Women and Water Resource Management
Water User Committees: an inclusive impact model
Providing
safe access to water and sanitation facilities is a social and demographic
imperative and a key driver for gender justice. UN world Water Development
Report 2021, released on 21st March 2021, with
the theme of ‘Valuing Water’ noted
that one of the reasons for mismanagement of water is a failure to recognize the
variant value of water and lack of involvement of multiple actors in decisions
related to water usage. Given that divergent stakeholder groups accord
different value to water, an inclusive and holistic approach to water management
is thus recommended, for policies and practices related to water governance to
be developed and implemented in an equitable manner.
There
is substantial evidence to indicate that lack of access to safe water and
sanitation facilities disproportionately affect girls and women. First, women
and girls continue to have the bulk of care responsibilities (in rural
communities in particular), which includes managing the water supply and water
usage, as per household needs. Second, lack of access to water facilities require
young girls and women to travel long distances to access water for household
needs, which precludes them from any kind of sustainable participation in
education or any form of sustainable employment. Data collected across ninety (90)
countries in the last decade (2001-2019) provides evidence that women spend
disproportionately more time (2.5 times more hours than men) on unpaid
house-work and care work, with this figure increasing post-pandemic (SGD
Report, 2021). Third, as per SDG Report 2021, violence against
women continues to be at unacceptably high levels, with nearly one in three
women (736 million) subjected to some form of violence. As per evidence from
India, lack of access to toilets at home, doubles the risk of sexual violence
for women, in comparison with those who have access to toilet facilities
(Jadhav et. al. 2016). Fourth, lack of access
to safe water and hygiene facilities at school leads girls to quit school as
soon as they reach puberty, further precluding them from vital learning
experiences that are crucial for their long-term human capital development and
economic and emotional emancipation.
Given
this debilitating impact on women due to of lack of access to water and
sanitation facilities, their involvement and voice in water resource management
is a global imperative, to arrive at gender just policies and resource
allocations (Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021). UN-Water
2021 reports that ‘fewer than 50
countries have laws or policies that specifically mention women’s participation
for rural sanitation or water resources management’. Further a recent
report from Global Water Partnership and UNEP-DHI, 2021, provides
evidence that inclusion of women, in particular, as equal partners in water
resource management, is in its nascent stages, with the compartmentalized and
adhoc approaches, failing to impact policy and practice significantly.
It
is against this background that Water for People India’s Water User Committees
(WUC), is an important step in the right direction.
Water
for People India: Everyone Forever Model
Water for People
(WFP) India’s Everyone Forever Model
(implemented in alignment with WFP global vision and mission) has inclusivity
at its core. Specifically, the impact model takes a holistic and
multi-stakeholder approach to strengthen the Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH)
ecosystem for sustainable and scalable impact. Since beginning its operations
in 1996, WFP India’s WASH solutions have positively impacted more than one
million people in India, through working in collaboration with relevant
partners in the public and private sectors and NGOs, among others. In
particular, WFP India’s extant WASH initiatives across key blocks in West
Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra, are implemented in alignment with the Government
of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (2014) and
Jal Jivan Mission (2019)
mandate for a bottom-up approach to sustainable change.
Water
User Committees (WUC): A community-based approach to water governance and water
resource management
Structure
The WFP India WUCs
are built on a community-based approach to change, with one WUC for each water
point. WUCs generally comprise seven (7) to fifteen (15) members, from the specific
households that use the water point. Three (3) office bearers are elected for a
term by the WUC, from within the community.
Capacity Building
The WFP India
project teams provide WUC members with formal and informal capacity development
opportunities on a range of skills including, operation and maintenance,
maintaining accounts (income and expense on various heads, handling petty cash,
etc.), organizing and minuting meetings and liaising with jalabandhus and Panchayati
Raj Institutions (PRIs). There is also evidence of cascading of this learning,
as WUCs who are trained provide technical support to their PRIs and Village
Water Sanitation Committees (VWSCs).
Specifically,
WUCs perform the following key functions:
- Ensure
Operation and Maintenance of the water point
- Tariff
setting and collection
- Minor
repairs of the water point
- Maintain
cleanliness around the water points
- Liaise
with the Jalabandhus
for repairs of water points
- Liaise
with the panchayat for resource allocations for major maintenance work (to
cover the cost of labor and materials)
- Management
of funds, including payment to hand-pump operators
- Scheduling
and leading monthly meetings to discuss tariff collection, water supply
operations and management
Women as agentic change
makers
WFP India has formed
eighty-three (83) WUCs since 2019 in Birbhum District of West Bengal, comprising
a total of nine hundred and thirty-one (931) members. Four hundred and eighty-two
(482) members out of the 931 are women (53% of the WUCs). Further, twenty-five
(25) WUCs have more than sixty percent (60%) female representation and eleven (11)
WUCs currently have more than 70% female representation, with some WUCs being
fully comprised of, and led by, women.
The bottom-up
change model as implemented through the WUCs, is built on the paradigm of
opportunity creation for exercising leadership amongst women, and enabling the
same through continuous capacity building, across a range of functions. Evidence
from the field indicates an increased sense of ownership and commitment amongst
these women, transforming them from powerless recipients to agentic designers
of change, within their homes and communities.
Rebati Pahariya,
a tribal woman from Kalyanpur Adivasi Para, states ‘The water point and the community meetings have motivated me. I am now
confident in public speaking and have participated in para baithaks with the
panchayat members’.
SK Sahanaz, a
local panchayat member, from Hajratpur Panchayat, remarks ‘There has been a change among people of Kalyanpur Adivasipara’, ‘(they)
have voiced their needs for the first time in last Gram Sabha. In January 2020,
WFP provided a water point here and formed and trained a WUC. The motivated
members of the newly formed WUC were instrumental in sharing their needs for a
water connection in the Gram Sabha, which was duly acknowledged, and in October
2020 a community tap connection was provided.’
Evidence from another constituency (Khoyrasol)
indicates that a total of eighteen (18) WUCs have taken action in the past six
months alone, to improve water supply. Further, five WUCs in Rajnagar reported
an improvement in water supply since they were constituted, with all having
levied token tariffs.
The holistic
impact on water resource management is also evident as per feedback from WFP
India partners on the ground, who note that the WUCs meet two conditions for improved
water resource management. The first is through the collection of water tariffs
from the beneficiaries (local villagers of that community) to cover the cost of
operation and maintenance, thereby developing a sense of ownership, as well as
greater efficiency and accountability towards the assets installed in their
locality. The second is an increase in the participation in decision making
leading to more sustainable water usage and more equitable sharing of benefits,
contributing to overall wellbeing and resilience of the communities involved,
with women at the heart of this transformation.
Conclusion:
Since women are
disproportionately affected by lack of access to WASH facilities their
involvement in key decisions related to water resource management is necessary
for achieving gender justice in water usage. WUC committees are an impactful
strategy for gender mainstreaming water resource management, with long term
implications for achieving both SDD#5 and SDG#6.5.1 goal. It is evident that WUC
provides opportunities for agency creation, through education and
skill-building, which then acts as a conduit for their engaged participation at
the community level, with direct and indirect impacts on their continued
empowerment. In addition, empowered women who understand the significance of
WASH will accelerate behavioral change at home and in their communities, thereby
creating a multiplier effect for continued achievement of gender parity across
the various interrelated SDGs.
