Blood spills over water, power across India
FIERCE FIGHTS In the country’s villages as well as urban pockets, disputes over electricity and water trigger clashes, which are likely to increase as the summer advances
public so that’s what he did on that day as well,” said Sharma.
The day’s temperature was running high and so were tempers. At 4.50pm, Gujjar charged into Singh’s office, brandishing a gun. “Neetu said ‘put on the power’. My uncle said he will do that after the storm passes over,’’ Sunil Tomar later wrote in his complaint at Badalpur’s police station. “Neetu started abusing him, my uncle protested, and in response Neetu opened fire at him. Uncle fell down. Uncle’s colleagues and I tried to restrain Neetu but he fired his way out of the gates,” the nephew added. At 5.20pm, Satveer Singh died on his way to a hospital in Ghaziabad.
WATER WAR
In Wazirpur, too, trouble began with “an exchange of swear words”. Three lakh people live in this cluster of three slums on Delhi’s north west periphery and “most crimes emerge from overcrowding,” said Abhishek Bajpai, the local police Station House Officer. Most fights in these slums break out over water.
“We hardly get any from the taps. No one knows when the water will come. When it does trickle out of the taps once in a while, it resembles acid: dark and pungent,” said Sumit Aggarwal, owner of the slum’s only grocery store. The only source of water here is a tanker sent by the Delhi Jal Board at 4pm every day. “The tanker carries a thousand litres of water. Nearly 250 people fight over it every day in this part of the slum complex.half go away without a drop,” Aggarwal said.
The DJB tanker has six outlets for water and the right to plug pipes into those holes rests with those who own pipes and know how to wield the privilege.
“First they will fill their own containers and then allow a set of people to line up after them,” explained Aggarwal, proud owner of a thick plastic pipe that he isn’t shy to show off. On most days, Aggarwal is perched in the middle of the melee to maintain order.
On March 18, things went out of his control. Two young men from the slum, both of them carrying their pipes, faced off over the right to draw water from the tanker.
“One overpowered the other with help from other members of his family.
The sister of the teenager who was getting thrashed went up to her house and alerted her father,” said Aggarwal.
Lal Bahadur, 60, a scrap dealer on a rare day’s leave from work that day, rushed down to the street to save his son. His older son too joined the battle shortly. It was too late, however. “My brother was injured but it was my father who suffered the worst blows. He had fallen on the ground and this entire family was upon him, beating him with their hands, their legs and their pipe,” said Rohit, the older son. He and his brother managed to pull his father out and carry him to the nearest hospital, but Lal Bahadur was declared “brought dead.” Twenty days after the man died in the capital’s first reported death over a water dispute, his younger son, who was about to begin his training as a bus conductor, quietly succumbed to his injuries.
SUMMER RAGE
More bodies may pile up as the summer advances. On May 11, two people were killed, 60 injured and 3,000 arrested in Aurangabad in communal riots triggered by the crackdown by the municipal corporation on illegal water connections.
What’s true of Wazirpur may well apply to India on a broader scale: too many people and a limited supply of the basic human necessities. A study by the Water Resources Institute reveals that 14 of India’s 20 largest thermal utilities shut down at least once due to water shortages between 2013 and 2016, costing the companies $1.4 billion.
In late April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India had become 100% electrified — a village is technically electrified if 10% of its households have power connections — but according to his government’s own data, 31 million households in India remain without electricity.
In a country where conflicts need no more cause, poor and unequal access to water and electricity add a violent edge to everyday life through the endless months of summer. Battles are fought at several levels.
States wrestle with each other over kilowatts and cusecs of electricity and water.
The conflict between Delhi and Haryana over Yamuna’s water spilled out of courtrooms in February 2016, killing 30 people and injuring over 200, when members of Haryana’s Jat community cut off the movement of water to force the central government in Delhi to cede their demand for job quotas.