Contesting Water Rights from “Below”

Abstract

This chapter focuses on three cases of local struggles contesting the rights to water and resisting privatization: two of these cases are in India, Tarun Bharat Sangh and the Plachimada struggle and the third involves a coalition of citizens in Stockton, California. The economic dimension of globalization has involved specific attempts by the state to privatize resources and assume that markets will balance the supply, demand, and prices of resources that are viewed by people as a common property resource. This chapter discusses water as a resource that has increasingly been privatized by the state, prompting community-based collective resistance to such policies. Such resistance also involves conflicts within communities because of differential water needs that may be rooted in class and/or caste differences. Community groups—village, town, and/or urban based—have resisted environmental degradation and access as well as control over local sources of water. For instance, in the late 1990s, the Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS) movement in Rajasthan (northwestern India) engaged in the regeneration of the Arvari River and the rejuvenation of traditional systems for water harvesting. By holding a water ‘parliament’ twice a year to settle disputes and conflicts pertaining to control over water resources and the use of pasture land, TBS has attempted to promote democratic governance of scarce water resources. This collective initiative in a developing country like India has similarities to the case of the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition of Stockton (CCCS) in California, which engaged in protesting the privatization of the municipal water supply. Although TBS engaged in mobilizing people in rural areas and CCCS was urban-based, their goals were similar as they challenged privatization and demanded a ‘say’ in who controlled water resources. However, it is essential to acknowledge the role of TBS as a non-governmental organization (NGO), which adds an additional dimension to the local-transnational nexus in challenges to water rights. Unlike the CCCS and TBS, the Plachimada (Kerala state, India) struggle predominantly by Adivasis has involved the conservation of existing resources and protests against the excessive utilization of groundwater by the Coca-Cola Company. As they experienced the depletion of their water resources, local residents came together in 2002 without any formal organization or leader. The local panchayat pursued a policy that differed from that of the Kerala state government and the national government’s agenda to attract and support private investment of all forms. This also shows that the multi-layered structure of state institutions can enable local protests.