Fetching Water in Rural India

1. Fetching Water in Rural India Sripad Motiram Lars Osberg Department of Economics Dalhousie University

2. Fetching Water: So What? • Illustrates two linked issues in development: • Problem of organizing collective action. • Distribution of the benefits of collective action. • Development Debates – Relative Importance of Social Capital versus “Traditional” cleavages. • Interesting problem in its own right • Water is a basic physiological necessity. • Minimum for survival – 5 liters/day/person+cooking, washing and sanitation. • Fetching water is physically demanding (UNDP (2005) - 20 litres per-capita, per day). • Time – Scarce Resource – Collecting water takes time away from other activities, including human capital formation.

4. Main Findings • 18.6 % of rural households fetch water. • On the average 47 minutes per day. • Which communities have tap water and who can connect to it? • Household Wealth. • Community Characteristics: Land Inequality, % of SC/ST, Social Interaction time (Social Capital) • Impact of Land Inequality, % of SC/ST much higher than that of Social Capital.

5. Main Findings • Gendered Task: Women do 87% of it. • Household water collection time adversely affects school attendance • Boys (Ages 6-14) and girls (Ages 15-18). • Decrease of 20% in attendance of girls. • Intergenerational implications, since female education affects the next generation.

6. Indian Time Use Survey,1998-99 • Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Orissa, Tamil Nadu. • Stratified Random Sampling (NSS). • Density of Population, Density of ST’s • 18,592 Households. • 12,751 rural, 5,841 urban. • 77,593 persons. • 53,981 rural, 23,612 urban. • Interview Method. • Dairy of day’s activities for persons aged 6+.

7. Indian Time Use Survey,1998-99

8. Time Spent Fetching Water

9. Water Collection by Gender, Age

10. Water Collection by Gender, Age

11. Which HHolds fetch water? • 2 issues, • Locality has supply. • Individuals can connect. • Individual Household Characteristics • e.g. Wealth and Caste. • Why do community characteristics matter? • Organization of public infrastructure provision. • Why difficulty in organizing? - mistrust, divergence of interests. • Novelty of this paper – Direct measures of social interaction can be compared to cleavages of wealth and caste.

12. A Simple Model

13. A Simple Model • TC = FC+ MC+ Negotiation Cost (Mistrust, Divergent Interests)

14. A Simple Model • Probability of supporting infrastructure:

15. Which HHolds Fetch Water?

16. Magnitudes of Impact

17. Household: Summary • Statistically Significant- Wealth Status, Land Inequality, Caste Status, Percent of SC/ST, Social Capital. • The Impact of Land Inequality is much higher than that of Social Capital. • The Impact of SC/ST Percent is much higher than that of Social Capital.

18. Who in the HH fetches water?

19. Who Fetches: Summary • Gender, Disability and Age. • Deeply Gendered Task. • men have a 76 percentage point lower probability than women of fetching water. • A disabled female is 39 percentage points more likely to fetch water than an otherwise similar non-disabled male. • Literacy & Unemployment not significant

20. Implications: School Attendance

21. Magnitudes of Impact

22. School Attendance: Summary • Statistically Significant: Presence of Literate Adult Females, Household Water Collection time. • Move from Average to No Water Collection implies increase in school attendance probability • 19.8% (Girls 15-18) • 8.9% (Boys 6-14).

23. Conclusions & Implications • Barriers of Wealth, Caste, and Class are the most important determinants of access to water. • Social Capital matters, but has relatively small impact. • Inequality in wealth, intra-family inequality, and intergenerational inequality are all linked through time implications. • Redistributive policies (e.g. Land Reform) can make a huge difference.