Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

244 SEEMA KULKARNI
of salinisation, and an increase in the arsenic and fluoride levels in the
water, rising energy costs and, finally, drying up of the sources. This has
affected the availability of drinking water. The lack of effective governance
in the groundwater sector has deepened the drinking water crisis in rural
areas, the impact of which is largely borne by rural women.
The overriding concern in the water sector today is to ensure adequate,
assured and accessible and supplies of potable water for livelihood security,
particularly for the poor and marginalised groups.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE QUESTION
OF GENDER?
In arguing for a radical potential for a link between gender and water, we
are not claiming that women somehow share a natural affinity with water,
but rather that it is not possible to understand the various dimensions of
the crisis in the water sector completely in the absence of a gendered
understanding of access to resources and their use. In this context, to
focus on the inequality based on gender is not to imply that an analysis
with class, caste, racism and/or ethnicity as its starting point would be
any less important or relevant. Neither does it try to undermine the enormity
of the problems with which the water sector itself is besieged. The
attempt here is to show how all of this is in fact organically linked together.
This is explored in the context of the new water policy.
NEW WATER POLICY ENVIRONMENT
The new policy environment seeks solutions in institutional reforms,
incentive structures and through a shift in approach from supply-side to
demand-side management to come out of this crisis. This brings in a
whole new set of implications regarding the questions of equity and sustainability.
This shift has also meant a slow but definite withdrawal of the
state, which now sees itself more as a promoter of water systems and
services than as a provider. This has opened the door for private interests
in water, especially in the drinking water and sanitation sector. Particularly
in urban areas, privatisation of drinking water has now become the norm