Landscapes of Water in Delhi: Negotiating Global Norms and Local Cultures

Abstract

The first section of the paper looks at the development of the historic walled city in the seventeenth century, when the pre-modern hydrological landscape included a system of underground canals, surface canals, stepped wells, ponds, tanks, and household wells. The second section examines the transformations under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century with the introduction of piped water supply, water closets, and sanitary engi- neering. In addition to the engineering skills and funds required to put the new systems in place, these new technologies required a rationalized and efficient legal and administrative apparatus to deliver them. Not only was the knowledge not local, but the institutions and administrative mechanisms they required were also imposed as an import. The third and fourth sections look at two different post-colonial (post 1947) landscapes of Delhi. The third section focuses on the rapid prolifera- tion of slums and squatter settlements in the city and conflicted efforts by the state and community development agencies to improve water and sanita- tion provisions for these settlements. The fourth section looks at the recent mushrooming of private townships devoted to global corporate offices and housing for a new generation of global corporate elites. Large-scale devel- opment projects such as DLF City or Gurgaon in metropolitan New Delhi, were established on agricultural land and depend heavily on groundwater that is now at a perilous low in the entire urban area of Delhi. Through a historical perspective on Delhi’s development, I identify five key transformations in the cultural landscape of water: (1) the geographies of access, (2) the technologies of extraction and distribution, (3) the socio- economic organization of water, (4) institutional structures and governance mechanisms, and (5) water’s symbolic significance.