By Dr. Arvind Kumar
President, India Water Foundation, New Delhi.
Abstract
This paper examines the issue of social exclusion in India’s water sector in the background of appraisal of the notion of social exclusion, its brief history and its prevalence in India, particularly in the water sector. While stressing upon the need for moving from social exclusion to social inclusion in water sector, this paper suggested bringing water from the State List to either Concurrent List or the Centre List as a preliminary step towards making Right to Water as a Fundamental Right by amending the Constitution.
Introduction
Water is generally regarded as a unifying force that brings the people together and owing to its immense life-giving importance it is held in high esteem by almost religions and civilization across the globe. However, denial of access to water on religious, caste, social or other grounds is highly detestable in this age of globalization. This social exclusion of certain segments of the society from the water sector in India needs to be viewed in the context of overall concept of ‘social exclusion’ in general and water sector in particular.
Concept of Social Exclusion
Viewed in a broad perspective, the notion of ‘social exclusion’ denotes the systematic exclusion of individuals and groups from one or more dimensions of society, such as structures of power and privilege, opportunities and resources. Social exclusion also describes as to what happens when people or areas are excluded from essential services or every day aspects of life that most of us take for granted. Socially excluded people or places can become trapped in a cycle of related problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poverty, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown.
The characteristics of the current widespread phenomenon of exclusion entail, what Goffman (1963) calls both the paths of stigmatization and isolation. The debates in Europe on new forms of poverty as a sequel to the crisis of the welfare state have spurred development studies to focus on the notion of social exclusion. According to Figueiredo and de Haan (1998), a research project at the International Institute in the mid-1990s, originally as contribution to the World Summit for Social Development, produced a range of country studies. An IDS Bulletin in 1998 focused on the subject, with an emphasis on bringing together northern and southern debates on poverty (de Haan 1998). The writings of Amartya Sen (1998) and the conference on chronic poverty at the University of Manchester in 2003 have also dealt with this issue. Common to most of these writing is a definition that emphasizes that: a) poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and b) on the institutions and processes that are responsible for causing and reproducing deprivation.
According to Hilary Silver (1994), interpretations of the concept of social exclusion have differed greatly, and there may have been more conceptual critique than empirical applications of the concept. Silver distinguished three paradigms of social exclusion, depending in particular on the ways social integration has been conceptualized, and associated with ‘theoretical and ideological baggage’. In the ‘solidarity paradigm’, dominant in France, exclusion is the rupture of a social bond between the individual and society that is cultural and moral. The poor, unemployed and ethnic minorities are defined as outsiders. National solidarity implies political right and duties.
A ‘specialization paradigm’, dominant in the US, and contested in the UK, is determined by individual liberalism. According to liberal-individualistic theories, individuals are able to move across boundaries of social differentiation and economic divisions of labour, and emphasize the contractual exchange of rights and obligations. In this paradigm, exclusion reflects discrimination, the drawing of group distinctions that denies individual’s full access to or participation in exchange or interaction. A ‘monopoly paradigm’ is influential in Britain and many Northern European countries, and views the social order as coercive, imposed through hierarchical power relations. Exclusion is defined as a consequence of the formation of group monopolies, group distinctions and inequality overlap.
Social exclusion in India
In Europe, the concept of social exclusion has generally been concerned with social problems in the labor market thrown up by economic restructuring. According to Noam Chomsky, it is this economic restructuring, and the resultant social transformation, that dismantled social bonds and support systems, undermined democracy and condemned large numbers of people to life in urban slums and collapsing rural communities.
However, the Euro-centric approach and its labour market framework are not helpful in comprehending the full gamut of social exclusion in India. The exclusion discourse in Indian society has to be understood against the backdrop of the caste system.
Caste, traditional India’s system of social ordering and control, is the most elaborate form of social stratification. It has dominated the Indian sub-continent for about three millennia, and is also the most exhaustive and obnoxious of all exclusionary systems. Caste-exclusions are explicit in traditional society. Membership and status are determined by birth; there is a hierarchy of social precedence among the castes; there are restrictions on social and cultural intercourse between castes; castes are segregated and stratified with regard to civil and religious privileges; occupations are caste determined with relatively little choice allowed; restrictions on marriage outside one’s sub-caste help maintain the system.
Those historically excluded in Indian society are broadly several social groups subsumed under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories, the lower strata of caste-Hindus, women, Muslims and some Christians. Until the Constitution came into force in 1950, exclusion was enforced primarily by the traditional caste-based social order. This practice was legally abolished in the 1950s, though it still persists socially.
The caste system has formed the social and economic framework for the life of the people in India. The caste system is based on separation, division of labour, and hierarchy where civil, cultural, and economic rights for each caste are fixed. The division of people falls into four broad categories with several subcategories within them including.
The system implies ‘forced exclusion’ of one caste from the rights of other castes. Exclusion and discrimination in civil, cultural, and economic sphere, is therefore, internal to the system and a necessary outcome of its governing principles. It thus involves the negation of not only equality and freedom, but also of basic human rights and does not recognize the rights and duties of individuals but that of the group as a whole. Though having its origin in the Hindu religion, the caste system has made inroads into non-caste based religions like Christianity and Islam and even anti-caste religions like Sikhism and Buddhism within the country and has been carried overseas by its diaspora. The nature of disabilities associated with social exclusion in India, inter alia, includes:
• Denial and/or restrictions of access to public facilities like wells, schools, roads, post offices, and courts;
• Denial and/or restrictions of access to temples or other places related to worship;
• Exclusion from learning the Vedas and inability to become religious teachers or leaders;
• Exclusion from honorable and profitable employment, relegated to menial employment;
• Residential segregation requiring individuals to live outside the village;
• Restrictions on life style that indicates luxury or comfort;
• Denial of services provided by barber, washer-men, restaurants, shops, theatres etc.;
• Compulsory requirements in the usage of different utensils;
• Imperatives of deference in the forms of address, language, and sitting and standing in the presence of higher castes,
• Restrictions in movement;
• Liability to unremunerated labour for higher castes and obligatory performance of menial tasks
Water and Social Exclusion
Nevertheless, water is a key livelihood asset for medium-rich households and partial, if not adequate, access to this water has been secured by this group. Having more or less resolved the problems of access to water for domestic use and unable to compete for productive water with the rich households, a viable decision is made to diversify livelihoods, using opportunities that are not water-dependent. For the traditionally landed and rich households, well-being and security revolve around adequate and reliable water. This explains the persistent focus on developing or exploiting water, even in the face of visible water scarcity. This also explains why male farmers in this category demand and exert strong influence on all water initiatives in the village.
Such entrenched inequities in social organization and water access are overlooked in the current drinking water policy and practice, which assumes an altruistic and unitary user community and compartmentalized water uses and/or need. The drinking water sector will continue to grapple with raising and addressing demand, unless Demand-Response Approach (DRA) design and implementation is revised to incorporate a poverty and livelihoods perspective.
Continued lack of explicit attention to these issues will mean that intended and potential benefits of a DRA are unlikely to be realized both in terms of sustainability (scheme and finance) and poverty reduction.
The perceived failure of previous supply-led approaches to realize the goal of ‘water for all’ led to a global shift in water policies and the emergence of new ‘Demand Responsive Approaches’ (DRA). In principle, DRA aims to improve financial and technical sustainability and efficiency of delivery systems and places huge emphasis on user ‘communities’ to function as management and financing institutions. Designed to deliver water by demand – identified as what users need and are able to afford – DRA in policy, aims to enable a voice and choice for all, including the poorest. In practice, the implications of poverty in making a demand for and securing access to water is poorly understood and addressed in currently implemented demand-responsive approaches to water supply management Water resources, both communal and individual, remain under the control of a small but – socially, politically and economically – powerful usually the upper caste3 males in village settings.
Moreover, the ability to invest in improved drinking water services varies significantly within communities and existing project cycles are insufficiently flexible to cater to different needs. The current emphasis on cost recovery over equity means that DRA, as currently practiced, mainly benefits economically better-off households. Finally, the domestic water sector policy remains narrowly focused on providing safe drinking water and does not recognize importance of productive uses of water at household level. Nor does the practice of demand-led approaches take account of the competing and conflicting demands on the resource base. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for water supply projects to guarantee access to secure water for domestic use. Institutional fragmentation in the water sector and weak capacity to regulate water use, combined with ambiguities in the definition of ‘sustainability’ (technical, financial, social, resource) in drinking water policy suggest that the mantra of integrated water management remains largely rhetorical.
Conclusion
In order to convert the existing social exclusion in water sector into social inclusion, there is need to amend the Constitution to bring water either into the Concurrent List or the Centre List from the present State List as a preliminary step to make water as a fundamental right. The Constitution is, prima facie, anti-discriminatory, anti-exclusionary, anti-exploitative and anti-oppressive. It strikes at the roots of traditional caste and community-based prejudices, hierarchies and inequalities, and provides for legal remedies to reshape social patterns. Effective implementation of its provisions over the last six decades should have ushered in an inclusive, egalitarian society devoid of privileged high castes, despised low castes, entrenched backwardness and exclusionary practices. This has not happened.
Once Right to Water becomes a Fundamental Right like other rights, then social exclusion in water sector will gradually diminish making room for social inclusion. It is worth pointing here that mere legislation is not helpful because its enforcement through courts is a lengthy and costly process. We have to prepare the society for that and civil societies are called upon to play crucial role in making people aware of it.
Besides, there is also need for considering heterogeneity in, and fluctuating household incomes and livelihood security, which influence differing demands for, access to and control over water resources and water delivery systems and place people, their livelihoods and the socio-economic and –political connotations of power and decision-making in resource management central to demand-responsive approaches to water planning and management. We have to prepare the entire society for bringing socially excluded into the national mainstream.
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