of nature It just gets reproduced differently with time but the primordial objective of exerting control is retained every time A similar encounter happened with a block officer during my pilot visit, who tried to make me understand why the water crisis is an issue in the Bhadralok samaj The line of thinking is rooted in strong values of caste which is again anchored in the principles of purity and pollution What is of concern here is the matter the decision making is controlled by people who think like that How can we expect an equal distribution of water when the needs of one section of the society are not recognised by the decision-making body By virtue of this, everywhere, it is the upper castes who have the control over water and the voices of the agony of the Dalits are not heard In the town, there is a huge conflict between the nich dik and uch dik over water distribution Fed up with the attitude of the ward councilor towards them over water, five years back, the people of the Trinamool Congress majority Yuva club area of Ward One with the help of other residents of the ward, did a mass protest and a roadblock in front of Nistharini college, in their demand for water taps The protest was successful as the District Magistrate had assured them that new municipality tap connections would be given And eventually, some connections were given to ease the problem a bit According to some respondents, even after the District Magistrate had given permissions, the municipality people had created some chaos over it But it has been a few years now that their drinking problems are marginally solved to some extent The yuva happens to be one of the uch dik of the ward Now the people of the nich dik, which includes the Alangidanga basti and the neighbouring areas, take view this in a different way Since a majority of them are CPIM supporters, some of them view this as a Trinamool conspiracy whereby the tap that was meant for them was taken away by the Trinamool people The other narrative establishes that the upper caste bhadraloks did not want the tap to be given in the nich para If the tap would have been given in the nich para, they would have to go the nich para, which they usually don’t, to fetch water This is why they cited the reason that if water connection was given to that side then due to the slope of the land, the entire water would flow there Let alone giving the connection there, they even refused to extend the water pipeline till there As Jaya Bauri16, a resident of the nich para, states that, “It is not that our ward does not have taps There are taps near the junction (more) point in the uch para areas but they don’t give us On top of that, the tap that we were supposed to get from the municipality was not given to us because they objected The bhadralok babus 16 Pseudonym used Interviewed many times in Ward One, Purulia town, on May 16, August 11, 14, 18, and December 29, 2017 16 of the Yuva club area did not allow the pipeline to be laid through their area to reach us So that they always get water and we don’t Municipality people came to give us connections but they didn’t allow They might have thought that if water connection is given to us also then their water supply might get affected and they might have to come to our side to fetch water They did not want that.” In addition to not giving water, the rift is such that the uch dik people not allow the people of the nich dik to fetch water from there The yuva club people justify this by claiming that they had made the tap connection possible through a lot of protests where the people of the nich dik had not contributed anything Therefore, only they have rights over that water But it is doubtful whether the people of the nich dik were aware of the plans of protest As they have often shared that despite the lack of communication between them, they would have loved to join the protest if they had been told They often lament over their situation in their own ward When their own ward residents don’t care about their water requirements, how could anyone expect others to be sympathetic towards them? Water, therefore, becomes a competition for them Another incident that came out during a focus group discussion with the people of the Yuva club area sort of validates their claim that the uch dik people not want to give water to the nich dik While inquiring about the reasons regarding why spot sourcing has not been done to solve the water issues of the people, I came to know that the proposal for spot sourcing was given by the municipality to the people of Ward One but it was opposed by the bhadraloks of that area irrespective of their political affiliation The spot sourcing would have drilled 5-6 deep bore wells close by and stored the water in community tanks But the bhadraloks rejected the proposals citing two reasons: firstly, they did not have space for that; and secondly, there was a risk involved that those borewells would have affected the water level in the borewells of their houses On top of that, if after drilling those bore wells also, water was not to be found, then it would be a loss for them This decision was taken thinking about the interests of one section of the society only, i.e the bhadralok elites Spot sourcing had the potential of solving the water issues of the ward once and for all but it fell a victim of upper caste interests and was not materialised In addition to this, there was another set of arguments coming from the upper caste people, who were settled in the immediate proximity of the Alangidanga area They also questioned the distribution of the water points on grounds that they did not have any water taps in their 17 area while there were so many taps around the Yuva club area and Ashu sohish lane They had a very different perception regarding the tap space of the one and only municipality tap that was located in Alangidanga As Bhakti Charan Das remarks, “There are one or two taps on the nich side but the chotoloks of the basti don’t allow us to take water from there We take water from the neighbouring Munsiffdanga but there also we have to take water in one is to two ratios i.e in the queue two people of their ward and then one from another ward That is obvious because that is their tap.” This reflects that the rush around the only tap in the Alangidanga locality is below a bhadraloks taste and dignity The people are simply reduced to being “the Chotoloks of the basti” Being politically identified as a Trinamool supporter, Bhakti Charan also has some grievances towards the councillor He believes that it is not ethical on her part to not care about the needs of the people of the opposite camp Once elected, the representative must treat everybody equally There should not be biases based on who has and who hasn’t voted for her According to him, because he supported the TMC during the election, she is not even providing us street lights to his locality Another respondent, who belongs to the Bauri community shared that every time she went to the councillor with her problems, the councillor did not help her citing the reason that she did not win with her vote So, we can see that the politics behind water distribution is exhibited in a myriad of manifestations while the roots remain dipped in the caste system The division of the physical space into nich dik and uch dik in itself reflects the Brahminical politics of restricting others’ interaction with nature The scene with the political parties is also rooted in caste because the leaders of both the political parties reflect the interests of the upper caste bhadraloks only Discrimination through Naming People often carry some perceived notions or imageries about things or ideas or places which has a bearing on their behaviour towards it As for example, when I ask what vision comes to your mind when say – a Bauri locality? The vision that will come to your mind will to a large extent shape your attitude towards that thing In the town, the upper caste people had weird notions about the lower caste people’s residential areas and this ‘mental map’ aided to their conceptualisation of what is a ‘chotolok’ space As for example, when the councillor was about what image came to her mind when she thought of Brahmin para, the spontaneous reply was that, 18 “It is a good place “Bhadra lokeder basabas, poriskar porichonno, shantipurna poribesh” Settlement of bhadraloks Clean and peaceful environment.” Whereas, when the same person was asked about her mental image of a Bauri para, the response was as simple as, “they are poor basti people” Two things must be noticed here: firstly, the settlements of the Brahmins are considered to be bhadraloks residential spaces which are ‘clean’ and ‘peaceful’ And secondly, the Bauri’s settlements are associated with ‘bastis’ and them being poor The question that arises now is what convinced the person to arrive at that conclusion? How this difference that a clean and peaceful environment is getting associated with the Brahmins and ‘basti’ is being associated with the Bauri’s? On further exploration, I came to know that this notion stems from the understanding that the Brahmin and Kayastha people put a lot of stress on hygiene and loves to stay clean and keep their surroundings clean too Giving an example of the cleanliness of her own lane, Moumita assured me that the areas where the Brahmins and Kayasthas are residing are always neat and clean and the people maintain a decorum in the way they conduct themselves And according to them, the lower caste settlements represented the opposite of this There is no cleanliness, no decorum and the behaviour of the people is also different While explaining to me how a Bauri basti is starkly opposite to their locality, Moumita Choudhury17 further added, “You will not find this kind of cleanliness in a Bauri basti They don’t take bath regularly They throw dirt here and there As you are aware, there is the practice of open defecation too As soon as the sun sets, you will find the men drunk and fight with their wives or shout and sing at the top of their voice and even lying unconscious on the roads Now you tell me, isn’t there a difference?” On asking that even if I consider what she is saying, how could the people maintain hygiene when they don’t have access to water? Her husband responded to this by saying, “Even if they had water, they wouldn’t have maintained hygiene It is the problem of habit and lifestyle A common toilet has been made for them by a friend of mine Go and see if they are using it I bet that they are not.” If we go by them, then lower caste is associated with staying unclean, getting drunk, practising open defecation and other behavioural aspects This thinking is so deep embedded in people’s minds that even when they casually describe their area, they tend to caution you that the nich 17 Pseudonym used Interviewed thrice in Ward One, Purulia town, on May 16, August 13, and December 24, 2017 19 side area of the locality, which are the bastis, are not safe to venture because, by the time it's evening, the people will be deep drunk and rolling on the floor and talking nonsense The notion that even if water is given to the lower castes, there will be no change in them because it is their behavioural problem, is problematic It has severe implications on the water distribution when the upper caste bhadraloks who hold authoritative posts and the decisionmaking power thinks like that The structure of the towns and villages is such that localities are still named after the caste of the people who resides there So there are jele para, muchi para, Moyra para and so on in the town itself As the situation of our country is such that most of the decision-making bodies are headed by upper caste persons, the perceptions and biases they have get reflected in their decision making The improper distribution of water in Purulia is one such example where their biases are reflected in the water distribution pattern 1.8 Concluding Remarks: Is water a physical space? In this paper, by presenting an overview of the physical and social settlement geography of the study areas, I tried to locate how one stamped upon another in the caste society of Purulia To present in a nutshell, on one hand, there are the existing sources of water in the form of underground aquifers, rivers, lakes and ponds which as a part of nature represents the absolute physical space On the other hand, there is human interaction with it This human interaction with nature is regulated in a number of ways In plain sight, we can say that the immediate interaction of the human with nature is through the land, or where the person chose to reside A study of the morphology of the settlements of the study area showed that there is a particular clustering of the settlements based on caste Therefore, the interaction with land space was restricted through caste since a person did not have the liberty to reside wherever he/she wanted What, thus, follows is that the accessibility to other elements of nature also depends on the settlement location of the person? For example: Because of the peripheral location of the Muchi settlements, it would be difficult for them to access the water sources which are often at the centre of the village But the segregation of settlement based on caste is not limited to clustering the settlements As a strategy to exert control over the elements of nature, there are several layers of segregating spaces based on caste Divisions of uch dik-nich dik and changing names of the streets are all manifestations of it When we see the distribution of water taps in the maps of Ward One, it becomes evident that the distribution is highly skewed The settlements of the lower caste people are completely shadowed Though people are blaming the politics of the two political 20 parties there (Trinamool and CPIM) for this skewed distribution, it is also clear to us now that this politics is also anchored in caste The evidences of the upper caste leaders of both the political parties referring to the lower castes as basti people and their settlement areas as nich diks, which are devoid of water facilities, enables me to argue that this politics of water is rooted in caste All these contestations over water make me wonder whether water is just a physical entity or there is a social aspect to it We know for sure that the physical world is not devoid of the social world and it is the interaction of the two that gives meaning to things At this conjecture, if we see the relationship between water and caste, the inevitable question that arises is how water becomes a social space when seen through the lens of caste But this social space is different from a Lefebvrian understanding of social space as cognizant of implied, contained, and disseminated social relationships where space emerges both as product and a means of production Because when both Lefebvre and later Harvey (2006) conceptualizes the experience of space as part of a process of contestation over space, they argue invariably in terms of class and capitalism But in the context of my study, I could see water as social space only because it involves caste and the discriminations on the basis of caste and something 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 artefacts such as the water tap into its extant system And further to this, it would be interesting to explore how space operates through caste in the realm of water in the caste society of Purulia district References Ambedkar, B R 1990 Annihilation Of Caste: An Undelivered Speech Arnold Publishers Baartmans, Fra 1990 Apah, the sacred waters: an analysis of a primordial symbol in Hindu myths Delhi: South Asia Books Bandyopadhyay, S 2014 "Does Caste Matter in Bengal? 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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