Gender and household water are intertwined, and their relationships are well-established in literature in the Indian context. Women and their agency for water collection are questioned in terms of 'unrecognized' and ‘unpaid’ labour for quotidian realities. This piece examines the strength of this agency to 'unpaid' and 'unrecognized' work in the 'unrecognized' spaces of slums of Jaipur and their agency in everyday negotiations for water. The study goes with empirical fieldwork, focused group discussion and interviews with the women slum dwellers held during the summers of 2023 and 2024. This study ventures into the process of water provisioning and alternatives that women resort to during the crisis and negotiations using the theoretical frameworks of passive acceptance, individual resistance, self help and social mobilization. These slum dwellers resort to an 'unrecognized' arrangement for securing water. In times of low supply for days, these women have to manage water from alternative sources and demonstrate at the nearest pumphouse or supplier's office to negotiate water into their neighborhoods. The negotiations depend on the positionality of the household in the urban entitlements. Women solely shape this water access, its negotiations with the local state, and their neighborhoods. Thus, this study argues that women and their agency have become more pronounced regarding access to household water through negotiation and strategy in the slums. This interplay of gender, social power and infrastructure in water access to Jaipur's slums underscores the critical need to recognize and address these dimensions in policy and practice.

Authors:
Monidip Mondal, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

About the Presenter(s)
Mr. Monidip Mondal is currently a Doctoral Student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a trained geographer and remote sensing and GIS enthusiast. He is interested in studying the urban dynamics using advanced geospatial techniques.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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