'They Throw us in the Drain and Beat Us’: Water, Care & Caste Politics in Childhood

• In Event: Institutional Failures

Abstract

In this paper, following girls in a Delhi informal settlement, I explore the nexus between the politics of care, caste criminality and water in childhood. Extending scholarship on decolonial childhoods and feminist care politics, while critiquing the “multiple childhoods” framework, I argue that water deprivation is a form of state-induced structural violence that gives rise to micro-forms of gendered violence at the community level. As they negotiate water access, young girls navigate local “fights” for water and complex power relations to meet the care needs of their families. These acts of resistance are not only about the politics of water, caste criminality and survival, but also about dignity and respect

Author

• Ragini S. Malhotra, University of Southern Maine