The dry side of Hyderabad

The tiny community of NBT Nagar in Hyderabad is squeezed into a narrow strip of land, bounded by railroad tracks, a road, a government school and the wall of a mosque. It has just 29 families—25 Muslim and four Hindu—living in one- and two-room single-story shanties with mud floors. Most have lived there all their lives. The men find casual work as day laborers and auto rickshaw drivers, and the women earn money selling vegetables or cleaning streets and apartments. The alleys are so narrow that you often have to step into a doorway to let another person pass. In monsoon season, the houses are often flooded, and snakes emerge from the bushes along the lake shore on the other side of the railroad tracks to crawl under walls into homes. 

In the middle of NBT Nagar, in what I’ll call a wide place in the alley, is the single water tap serving the whole community. Water supply is always precarious. The line runs from the road to the mosque and then to the tap. During the month of Ramadan, pressure dropped because worshippers used most of the water to perform their ablutions. Sewage leaked into the line and residents complained to the imam. In a thoroughly non-discriminatory action (because it affected Muslims and well as Hindus), he had the water line cut, leaving the community with no water and forcing residents to carry water from another tap further along the road. The water board eventually fixed the line, but supply is still intermittent.

“We have water for about one hour in the morning, every other day,” a woman told my UNICEF colleague Carol. “Sometimes 7:30, sometimes 8:30. We never know. We just have to wait.” While we sat on a straw mat on the side of the road with women from the community, others passed carrying large plastic jugs of water on their shoulders. “They would like to join us but they’re too busy fetching water,” someone said. Everyone laughed.

The UNICEF team had joined staff from the community-based organization Basthi Vikas Manch (BVM; literally, Slum Development Platform), which campaigns for water rights in the slums of Hyderabad, on field visits to communities to try to understand why so many people in this densely-populated metropolitan area lack safe, clean water. Predictably, the arrival of outsiders in NBT Nagar attracted a crowd. About a dozen women sat talking with us, with BVM organizer Sunny Rai (his real name, and most of the time he’s smiling) translating from Telugu.

The group fell silent when an older woman arrived. The women shuffled aside to give her the most prominent position on the mat. She said she could speak for the community because she was the general secretary of the local branch of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the ruling party in the state of Telangana. Meanwhile, an official from the human rights office of the state administration buttonholed me to give me her mobile number. Someone had called to tell them that foreigners and BVM organizers were holding a meeting about water in NBT Nagar. They sped to the scene to take over the agenda. What had begun as a meeting with community members had been shanghaied by the politicians.

In densely-populated urban areas all over India, water and sanitation are high on the political agenda. Local politicians make campaign promises to bring water and public toilets to communities, but as soon as the election is over the commitments are forgotten (at least until the next election). In Hyderabad, community members are left to complain to the officials and engineers of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB). Underfunded and stifled by bureaucracy, HMWS&SB is ill-equipped to maintain its existing infrastructure, let alone expand it to serve communities such as NBT Nagar. 

Despite the claims of its local secretary, the TRS has done little to help NBT Nagar residents. After several appeals from BVM, water board officials visited the community.  Residents pointed out that although their dwellings were modest, they all had electricity and paid their bills. Why not water too? The officials agreed to install lines and water meters but reneged a few weeks later when residents could not produce legal titles to their land and houses. BVM reminded officials that the board had provided taps to other slum communities where the legal titles were as iffy as in NBT Nagar. The HMWSSB said it would review and respond. 

No one holds out much hope that will happen. Indian babus are skilled at burying paperwork in the large and dark holes between management levels and functions or rejecting it on technical grounds—an illegible signature, the lack of an official stamp, an ambiguous reference to state or federal statute. Most people, says BVM, do not know their water rights, and even if they do, they lack the capacity to demand them from officials who fear they will lose their jobs if they take any initiative. BVM helps by drafting petitions and occasionally takes a case to court, but there’s a limit to what a small community-based organization can do.

City authorities estimate there are more than 1,600 slums—many of them larger than NBT Nagar—in the metropolitan area with about 12 per cent of the population (more than a million people) living in them. The slum designation provides a useful pretext for taking over land, especially when residents cannot prove legal title. Indeed, the authorities have little incentive to improve services to communities such as NBT Nagar. With property prices rising, private developers are eyeing slum areas. A few hundred yards from NBT Nagar is a modern apartment block with views of the lake. It’s probably only a matter of time before the authorities evict the residents of NBT Nagar and demolish their homes. If the bulldozers move in, the residents will be homeless or forced to squat on land on the outskirts of the city. They will not have the money to travel into the city to work. And they probably won’t have water.

NBT Nagar’s water problems are mirrored in urban and rural areas all over India. At the macro-level, India is not a dry country, at least compared with some African and other Asian countries; per person, India has twice as much water as arid northern China. The problem is that it receives most of it during the four-month monsoon season, beginning in June, and some areas have far less than others. In 2016, after two years of poor monsoons, India faced its worst water crisis since independence. Rivers ran dry, and wells were exhausted; destitute farmers migrated to cities, and some committed suicide. The central and state governments responded by dispatching water trains and tanker trucks to parched regions and announcing new irrigation and water diversion projects. One, priced at $165 billion, would involve 37 links between rivers, most by canals—almost 1,000 miles of artificial waterways.

Such big-ticket projects, touted by politicians, make headlines but fail to address basic problems. Underground aquifers, not rivers, lakes or dams, supply two thirds of the water used for irrigation and more than three quarters of drinking water. With so many wells and pumps drawing water, ground water levels have been falling. In a perverse effort to boost agricultural production, some states provide free or cheap electricity to farmers; this encourages them to pump ground water to flood their fields and grow water-guzzling crops such as rice. In some states, rivers are dammed to provide hydro-electricity, while farmers downstream pray for rain. At the same time, half of India’s villages have inadequate drinking water. Canals built to bring water to urban areas lose up to 70 per cent of their supply.

It’s not as if the water problem is a new one. In the 16th century, the sultans of the Qutb Shahi dynasty built a network of artificial lakes, called tanks, in Hyderabad to hold water. Some, such as the small lake across the railroad tracks from NBT Nagar, remain. Others in prime residential and commercial districts have been filled in by developers. Hyderabad has to pump much of its water from rivers and reservoirs and try to maintain an aging supply system. Every day, the HMWS&SB’s fleet of blue and yellow water tankers are on the streets, delivering water to paying customers and slum communities. Their slogan is “Water is precious—Every drop counts.” There’s no sign that many people, least of all the politicians, take that message to heart.

Inexplicable India

As a Westerner visiting India for the first time, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Of course, you have read guidebooks and watched TV travel shows to prepare for the trip. You know the basic facts—that India is the second most populous country in the world, diverse in topography, ethnicity, language, religion, culture and cuisine. Nevertheless, after you have pushed your way past the hotel and taxi touts at the airport, shooed away the gaggle of barefoot young boys fighting to carry your bags, and settled into the air-conditioned comfort of the official car or the hotel shuttle, India still assails your senses. 

There’s no travel show that can prepare you for the crush of people, cars, auto-rickshaws, hand carts, bicycles and people on the city streets. Your driver is nonchalant about the traffic snarls. “Much worse in monsoon season,” he says matter-of-factly. Street vendors, hawking snacks, newspapers, cheap toys, sunglasses, pens, pencils, balloons, coconut slices, and mobile phone car chargers, move among the stalled or slow-moving vehicles.

When I’m stuck in traffic in Delhi or Mumbai, it’s easy to think that the city’s jams are the worst I’ve ever experienced. On reflection I realize that the traffic is just as bad in most other south and southeast Asian cities. The difference is that in India stalled traffic offers a front-seat view of urban poverty. Beggars with long straggly greying hair, sad-eyed children and women with babies bundled on their backs knock on the car windows, holding open their hands. At one intersection, children perform tumbling tricks on the road. “Look away and don’t open the window,” your driver instructs, hitting the automatic door lock.  You feel a little guilty about ignoring suffering, but at the same time you check your billfold or purse to make sure nothing is missing after the jostling at the airport. The guidebook warned you about pickpockets.

Your car passes rows of dilapidated concrete apartment blocks, their courtyards strewn with trash. Along the roadside and the railroad tracks are rough, single-room shanties, bamboo poles framing rusting sheets of metal, cardboard, tarpaulin and plastic; outside, literally on the street, women are cooking on stoves or open fires and bathing children.

In parks, alleys and under bridges, those who do not have a shanty claim a few feet of grass or dirt for a sleeping space, laying out a blanket and a few possessions. Yet, a few hundred yards further on is a residential compound of smart, high-rent apartments, with an electronic security gate, a guard post and security cameras. Your car passes modern office towers, ornate wedding palaces, brightly colored Hindu temples and plain mosques, and a moving window display of commercial signage, some in comic English. The malls are packed with shoppers; at the food court, they go for traditional north or south Indian fare or sample KFC and Subway, before shopping or heading to the multiplex for the latest Bollywood blockbuster.

You arrive at your hotel, surrounded by high brick walls topped with barbed wire and spikes. At the security checkpoint, one guard opens the trunk to inspect the luggage; another slowly circles the vehicle holding a pole with a mirror, checking the underside for suspicious attachments. At the entrance, one hotel staff member opens the car door and two more carry your bags to the metal detector. The doorman looks as if he just stepped out of the military parade ground or a TV period drama. Six feet tall and well built, with a dark beard, he is resplendent in his yellow turban and tailored white suit with a red sash and ornamental sword. He salutes smartly.

Standing nearby, two less well tailored security guards armed with semi-automatic rifles and perspiring in their flak jackets acknowledge your arrival, although their salutes are more perfunctory. There’s more saluting and door-opening as you enter the lobby and approach the reception desk, where a waiter offers you a welcome drink of watermelon juice. For an instant, you imagine you’re back in the time of the Raj, that you’re a British colonial officer with a small army of staff at your bidding. Then reality returns. You’re in a modern hotel with air conditioning, wi-fi, and room service. BBC World is on the TV monitor, the sound muted.  The low-level muzak sounds familiar, but somehow out of place.  Then you catch the tune. “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow …” Surreal.  The dark-suited desk clerk smiles and gives you your key. “Welcome to the Taj, sir. I hope you have a pleasant stay.”

Statistically, the wealth gap in urban India may be no greater than it is in other countries. To me, the poverty of Delhi or Mumbai seems more apparent, more emotionally draining. The wealth gap in urban India, perhaps more than in any other country I’ve visited, is striking and ever-present, sometimes within the same field of view. In some countries, most poor people are geographically segregated, confined to the outer limits of cities in shanty towns or informal settlements. In urban India, outside the oases of hotels and offices, the poor are with you all the time, often right in your face or following you down the street. Do you hand over that 20 rupee note (about 30 cents) with its image of that champion of the poor, Mahatma Gandhi, to make the woman with her baby go away? How do you know that she’s not part of an organized begging ring?  In India, moral dilemmas await you around almost every corner.

Faced with crowds, poverty, pollution, trash, traffic congestion, and crime, some people find India too much to bear. There’s always a danger of getting sick—from tap water at a budget hotel or restaurant, or from street food. Except in the foothills of the Himalayas, it’s usually hot—in some months, almost unbearably so.  If you’re prepared to take India for what it is—often messy and disorganized, occasionally dangerous and always unpredictable—and put up with unanticipated inconveniences and hardships, you will be well rewarded, and relish its smells, sounds, sights, culture and people.

You may also feel humble, as I do when Indian friends and colleagues start talking about  history, religion and culture. India is an epic of epics, spanning thousands of years—of war and conquest, of the rise and fall of great civilizations, of architecture, literature and art, of migration and settlement, of commerce with Asia, Europe and Africa. I know some of this, but have much more to learn.

Most visitors to India long ago accepted that any generalizations are at best tentative, at worst misleading. There is not one but many Indias. India is not only, as its tourism slogan goes, “incredible.”  It’s inexplicable.