Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Women and Water Policy 257
the democratic processes themselves. If water is to be seen as a common
property resource, why are decisions taken by only one section of users?
Decision-making should be based on citizenship rather than membership.
An effort is being made in Maharashtra by the Shramik Mukti Dal, 4 an
organisation working in western Maharashtra, on the question of water
management, and SOPPECOM has tried to introduce such changes in
the draft legislation on Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM).
The second issue is related to the nature of the organisation. Participation
in formal organisations requires spending time in meetings.
Women weigh the benefits and costs involved in such participation. They
are not able to spend that kind of time as there is often no one to share
the reproductive tasks that women are involved in at present. Moreover,
many of these meetings are not held at times that are suitable for women.
Women would also have to challenge the prevailing norms in the society,
as irrigation is not traditionally considered to be in the female domain.
It is not enough to fight for a legal space for women, or for those who
have been conventionally on the margins of irrigation thinking. For
women, formal organisations represent the domain of the male. As
mentioned earlier, it has been observed that women are at their best in
informal situations and share their insights, negotiate for rights, et cetera,
in informal networks. A well-structured formal set-up may be a barrier
to the participation of resource-poor women. (Meinzen-Dick and
Zwarteveen 1998).
Therefore, we propose (i) the expansion of the WUA to include all
adult members of the particular hamlet/village/water unit, and that
decisions be made in the presence of every citizen residing in the redefined
area of the irrigation project; and (ii) that (recognising that formal
structures cannot be done away with) the insights and suggestions
emerging from women’s informal networks should find a hearing at the
jointly held meetings in the formal set-ups.
INTEGRATION OF VARIOUS KINDS OF WATER
RESOURCES
Planning in the water sector has failed to understand the common pool
character of water. Water has often been compartmentalised as surface