Gendered and Caste Spaces in Household Water Use: A Case of Aliabad Village in Peri- urban Hyderabad, India

One of the major changes in the water sector over the last few decades has been the enhanced thrust on institutional reforms, including the increasing recognition of the bottom-up approach to management as against the techno-centric top-down one. At the heart of this lies the concept of greater inclusiveness of all stakeholders, including women and people lower in socio-economic hierarchies. Hence the greater necessity of understanding their differential needs. A need to integrate gender and equity concerns in the water policy discourse stemmed from two facts: first, that women are the primaty collectors of water and also responsible for health, hygiene, and sanitation at the household level; second, that historically the above work has been seen as non-productive and women have not had adequate representation in decision-making around water. So when water becomes a scarce good, the more privileged inevitably find ways to maintain access.