Digging Deeper: Deep Wells, Bore-Wells and Water Tankers in Peri-Urban Hyderabad

Abstract

Hyderabad in India is a rapidly growing city and a popular global hub of high-tech and information technology industries. With its aspiration to be a global destination for transnational companies and engine of economic growth for the twenty-first century, it is rapidly urbanizing and expanding outward with intense infrastructure development. With this rapid expansion, the city increasingly witnesses water insecurity, especially in its peri-urban areas. To supply the high-tech and aspirational pockets of Hyderabad, water has been piped and sourced from far-away reservoirs, deep wells, and borewells, as well as through water tankers that collected water from the surrounding peri-urban areas. These unsustainable practices have led to groundwater shortages and severe water insecurity for the ordinary residents living at the edge of the city. Through a grounded understanding based on ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter delves into the everyday experiences of water insecurity in peri-urban Hyderabad. The chapter discusses the context of vulnerability and ways of coping in relation to water insecurity in peri-urban communities. It seeks to give a micro- and nuanced view of rural-urban relationships around water in Hyderabad, in a context of water-related conflicts, privatization and (piped) connections between the urban and peri-urban localities.