In the journeys of ecological justice movements one has found that since it is women (specifically rural women) who are closely engaging with harnessing, accessing and preserving natural resources, they sometimes encounter deep conflicts as the artificial society expands and tries to constantly arrange and rearrange natural resources in order to rationalize its existence.
I
Rivers, have been a strong symbol in our imaginations. They have been the centres of our civilisation histories. With time however, in our perceptions, and specifically language, rivers transformed from being mere ‘gushes of water across rocks, pebbles, mountains and plain lands’ to ‘navigable streams, deliverers of flood and therefore bountiful crops, symbols of fertility, and mothers and goddesses’. Just as women have had to constantly struggle with the positions that patriarchy accords to them as mothers, daughters and wives, so too in the case of rivers. Even though they may have been associated with the divine, when rivers would overspill their embankments they were imagined to be ‘aberrant’, ‘out of control’ or that which needed to be ‘tamed’, ‘dammed’ or ‘harnessed’. After almost half a century of experiences on damming rivers in India, some scholars critiquing the state of our rivers observe that they have become like older mothers, who are tired, sluggish and slow. Changing our imaginations about water and other natural resources is a crucial step towards thinking of new non patriarchal ways of relating with nature and also women. While a very literal example may be drawn in the imagination of rivers, the same is true for other natural elements such as forests, our lands, the earth and other life systems.
II
For many people who live further away from rivers and do not directly depend on it, the river becomes more and more remote in their imaginations where it is merely a part of the landscape much like a road, bridge or a speck of blue amidst the concrete. Communities whose lifestyles are close to the rhythms and cycles of nature still see rivers as living entities. To a large number of these communities rivers are divine and almost all their daily activities revolve around it. However they have lesser stakes in determining pathways and directions on development policies, usage of natural resources and their rights to livelihood. Their voices or demands are a constant reminder to society to slow down its pace, but most often their thoughts are considered to be just a bundle of ‘inconvenient truths’.
Most women within these communities have been assigned roles where they are more involved in accessing natural resources for the well being of their families. The universally essentialised roles of women as food providers, water harnessers, care givers, and also their work being mostly ‘manual work and less technology oriented’ tends to place them in serious and conflictual situations as the current artificial society expands itself and continues to arrange and rearrange and shift the way it uses and exploits natural resources.
In my presentation I highlight snippets of journeys from the lives of women who have experienced conflicts in the light of shifting regimes of natural resources use. These journeys and struggles show that their struggle to retain access has a close link with establishing their own identities while preserving the cohesiveness of nature or the environment around them.
III
My first story is about Tara who is a village head and lives in the same district where the steel town Bokaro is located on the banks of the River Damodar. The river Damodar was dammed in the 1950s. Tara states ‘Rivers are like the interconnected veins running through our bodies, if you cut off a vein we cannot continue to live. The life of a woman is closely intertwined with the river. We derive our identity from it.’
In spite of the Damodar Valley Project being projected as one of the main ‘temples of development’ a substantial number of people faced displacement due to construction of dams in these parts of Jharkhand. People were promised irrigation, jobs and basic amenities by dam authorities when they were displaced, but for many these promises have not been kept. There was a proliferation of steel and thermal power plants in the valley resulting in serious water diversions, drying up of the river and industrial air and water pollution as the DVC developed and shifted away from its initial emphasis on irrigation and flood control to the sole purpose of power generation.
Tara’s journey into the public sphere began with her work with women belonging to those communities who had been displaced due to the Tenughat Dam, one among the network of dams for the Damodar Valley project. Tara found that the promises made had not been kept. People were without jobs, and had not received irrigation facilities and basic amenities. In 2001 when she first started to talk to women in the displaced community, she found that accessing drinking water was a major problem. The irony was, that the community which had agreed to give up their lands for the ‘project’ in the hope of receiving irrigation benefits did not even have a drop to drink for themselves. Tara started raising the issues of justice over water resources for this community. She helped to connect the local community with the Damodar Bachao Abhiyan(or Save the Damodar Campaign) network which worked with several local communities impacted by water diversion and pollution in the river. The campaign led by the displaced community did not sustain due to several interferences by political leaders. Tara analyses on hindsight, that one of the main reasons was that the male political leadership did not give enough space to hear out the problems of women. Women not only access the river for waters but also small fish, and riparian vegetables that grow in it. The campaign activities however helped the community gain experience on how to get schools, jobs and other infrastructure, though water remains a contentious issue.
Being part of the campaign helped Tara to continue her work on social issues. She finally founded an organisation with her colleagues who were part of the campaign. The organisation engaged on raising issues on pollution in the area and also worked on revisiting cultural practices which were more in tune with nature within this industrial landscape.
Tara’s community considers the river to be ‘sacred and pure’ making it very difficult for them to accept that it is polluted. And this is a response many women give, as the river plays an important role for them in their daily ritualistic practices which are related to marriage, birth and funeral rites. While these practices along with their domestic chores draws women close to the river, their inherent belief in its ‘sacredness’ also blinds them to the ill effects that industrial wastes or pollutants may have on their health. Probably the blindness or denial also comes from the lack of other options. Ground water is becoming scarcer in these villages neighbouring coal mines along the banks of the river Damodar due to changes in land levels and due to mining underground and recurrent droughts. Wells have dried up in many villages along the banks of the river adjacent to old mines, forcing women to go back to using the river. Tara’s organization documented a few cultural practices all along the river Damodar and also started a village campaign on the river, which were held alongside the ritual activities, to initiate discussions on the need for community consciousness on river pollution.
Tara was elected as head of her Village Council 15 months ago. She faces several challenges as a leader. While greater decision making powers are yet to be fully transferred within the working principles of the decentralized village decision making bodies in the federal state of Jharkhand in India, Tara has been trying to convince the Block Development Officer about a recently announced scheme on wells. Ground water being very low, blanket state strategies of sanctioning wells to everyone may not work. The schemes sanctioned at the state level have come with specific diameter measurements for wells and tubewells which is a top down planning approach. Her village has two predominant poorer communities, the landless Dalits# and the OBCs# engaged in agricultural work. Wells have been sanctioned for Dalits, who have no land, and OBCs desperately need water resources for agriculture but since they own agricultural land they do not qualify under the ‘below poverty line’ criteria for sanctioning wells. The predertemined categories of beneficiaries listed through government schemes has made it difficult to realize the potential of these schemes at the village level. Digging more wells may not ensure water availability. In the area where the entire community needs water, Tara has been trying to convince the government that community managed water resources should be supported, and traditional methods of accessing water which only looked at accessing sub surface water could be tapped along with water harvesting practices where people have communitarian rights over water rather than individual rights. This will prevent over exploitation of water in her opinion.
Tara has also tried to introduce changes in the culture in her Panchayat, where she has been campaigning against acts of untouchability, superstition and child marriage. In a particular case where a Dalit girl died of diarrhea, a village shaman claimed to bring her alive for a sum of Rs. 15000. Tara having heard of this, rushed to the area and shared that she will give a sum of Rs 20000 if he is able to do it. Taken aback by this, the shaman threatened that ‘a witch will be identified and made to dance in the naked in the village’. However Tara managed to drive him out of the village dispelling the fear that many exploitative shamans evoke among women. Tara acknowledges, that her struggles have helped to make her the leader she is and more than anything given her a sense of identity.
IV
The second story is around the river Mahanadi in Odisha. It shows how crucial it is to encounter marginalized women’s voices within ecological justice campaigns for a more nuanced approach, for ‘definitions’ and points of action. The story revolves around citizen’s resistances against water diversion for industrial projects in the state of Odisha and lays bare the numerous ways in which water is imagined as a resource by different stakeholders.
Cuttack, is the oldest unplanned city of Odisha, and is thickly populated with a large slum population. The city is bounded by the biggest river of the state ‘Mahanadi’ on the eastern side and ‘Kathajodi’ on the western side. The Taladanda canal built during the British period runs through the heart of the city. It is one of the longest river canals in the world, and starts at Jobra linking it to the Mahanadi river with the Bay of Bengal at Paradip. It receives domestic, commercial and industrial wastes which are dumped into the Mahanadi river at Sikharpur. However a majority of the people in the city specifically those living in slum pockets use the water that drains through this canal for their daily needs as well as for cooking.
Intense industrialization has turned the former commercial capital, Cuttack, into a ‘hot spot’. Factors such as the slow increase in the city’s mean high temperatures over the years have sparked off protests against any further establishment of steel and thermal power plants. Thus it is not uncommon to find that several members of the middle class in the city and its hinterlands have been engaged in environmental movements demanding clean air and water. In earlier Public Interest Litigations, petitioners have also requested the State Government from stopping discharge of industrial and city waste into the Taladanda Canal which is used by most of the city’s poor. Petitions have also been filed to clean up the storm water drains in Cuttack.
The Mahanadi, unlike the Ganga, is not a perennial river and is largely dependent on rain water. Therefore its limited capacities have to be kept in mind. It is also the only source of water for 12 districts in the state. The waters of the Mahanadi are feeding agriculture, fishing and industrial activities, along with sustaining some of the major urban cities such as Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambhalpur, and Sonpur, in the state. The Hirakud dam, Naraj and Jobra barrages were constructed over the river to cater to irrigation and drinking water requirements of neighbouring districts and cities. However the state has been committing large amounts of water to industries instead. Several citizen protests led by political parties and people based organizations have appealed to the government to stop this diversion and also demanded a setting up of a Water Commission to study water availability in the Mahanadi for irrigation and industrial purposes. The organizations have also found that ground water levels have gone down to below 8m in the city which makes it difficult for residents to ensure their own supply of water, where surface waters are either polluted or being channeled out. Thus the Manch has proposed that the government also take up water retention activities in the area.
There are two new major projects coming up in the vicinity. The POSCO (steel plant and port) project, which is India’s largest FDI, and the TATA Naraj project. Both these projects have excessive demands for water. Residents in the project site for the TATA Naraj project have vehemently opposed the project and succeeded specifically on grounds related to the suitability of the project site. There is a massive movement against displacement of communities located in the POSCO steel plant site and smaller movements around the proposed port site areas as well. In spite of numerous environmental and social concerns around the project several leaders of the movement opposing the project faced state repression.
The POSCO company in its estimates has given various ways in which the intricate systems of canals and rivers may be used to meet its water needs. POSCO argues for release of water for its activities at the source point near the Jobra barrage stating that this is the most appropriate source where no land needs to be acquired for reservoirs, there will no problem of tampering by locals and unlike in the case of the canals, there will be continuous supply. POSCO estimates ‘Taladanda canal has a designed capacity of 95 cumecs, which includes 15 cumecs for industrial use in and around Paradip. So far the Industrial utilization all put together is less than 2 cumecs. However, annual canal closure is undertaken for a stretch of about 20 days in two spells. So if Taladanda water is used, a large storage reservoir would be required for POSCO-India water usage, meaning extra 400 acre land to store 5.8 million cubic meters water. In addition, it is subject to likely tampering by locals and risks like breaches during floods, etc. In case of Hansua nallah, a new barrage near Khuranta is to be constructed, but during non-monsoon spells, it is to be fed from Taladanda canal through Jaipur escape at 40 km length of the canal. However, the problem of canal closure persists even here. The 2 km long Jobra barrage across Mahanadi has a water pool of volume 4.5 million cubic meters and thus is the most appropriate raw water source. Since the water is non-saline and round the year requirements of the plant could be met without hampering the flow of Taladanda canal and the irrigation system in the area, Jobra barrage have been considered as the most appropriate source.’ It needs to be noted that the Mahanadi is the source for Jobra, Hansua and Taldanda, so the impact of diversion of water will have its interconnected impacts on the entire watershed up, no matter which point POSCO would like to draw its water from. There are protests against discharging water from Hansua to the project, which people share is not a river but a drainage channel, built to channel flood waters into the sea and for irrigation purposes for farmers. Lakhs of farmers and fisherfolk are dependent on Hansua for their daily sustenance.
In a recent judgment the National Green Tribunal, a fast track Court newly set up for environmental cases suspended the earlier environmental clearances for the project and also gave a judgement that the Company instead of diverting the city’s drinking water organize its own sources of water.
Women leaders such as Noina Naik one of the members of a local Dalit organization# of Dalit Safai Karmacharis or those who are engaged in keeping civic amenities in the city clean reside in the slum area of Cuttuck next to the Taladanda Canal. Noina is an active woman’s leader and mentions that her organisation mostly works on issues of domestic violence and women’s rights. In her opinion the three most important needs for Dalit women are education, awareness and economic livelihoods. Discussing displacement issues, she states that though they are living in the area for over 90 years, they are facing threat of displacement. 80 members from among them have filed individual cases to counter the order on eviction. None of them were informed personally, but a Notice came in the name of leaders. People are unsure of why they are being displaced, but they feel that it could be for work on the Taladanda Canal for the POSCO project. The Taladanda Canal is their main source of water, except for the dry spells. Currently the tubewells and handpumps are very few in number, almost 60 people use one tubewell in the slum, hence most of them have to depend on the water in the canal for washing clothes and other household activities. Even though the waters of the canal were severely polluted and specifically filled with city waste, members from Noina’s community have continued to use it.
Almost Rs. 98 crores is currently being invested by Asian Development Bank and Odisha Government to revitalize the canal. Odisha’s Integrated Irrigated Agriculture and Water Management Project a project report by the ADB assesses that 2,10,000 poor people reside in the command area of the canal, however most of its estimates are around small and large farmers, crop production etc. with no estimates of urban poor populations who also use the canal.
Noina states that most of them have been fighting their cases of eviction individually and have not got any external support for the same. However she agrees with the large anti displacement movements and feels that it is necessary for the well-being of poor and Dalit families and if ‘we are called we will surely go’ she adds. Discussions with Noina reveal that a lot more work needs to be done by women activists to engage and seek out those from Noina’s background into the larger ecological movements in the state. It is clear that Noina’s life in the city of Cuttuck is impacted by the decisions of the POSCO project being set up outside the city some kilometers away from the area in which she lives.
IV
My last story is on how conservation programmes have affected rural women engaged with low technology livelihoods.
The Sunderbans in West Bengal are the world’s largest deltas. Here the biggest challenge for people is nature’s unpredictability. The numerous distributaries flowing into the Bay of Bengal play in tune with the tidal waves of the sea, sometimes draining the river waters of the larger Ganga-Brahmaputra river systems, and at other times bringing in the waters as the sea swells (which many say is due to Global Warming). These small distributaries are dynamic swelling and flooding their banks, depositing fresh silt at times or eroding at other times. And through this dynamic activity are formed the little inhabited islands of the Sunderbans. They have been given the description ‘Kham khayali’ or whimsical by the habitants. It has been three years since the disastrous ‘Aila’ cyclone but the communities are still attempting to recuperate from the problems left here. A large percent of the population has migrated out. Paddy cropping has failed for the third year due to high salinity in the soil. Fishing has become an increasingly hazardous activity as fisherfolk navigate through creeks in the mangrove forests due to atrocities meted out by the forest department and the dangers of tiger attacks. Fishing is precarious also because of the stiff competition to catch stock with large trawlers and bigger boats. Fish populations have been reducing greatly. The serious competition, low returns and heavy debts incurred on boats and fishing equipments means that fishermen are also becoming more aggressive with fishing.
Many women in the Sunderbans are the heads of households as their husbands migrate outside for work. Many others have lost their husbands to sea. There are serious problems of agriculture, fuel wood and safe drinking water in this disaster prone zone. Here is where there is water everywhere but not a drop to drink. Due the fragility of eco resources and eco restoration after flooding, people are forced to go outside in search of work. The most important issue identified by women themselves is the regular breach of embankments by the rivers that surround these islands before entering into the sea.
In these parts women do not go fishing in the boats but are instead engaged in manual fishing with hand nets. At a coastal village, Jharkhali the fishworker’s Union has managed to register women in the Union. This is a new change in attitudes since women unlike male fisherfolk are engaged in manual fishing mainly to catch prawns. However this manual fishing has destroyed mangrove forests as women tread across them back and forth on foot and hence due to conservation laws they have been forbidden to do manual fishing. Thus while on the one hand the larger interests of conservation have been served there is no work for women in these parts. Conservation programmes at local levels need to assess livelihood impacts and resultant impact on the poor.
V
These journeys and experiences of women throw up some important things to think about for organisations engaged with ecological issues and women’s issues. Allowing women to lead ecological campaigns has contributed to their improved self identities, especially rural women for whom these environmental resources have a close connection to their daily lives. In fact women can become confident decision makers within governance systems as well. Governance on environmental resources needs to be decentralized and universal categories does not work in all contexts especially with respect to use of environmental resources which have impacts on the entire community. This needs to be decided at the local level as per local dynamics and interconnected with the larger problems. Bridging the voices of women in ecological campaigns and the voices of urban and rural poor women brings in nuances of the complex impacts that large industrial projects have on their lives. New potentials can be realized in furthering the questions on the relationship of women’s issues with environmental justice issues. Patriarchal notions of control of environment, has also flowed into conservation of resources today and this needs to be countered.
The above piece was presented at the 2012 AWID Forum by the author in a session co supported by Global Fund for Women and Global Greengrant Fund. The narratives were collected during the author's field work
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