Combating the Privatization of Life in a Neo-Liberal Regime: The Fight for Water Democracies in India

Combating the Privatization of Life in a
Neo-Liberal Regime: The Fight for Water
Democracies in India

by: Gavin Raders
in The Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, 2009

Abstract

“Natural” water scarcity is often touted by international banks and trade organizations
as a justification for the wholesale privatization of common water supplies and urban water
infrastructure, giving powerful multinational corporations ownership over the most precious
precondition for Life. Through participatory research, fieldwork, and a critical anthropological
lens, this paper examines two struggles against water privatization in South India: the fight for
water rights in the village of Plachimada against the exploitation and pollution of water by the
Coca-Cola company, and the fight against privatization of the municipal water supply in the
“Silicon Valley” of India – Bangalore - which would effectively cut off free access to drinking
water for the city’s massive population of urban slum dwellers. I seek to deconstruct the notion
of water crises as a “natural” phenomenon by showing how British colonial practices and
the modern Indian State have created water scarcity by systematically destroying indigenous
water harvesting technologies that have long created ecological abundance in village India and
by usurping control and the ownership of water. With the recognition that water scarcity,
ecological destruction, and accompanying poverty are man-made phenomena, I explore the
inverse by arguing that human design systems can instead create local ecological abundance
and economic self-sufficient communities. And it all starts with water: Earth’s most precious
free gift to Life.

To read the full text, go to: http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1095&context=o...