





































Ecology, Economy, and Society–the INSEE Journal 6(2): 205-236, July 2023 

RESEARCH PAPER 

Socio-spatial Infrastructures: Drinking Water Supply 
and Formation of Unequal Socio-technological 
Relations in Rural Southern Bihar 

Amit Kumar Srivastwa* and Asmita Kabra 

Abstract: This paper explores the social and spatial implications of drinking water 

infrastructures in rural southern Bihar. Hardiya, a multi-caste and multi-religion 

village, has a complex social arrangement. This village consists of original 

households, households resettled due to dam construction, and households 

resettled due to excessive fluoride contamination in groundwater. Excessive 

fluoride produces incidences of fluorosis among households, and historically, 

households have low access to clean drinking water. In response to the drinking 

water and public health crisis, multiple state, non-state, and transnational 

institutions intervened in Hardiya to provide safe technologies and infrastructures 

for clean drinking water. These twenty years of interventions have brought 

different technologies, institutions, and actors together to supply drinking water. 

However, these schemes are functioning inadequately on the ground, and access to 

clean water remains a big question amidst the development of drinking water 

infrastructures in Hardiya. This paper explores the dialectical relationship between 

drinking water infrastructures and social spaces, how both shape each other, 

through which assemblages, and what it renders. It explores the uneven outcomes 

of this technological intervention across different socio-spatial groups in Hardiya. 

Firstly, it examines how drinking water infrastructures arrange social spaces at the 

village, settlement, cluster, and household level. It further examines the changing 

nature of drinking water services and infrastructures in Hardiya and how various 

drinking water programmes incorporating multiple institutions, organizations, 

actors, and social groups arrange and settlement patterns in the village. Moreover, it 

 
* Doctoral Scholar, School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, 

Kashmiri Gate, Delhi -110006; aksrivastwa.19@stu.aud.ac.in  

 Professor, School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, 
Kashmiri Gate, Delhi – 110006; asmita@aud.ac.in  

Copyright © Srivastwa and Kabra 2023. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 

NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.990  

 

mailto:aksrivastwa.19@stu.aud.ac.in
mailto:asmita@aud.ac.in
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.990


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [206] 

examines how different social groups, with variable access to power, access water 

for their daily needs in the face of diversity in technologies, infrastructures, and 

responsiveness of local state actors. Using Political Ecology and Critical Geography 

frameworks, this paper argues that drinking water infrastructures and services, 

mediated by institutional and social actors, produce uneven access, power 

arrangements, and socio-technological relationships.  

Keywords: Drinking Water Supply, Infrastructure Assemblage; Geography and 

Technology, Political Ecology, Southern Bihar. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

On 28 July 2022, while returning from a day of fieldwork in the village of 

Hardiya, I was looking for a water source to fill my empty bottle. The 

scorching heat had dehydrated me and propelled me to obtain water from 

nearby households. At the household I went to ask for water, I encountered 

Kavita Devi. On my request for drinking water, she asked me to sit down 

and told her younger daughter to bring water for me in a lotah (a brass or 

steel water jug) from their hand pump. Kavita Devi, who looks after her 

five children, shared with me that her husband was a migrant labourer and 

visited home only once or twice a year; in his absence, she was the head of 

the household. Soon after, her daughter fetched me some water. I was 

amazed and speechless when I saw the water: it was filthy, and micro-red 

residual particles were visible in it in enormous quantities. I asked hesitantly 

whether the tap water connection had yet to reach their household. Kavita 

Devi replied that her household has a tap water connection but does not 

receive water regularly. She said that at the time of setting up the tap water 

connection, the plumber had left the pipe open in the middle of the road, 

saying that the government had only provided that much length of pipe per 

household. Further, her household was located on higher ground, making 

access to piped water difficult. She quoted these reasons to justify their 

dependence on a hand pump.  

I could not decide whether I should drink the water. I drank it, hesitantly, 

and asked Kavita Devi whether this water affected their health. She said 

that most of her family members merely faced colds and fever at times but 

that her elder son suffered from fluorosis and could not walk. When she 

told me this, she was calm and composed. She did not know much about 

fluorosis and that it was a water-borne disease. Consuming fluoride through 

contaminated drinking water had disabled her son’s body, and she had to 

care for him. It seemed customary to accept the occurrence of fluorosis due 

to its prevalence in households. 



[207] Srivastwa and Kabra 

I was frightened to consider how drinking such contaminated water would 

affect people’s health in Hardiya. Over the decades, contaminated drinking 

water has worsened households’ health and livelihood conditions and 

constrained “social reproduction1” in Hardiya (Norton and Katz 2017). 

Further, partial access to safe drinking water ultimately directs people to 

consume contaminated water through degraded technologies and 

infrastructures. 

Like Kavita Devi’s household, many other households in different parts of 

Hardiya suffer from incidences of fluorosis. Hardiya is a multi-caste and 

multi-religion village with a complex social arrangement, comprising 

multiple social groups, including the original settlement and villages 

displaced from the nearby forests and relocated here in the 1980s. Hardiya 

is not only deprived of clean drinking water; low groundwater availability 

(CGWB 2013), barren lands, poor soil quality, and inefficient cultivation 

(O’Malley 1906; Roy Chaudhury 1957) also produce absolute scarcity 

(Scoones et al 2019). In Hardiya, which is situated in the southernmost part 

of Bihar, diversity in topology, socio-economic differences, and 

technological and infrastructural interventions shape access to safe drinking 

water. Over the decades, multiple types of water infrastructures have 

emerged. Today, access to water is shaped by diverse technological 

interventions such as large dams, water treatment plants, irrigation canals, 

hand pumps, borewells, open wells,2 pipes, and taps.  

The presence of fluoride in the groundwater in the village has drawn the 

attention of state, non-state, and transnational organizations. Over the last 

two decades, many state and non-state institutions have intervened to 

provide water for agrarian and domestic purposes. However, focus group 

discussions conducted for this research reveal that these interventions 

performed poorly and failed to produce the desired outcomes. In a different 

tola,3 one can see the remains of technological artefacts once introduced to 

 
1 Social reproduction is defined as daily and long-term reproduction of the means of 
production, which is enabled by labour power and social relations. Social reproduction also 
takes place outside the waged labour–capital relationship, where uneven access to state-based 
provision (e.g., public health facilities) in daily life restricts or enables the production and 
reproduction of material social relations and practices. 
2 Borewell and open well both extract groundwater but at different levels. A borewell is 
installed by drilling a pipe into the ground and is equipped with a pump to draw water. They 
extract groundwater stored at a deeper level. On the other hand, an open well is a big hollow 

place that allows manual access to groundwater. 
3 A tola refers to a neighbourhood usually consisting of a single social group. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [208] 

improve water quality. During the fieldwork for this study, many people 

narrated their interaction with drinking-water infrastructures that had 

initially generated hope of safe and secure water access. However, over 

time, they resulted in disappointments due to poor operation and 

management, unattended grievances, and lack of technical expertise.  

Figure 1: Abandoned Fluoride Removal Cylinder in a Resettled Area 

Source: Amit Kumar Srivastwa 

This study attempts to understand the changing nature of drinking-water 

services and infrastructures in Hardiya. It examines how various drinking 

water programmes incorporating multiple institutions, organizations, actors, 

and social groups shaped and continue to shape the village society and 

settlement patterns. It further examines how different social groups, with 

variable access to power, access water for their daily needs given the diverse 

nature of technologies, infrastructures, and responsiveness of local state 

actors. Through the existing literature in political ecology (for instance, 

Bakker, 2007; Budds, 2009; Sultana 2013; Krause and Strang 2016; Anand 

2017; Goodwin 2018; Scoones et al 2019) and critical geography studies (for 

instance, Ferguson 1994, 2012; Gupta, 2001; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; 

Meehan 2014; Boelens et al 2016; Schouten and Bachmann 2022), this paper 

tries to link site-specific realities of water access with the stated purpose of 

diverse drinking-water infrastructures in policies.  



[209] Srivastwa and Kabra 

The rest of the study is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the 

methodology and describes the study area in terms of social arrangement, 

settlement, and structure of social and religious groups and livelihood 

activities. Section 3 explores the historically produced geography of Hardiya 

and describes how infrastructural and geographical processes have 

configured territories and spaces at the intra-village level in the past. Section 

4 traces how groundwater contamination and the development of clean and 

safe drinking-water infrastructures have affected household water access 

across different socio-spatial groups in the study area. Section 5 further 

explains how the location of drinking-water infrastructures and accessibility 

to local state actors influence households’ access to safe and clean drinking 

water at the inter- and intra-settlement, cluster/ward, and caste group levels. 

Section 6 elaborates on how different households meet their water 

requirements from multiple drinking-water infrastructures and the role 

played by social and economic power differences in this context. This study 

adds to the current discourse in urban political ecology and critical 

geography in a rural location, which views drinking-water infrastructures as 

a tool for arranging uneven power dynamics. Further, it highlights the role 

of infrastructures and local state actors in the making of caste-based 

hydrosocial networks and territories.  

2. STUDY AREA AND METHODOLOGY 

Hardiya is located in the Rajauli sub-division of Nawada district, in the 

southernmost part of Bihar, adjoining the border with the state of 

Jharkhand (Figure 2); the hilly tracts of the Chotanagpur Plateau run along 

its southwestern side. River Tilaiya flows along its western boundary, and 

river Dhanarjay runs along the eastern boundary. Since both are seasonal 

rivers, the water supply ends a few months after the monsoon. The 

southern boundary of the village is adjacent to a wide belt of brushwood 

forest (Roy Chaudhury 1957), which also has some mica reserves that are 

mined at a small scale. The Nawada District Gazetteers (O’Malley 1906; 

Roy Chaudhury 1957) describe this region as water scarce and attribute this 

scarcity to geographical factors such as altitude and rainfall. Census data 

reveals that the actual rainfall in this district decreased by 34% between 

2006 and 2009 (Census of India 2011), creating ongoing risk and 

vulnerability in the daily lives and livelihoods of the people. 

Central, state, non-state, and transnational institutions and agencies have 

implemented multiple schemes and programmes over the decades to 

provide water to the region for agricultural and domestic purposes. These 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [210] 

interventions include building water infrastructures—such as the 

Phulwariya dam and associated canals and piped-drinking-water 

infrastructures, such as Neer Nirmal Pariyojana (NNP, “pure water scheme”), 

a fluoride removal centre and cylinders, and other drinking water 

programmes. A significant attempt to ensure the availability of clean 

drinking water in the area was made in 2015–2016, when the Public Health 

Engineering Department (PHED), Nawada district, in collaboration with 

the World Bank and Jindal Water Infrastructure Limited (JWIL), sanctioned 

a large-scale project in Hardiya to supply water through piped water supply.  

Figure 2: Spatial Configuration of Hardiya 

Source: India Map – Wikimedia Commons, District Map – Census of India, and 

Hardiya Map – QGIS, Authors 

Hardiya becomes an important site for understanding the complexity and 

entanglements of communities, institutions, and infrastructural 

arrangements. It helps examine how the materiality of drinking water, 

infrastructure, and local bureaucratic arrangements shape access to safe 

drinking water. In the following sections, we will discuss how this and other 

interventions have impacted the social groups living in settlements and 

influenced spatial conditions and technological availability in Hardiya. 

As per the 2011 Census, the total number of households in Hardiya was 

1,170. However, this number has increased to around 1,600 in the last 

decade, as indicated by our participatory rural appraisal (PRA) estimates and 

 



[211] Srivastwa and Kabra 

Table 1: Social and Occupational Structure of Hardiya  

 
1 Dominant caste consists of  those social groups which may or may not belong to upper caste 
groups but hold or wield social, economic, and political power in a given context or space. 
2 Scheduled Castes (SC) are those social groups which are historically disadvantaged socio-
economic groups. Other Backward Castes (OBC) are those social groups which are 
educationally and socially backward. 

 

Settlement Social Composition No. of  

Households 

(approx.) 

Key Livelihood 

Activities 

Old 

settlement 

area (S1) 

This settlement has 

different caste groups, 

living in different clusters, 

which are originally from 

this village. 

Dominant castes: Sahu 

and Rajput 

Extremely vulnerable 

castes: Rajbanshi and 

Harijan 

Religious minority group: 

Muslim 

375 

(Sample size: 75 

households; 

20% from each 

cluster) 

Dominant castes:1 

Agriculture, private 

jobs, and formal 

businesses 

SCs, OBCs,2 and 

religious minorities: 

Agricultural wage 

labour, 

non-agricultural wage 

labour, migrated labour, 

informal businesses, 

and 

sustenance farming 

Resettled 

areas (S2, 

S3, S4, and 

S5) 

These settlements are 

constituted by different 

caste and religious groups, 

earlier residing in forest 

villages and rehabilitated 

due to the construction 

of  the Phulwariya dam. 

1,100 

(Sample size: 

220 

households; 

20% from each 

ward of  each 

settlement) 

Dominant castes: 

Agriculture, formal and 

informal businesses, 

and 

private and government 

jobs 

SC, OBC, and religious 

minorities: Agricultural 

wage labour, non-

agricultural wage 

labour, 

migrated labour, 

sustenance farming, and 

private jobs 

Resettled 

area (S6) 

SC households earlier 

residing in a forest village 

and rehabilitated on the 

outskirts of  the old 

settlement area S1. 

50 

(Sample size: 

20% of  total 

households, i.e., 

10 households) 

SCs: Non-agricultural 

wage labour 

Resettled 

area (S7) 

SC groups relocated from 

a cluster of  the old 

settlement due to the 

presence of  excessive 

fluoride in the 

groundwater. 

50 

(Sample size: 

20% of  total 

households, i.e., 

10 households) 

SCs: Non-agricultural 

wage labour, migrated 

labour 

 
Source: Social mapping activity across settlements and clusters 

Note:1Dominant caste consists of those social groups which may or may not 
belong to upper caste groups but hold or wield social, economic, and political 
power in a given context or space. 2 Scheduled Castes (SC) are those social groups 
which are historically disadvantaged socio-economic groups. Other Backward 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [212] 

Castes (OBC) are those social groups which are educationally and socially 
backward. 
 

interactions with ward members. The major caste and religious groups 

include Sahus, Rajbanshis, Yadavs, and Muslims. Table 1 shows that 

dominant caste groups have better employment and income opportunities 

than the Scheduled Castes (SC), Other Backward Castes (OBC), and 

Muslim households.  

Figure 3: Household Percentage of Social and Religious Groups in Different 

Settlements  

Source: Demographic profile through primary data collection 

The village has three categories of settlements. The first (S1 or old 

settlement) consists of those who originally lived in the village, while the 

second (settlements S2 to S6) consists of those who were displaced due to 

the Phulwariya dam construction and resettled in Hardiya (Figure 2). The 

last category (settlement S7) consists of a few households that were moved 

from the SC cluster of S1 in 2004 due to the occurrence of excessive 

fluoride in the groundwater. Thus, Hardiya has residents who originally 

lived here, residents who resettled due to dam construction, and residents 

who resettled due to groundwater contamination. 

This study uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the nature of 

drinking-water infrastructures in the study village. We selected a 



[213] Srivastwa and Kabra 

representative sample of 20% of total households through stratified random 

sampling, covering the village’s different settlements, clusters, and wards. 

The survey questionnaire had five sections: a) demographic profile, b) 

source of drinking water, c) quality and expenses of drinking-water 

infrastructure, d) quality of water supply, and e) exposure to fluorosis. 

Information on the qualitative aspects of people’s local lived realities of 

drinking water access, services, and infrastructures was collected through 

conversations with key respondents and in-depth interviews. Key 

respondents were selected through snowball sampling. Some of the key 

respondents were pump operators, agents from JWIL, and persons from 

households with no access to piped water. Questions in these interviews 

varied according to the respondent. Questions to local state actors aimed to 

understand the trajectory of drinking water programmes, their 

shortcomings, and how they respond to household grievances. Questions to 

households aimed to understand whether they depend on one or several 

sources and what problems they face in accessing drinking water. 

Quantitative data analysis was conducted using Microsoft Excel and Stata. 

Qualitative analysis was conducted through the frameworks of political 

ecology (Anand 2011; Sultana 2013) and critical geography (Dixon and 

Whitehead 2008). The spatial distribution of households and drinking-water 

infrastructures was mapped using QGIS and Google Earth. Oral narratives 

and ethnographic accounts (Ernstson and Nilsson 2022) were deployed to 

establish the role of infrastructural interventions in shaping different 

settlements. Focus group discussions (FGDs) and non-participant 

observations (LADDER Research Team 2001) were used to identify the 

changing nature of households’ interactions with the various drinking-water 

infrastructures and institutions. FGDs were conducted to understand 

problems in accessing safe drinking water specific to each 

settlement/cluster. 

3. GEOGRAPHIES OF INFRASTRUCTURE: SPATIAL 

CONFIGURATION AND RECONFIGURATION OF 

HARDIYA  

Geography and infrastructure go hand in hand in shaping marginal 

identities and the sense of othering in social spaces. Flowing through 

landscapes and infrastructures, water either transforms or destroys places, 

lived spaces, social linkages, and boundaries, rendering new social, 

geographical, and water configurations (Mosse 2008). Water infrastructure 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [214] 

creates unequal spatial conditions (Meehan 2014), where households within 

or across spaces have restricted access to water due to the locations they 

live in. Water infrastructures can be seen as “material geographies of 

power” (Gandy 2004; Meehan 2014; Schouten and Bachmann 2022), where 

geophysical, biophysical, ecological, temporal, and spatial conditions shape 

the contested relation between communities, water infrastructures, and 

powerful state and non-state actors (Boelens et al 2016). These 

infrastructural, geographical, and social processes produce “hydrosocial 

territories”, defined as spatially bound multi-scalar networks where human 

and non-human entities are aligned and defined through hierarchies 

(Boelens et al 2016). These territories and networks reorient the landscape 

and produce new values and meanings (Ferguson 1994), inclusion and 

exclusion (Boelens et al 2016), development and marginalization (Björkman 

2015), and benefits and burdens (Appel, Anand, and Gupta 2018), which 

often generate precarious conditions for households.  

In the mid-1980s, the irrigation department of Bihar constructed the 

Phulwariya dam near Hardiya to impound water from the Tilaiya river to 

improve water supply, agricultural conditions, and associated livelihoods.  

Figure 4: Landscape Change in the Resettlement Area Between 2006 and 2011 
Source: Google Earth 

However, the Phulwariya dam displaced many households from the forest 

villages and destroyed the associated ecologies. The irrigation department 

resettled all of these villages in the remaining parts of Hardiya on the side of 

the Dhanarjay river. Between 1981 to 2011, the number of households in 

Hardiya increased from 100 to 1,170 (Census of India 1981, 1991, 2001, 

2011). The rapid growth of the population created resource scarcity, as 

every household required forest and water resources to support their 

sustenance farming and domestic requirements. Dam construction 

eventually created contestation among resettled households who depended 



[215] Srivastwa and Kabra 

upon Dhanarjay and the nearby forest to build and sustain their new 

habitat. The question of water remains the same, as Dhanarjay does not 

provide water in all seasons, and only those living on the river’s banks can 

access water from it. Moreover, canals flow through the old settlement area, 

restricting resettled communities’ access to Phulwariya dam’s water. Figure 

4 shows that the landscape of Hardiya changed drastically after the 

resettlement. The forest resources in the resettlement area have been 

reduced, and the river dried out in a short period. Over the years, 

deforestation—due to household demand for fuelwood and commercial 

tree-felling—and riverbed mining for stone and sand have caused siltation 

in the riverbed. 

Most households in the resettlement area belong to SC and OBC groups 

(Figure 3) who relocated from an upland forest area to the plains of 

Hardiya. Earlier, these households depended on forests for resources such 

as fruits, wild meat, firewood, and fodder for their livestock. Displacement 

and resettlement impacted resource accessibility adversely. The SC 

households in resettled areas live in kaccha houses.4 Most generate their 

livelihood by working as labour (non-agricultural and migrant). Women in 

these households spend a large part of their day collecting firewood from 

the forest area and caring for livestock. Resettled communities were 

promised to receive a fair amount of land in compensation but they actually 

received very little land for house construction. People in the resettled areas 

also narrated that the irrigation department provided different land amounts 

to different households, which was opposite to the proposed 

compensation.  The resettled parts of the village are barren and undulating, 

with little scope for agricultural activities. During the social mapping activity 

across the resettled clusters, people reported that the land they received 

from the government was not enough for their living requirements. As 

families grew, the land was distributed among kin, and living spaces became 

congested. Those with fewer household members retained some land for 

sustenance farming. A resident of resettlement area S3 said that his 

household had a very good amount of land earlier, but after displacement, 

the state government had provided them with minimal land. He further 

narrated, 

We did not get a good amount of land during our displacement. Our 

forefathers had ample land, but when we came here after resettlement, the 

 
4 Mud house or under-constructed house. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [216] 

state government gave us very little land for subsistence farming and 

household construction. At the time of displacement, Karpuri Thakur was 

our CM, and he promised us government jobs, but we have not got any 

employment security from the state. Now, most of the households in our 

cluster do wage labour or some of the members from every household 

migrate for better employment opportunities. Those with social and 

political capital captured more land through their strong relationships with 

state officials, and people like us can’t do anything about it but struggle. 

Thus, dam construction reshaped the socio-spatial settlement pattern of 

Hardiya. First, at the village level, two spaces and identities emerged: the 

households living in the old settlement and households resettled due to the 

dam’s construction. These spaces are formed based on identity, culture, 

knowledge systems, agrarian and livelihood practices, caste-based 

distinctions, and their access to water. Those initially residing in the village 

had the upper hand in terms of accessing resources, upholding social 

relations, and negotiating with the irrigation department and other 

government institutions. Dam construction, leading to displacement by 

default, created a hierarchy between old and new settlements, where the 

households of old settlements had access to canals from the Phulwariya 

dam and new settlements had to depend upon the river or rainfall for their 

farming needs.  

Secondly, a large water infrastructure such as the Phulwariya dam 

reconfigured multiple social structures and spaces within the displaced 

community, where the location of a house shapes its access to water 

resources and, further, its material conditions. For instance, households 

living near the river can easily access water compared to people living near 

roads. Therefore, households’ social spaces configure access to water; 

simultaneously, water constitutes and reconstitutes social groups as spatial 

entities. Reconfigured spaces further drive people to look for multiple water 

sources to fulfil their domestic needs. Dependence on multiple sources 

creates heterogeneity, wherein households struggle to access water in their 

everyday lives. Hardiya thus appears as a product of infrastructural and 

geographical processes, where socio-spatial conditions configure access to 

drinking water. The material conditions of drinking-water infrastructures 

have shaped the social spaces from above (dam, river, canal) and below 

(hand pump, taps, well) in this village.  



[217] Srivastwa and Kabra 

4. INFRASTRUCTURAL INTERVENTIONS IN THE 

PRODUCTION OF UNEQUAL SOCIO-TECHNOLOGICAL 

RELATIONS 

The previous section demonstrated how past water-based infrastructural 

interventions created socio-spatial inequality in Hardiya. This section shows 

how recent interventions for access to clean water have aggravated these 

inequalities. In 2004, the PHED built a water tank and a network of pipes 

in one of the resettlement areas (S4) to supply clean drinking water to the 

fluorosis-affected households in the SC-majority tola of the old settlement 

(S1). This water tank extracts and purifies groundwater using chemicals 

(e.g., chlorine). In the initial years, households in resettled areas (S3 and S4) 

also accessed water from this tank. However, the water tank reportedly 

stopped functioning within a year or two due to poor operation and 

maintenance. In 2016, PHED, World Bank, and JWIL established NNP to 

provide safe access to clean drinking water to the entire village. This 

programme aimed to provide all households with a paid pipe-based tap 

water connection using water drawn from the reservoir of the Phulwariya 

dam.  

However, in reality, the infrastructure created under this universal drinking 

water scheme produced diverse realities of water access across different 

socio-spatial settlements in Hardiya. The pump operator reported that the 

Bihar government had waived the installation and maintenance cost, 

making the tap water supply free and allowing everyone to use it. However, 

access to clean drinking water from taps depends on whether a household 

has a piped water connection and whether the taps connected to these 

pipes receive water supply. Even though programmes like NNP promised 

water for everyone, the actual spread of pipe connections varies widely 

across settlements in Hardiya. In Figure 5, it can be seen that while 

settlement S7 has universal access to pipe connections, in settlement S2, 

only 53% of households have a piped water connection. The reasons 

include (i) instability in tap water supply; (ii) the quality of water in 

traditional sources of water (hand pumps and borewells); (iii) divergence of 

views within settlements (especially those of mixed-caste groups); and (iv) 

irresponsiveness of state actors to demands for water connections.  

The views of local state functionaries and community members diverge 

widely. For instance, the pump operator of the Hardiya water tank said, 

 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [218] 

Figure 5: Households with Tap Water Connections in Different Settlements 

 

Source: Questionnaire-based, close-ended survey 

When we made the pipe connection five or six years ago, many 

households denied tap water. Many officials from the Nawada district 

came to Hardiya to inform households of contaminated drinking water, 

but households outrightly denied the clean water. What else can we do? 

These people are like that, illiterate and stubborn. 

However, a resident of one of the SC tolas in the old settlement (S1) gave 

the following counter-argument, 

In 2015–2016, at the time of pipe water installation, some people, 

including our ward member, resisted the tap connection and said that the 

installation of pipes would damage their street. People were separated into 

groups and argued over the pipe connection; due to that, no one got the 

connection in our tola (cluster). Now, we have no other option but to 

share other households’ hand pumps. We went to the pump operator 

asking for connections, but he refused our request by stating that he had 

no autonomy in providing a new piped water connection. 

Households in the resettled areas (S2, S3, S4, and S5) echoed this narrative 

of unresponsive local state actors. For instance, some households at the far 

end of S3 have no tap connections and depend on hand pumps for their 

water supply. A resident of an OBC household said, 



[219] Srivastwa and Kabra 

When they (JWIL officials) were installing pipe connections, they said it 

was impossible to bring pipes to our homes. So, they left the pipe 

connection on the main road of the ward and told us to invest our money 

to extend that pipe to our households. You tell us. Who has this much 

money and time to look out for pipes and taps in the market? 

Muslim and SC households in S3 face similar problems and deploy similar 

coping strategies. 

However, access to a piped water connection does not mean access to 

sufficient water. This is because of factors such as inadequate water 

pressure, leakages in pipes, disruption of supply, and breakdown of taps. 

When pipes fail to supply clean drinking water, residents turn to other 

strategies to access water—traditional water sources such as rivers, open 

wells, and canals; private water sources such as common borewells; or 

evolving sources such as private or shared borewells/hand pumps. As a 

result, households in all settlements apart from S7 depend on multiple water 

sources (Figure 7), indicating the insufficiency of the piped water supply to 

serve domestic needs. 

Resettled area S2 has three wards, each consisting of different social groups. 

Households in Ward 3, near the Dhanarjay (Figure 2), are more prone to 

have a lack of access to safe drinking water. This ward consists mostly of 

SC households with tap water connections, but these taps produce no or 

low water pressure. Consequently, they rely upon other open water sources 

such as the river, wells, and hand pumps. Residents of this ward registered 

their complaints with JWIL officials several times. However, a JWIL official 

responded, 

We have acknowledged their complaints and know that taps are not 

producing enough pressure in Turiya and Musahar tola (ward 3, S2). We 

have analysed the situation several times and found that the pipe 

connection from the water treatment plant to their tola is properly 

functional. I think we should make a direct pipe connection from the 

plant to their tola to provide better drinking water flow. 

Due to low pressure in taps, many households have dismantled or 

disowned their tap water connections. The last ward of S2 has become a 

site of abandoned technological artefacts. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [220] 

Figure 6: Abandoned Tap Connection in Ward 3, S2 

Source: Amit Kumar Srivastwa 

Resettled area S2 provides a mixed picture of tap water accessibility, with 

assured tap water supply decreasing along the axis of caste-based social 

stature. Households in wards 1 and 2 receive disrupted supply due to 

leakages or breakage. Households in Ward 1 mainly belong to dominant 

caste groups, which have the option of using hand pumps and borewells 

apart from tap connections. Households in Ward 2 are mostly from the 

OBC and SC categories, and they meet domestic water needs partly through 

tap water and water shared with other hand pump owners. The local 

representative of Ward 2, who also experienced a disrupted water supply 

through his household’s tap, said, 

The pump operator or Jindal officials never visit this part of the village. 

You tell me how we should register our complaints? 

Testimonies and data show that the idea of universal access to piped water 

supply has failed in Hardiya. Two important reasons underlie this failure. 

Firstly, local state actors often quote norms provided by the PHED and 

other state institutions as a basis for refusing tap connection requests from 

underprivileged social groups. Secondly, even where tap connections have 

been made available, the repair and maintenance facilities flow along social 



[221] Srivastwa and Kabra 

hierarchy lines. Local state actors are more efficient in repairing leaking 

pipes and correcting disruptions in upper caste wards than in SC and OBC 

wards. The “modern infrastructural ideal” (Graham and Marvin 2002, 

Breshinan and Hesse, 2020) of universal access to piped water supply did 

not materialize in Hardiya. Instead, uneven provision of tap connections 

and water availability has created unequal relations between 

households/social groups and local state actors.  

However, heterogeneous water infrastructures are shaped not just by spatial 

and social relations but also by water quality. In Hardiya, the presence of 

fluoride has resulted in changes in the settlement pattern and, subsequently, 

shaped household water availability, as described in the later sections. 

Groundwater in Hardiya is contaminated by fluoride, which has made its 

residents vulnerable to fluorosis (see Section 5). Negotiations for safe 

infrastructure and technology underlies the technological relations among 

households and between households and other (state and non-state) actors. 

Infrastructural processes have thus created hybrid (Furlong 2014) and 

contingent realities (Dixon and Whitehead 2008) in Hardiya.  

5. LOCATION OF INFRASTRUCTURES AND 

ACCESSIBILITY TO The LOCAL STATE ACTORS  

The settlements on both side of the national highway have varied access to 

clean sources of drinking water (Figure 2). Households in S1, S6, and S7 

have more sources of clean drinking water than households in the other 

resettled areas. Various state and non-state drinking water programmes 

cover S1, S6, and S7, except one, which cover S4. Only one water tank has 

been constructed in S4 (Figure 2), which was initially constructed for an SC 

tola in the old settlement. The location of a water infrastructure influences a 

household’s access to water, and access differs for households not just 

across settlements but also across different clusters within the same 

settlement. Uneven infrastructural interventions made over time have 

created socio-spatial inequalities in accessing drinking water. All the local 

representatives and dominant social and political actors come from the old 

settlement. More often than not, these dominant actors act as service 

bearers for different developmental programmes at the local level and 

benefit from them.  



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [222] 

Figure 7: Households’ Primary Source of Drinking Water 

Source: Questionnaire-based, close-ended survey 

For instance, the pump operator of the Hardiya water tank volunteered in 

different drinking water and fluoride removal programmes, which allowed 

him to work for state and non-state institutions in Hardiya. Working for 

different institutions simultaneously gives him access to knowledge systems, 



[223] Srivastwa and Kabra 

rules, regulations, norms, networks, and authority, which he exercises at his 

convenience and in line with his interests (Gupta 2018). These systems 

provide expertise and allow him to mechanize the provision of drinking 

water supply.  

As agents of these state and non-state institutions, local state actors use 

their authority to manage, control, and negotiate drinking water provisions. 

The settlements near the water tank and treatment plant have more 

households using tap water as a primary source (S1: 64%; S6: 80%; S7: 

100%). On the other hand, in the resettled areas, households have fewer or 

no clean drinking water sources (S2: 32%; S3: 53%; S4: 50%; S5: 14%) 

(Figures 3 and 8). As discussed in Section 4, households in resettled areas 

receive no or low pressure, and leakages and disruptions further impact the 

water supply. Gaining no or limited access to local state actors further 

pushes households to shift to conventional water sources. However, this 

does not imply settlements with better access to clean drinking water and 

infrastructure have access to local state actors. Uneven water supply 

provision flows on both sides of the national highway, and accessibility to 

local state actors also seems uneven at the settlement, cluster, and 

household levels.  

Only all households in resettled area S7 use tap water as their primary 

source. Our interviews reveal that this settlement was created during 2003–

2004, following a visit by the then–district magistrate, who observed a high 

incidence of fluorosis among the extremely vulnerable Rajbanshi (ST) 

community due to the excessive fluoride contamination of the groundwater. 

The officer offered the affected families a new site for relocation, combined 

with land for housing and secure access to clean water. Several families 

accepted this offer and moved to S7, while others subdivided their 

households to maximize access to new housing. The location of S7, right 

opposite the water treatment plant (Figure 2), ensures timely and adequate 

water supply as well as easy redressal of supply-related grievances, despite 

the socio-economic marginality of the residents. State and private water 

supply agencies showcase S7 as one of the project’s success stories, which 

further assists the community in maintaining their access to clean water.  

A resident of this settlement recalled an incident, 

Two–three months ago, someone stole taps from most of the houses. 

These taps are made from brass and are costly to purchase. So we went to 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [224] 

the Jindal office (in the water treatment plant), and people there fixed it 

within three–four days. 

The location of the water treatment plant enables better water flow and 

pressure and, simultaneously, the spatial arrangement of S7 helps the 

households to approach JWIL officials to register their grievances.  

Resettled area S6 is just behind the water treatment plant (Figure 2). Here, 

90% of households have tap connections (Figures 5 and 7). However, this 

settlement has a common hand pump, a water tank installed by a non-profit 

organization, and a canal covering one side of the settlement. Around 80% 

of the households use tap water as their primary source; if these 

connections experience leakages or disruptions, they move to other 

accessible sources. The other 10% have tap connections but it produces 

leakages often, so they also access water from other households’ taps. A 

plumber in the water treatment plant lives in this tola, and residents pass 

their grievances to higher officials through him. Sometimes, if a household 

is willing to pay for the repair of tap connections, the plumber helps to fix 

taps and pipes without any charge.  

Figure 8: Social and Spatial Arrangement of the Old Settlement (S1) 

Source: QGIS 



[225] Srivastwa and Kabra 

In the old settlement (S1), every tola has a piped water connection except 

one. S1 consists of seven tolas, each presenting a different arrangement of 

socio-spatial hierarchies and access to tap water (Figure 8). For instance, if 

SC households face leakages or disruptions, they can register a complaint 

with the pump operator, as he resides in this tola, and get their concerns 

resolved easily. Next to the SC cluster is SC cluster 1 (SC1), and, as 

described in Section 4, none of the households in this cluster have tap water 

connections. SC1 has a common hand pump, and households access it to 

store water for daily domestic requirements. A few households are 

dependent on their neighbours to access hand pumps. The socio-

technological relations of these clusters differ because of their relations with 

local state actors despite their identity as vulnerable SC groups.  

On the other end of SC1 is located the OBC cluster. The water tank of 

Hardiya is situated in this tola, and the pump operator visits the tank daily 

to record water meter readings and regulate the water supply. Households 

in this cluster can access the pump operator on most days and register their 

grievances. However, people in this tola said that though the pump 

operator resolves their problems, sometimes grievances go unattended. A 

resident, in her interaction with the pump operator, aggressively said, 

How often do we have to tell you to fix the tap and pipes? You never 

listen to our complaints. See (pointing to her household’s tap) how much 

water leaks when we open the tap! 

In response, the pump operator said, 

I cannot provide new pipes or taps to you because it is not in my hand. 

You should go to the Jindal office (in the water treatment plant) and 

register your concern there. I am not allowed to give these materials to 

existing connections. You can buy pipes and taps from the Rajauli market. 

I only can arrange for a plumber to repair it. 

The last tola in the old settlement consists of Muslim households. 

Households here have tap water connections but most are dysfunctional. 

Women in this cluster said, 

We have tap connections but mostly use hand pumps for our domestic 

requirements. We receive powder (chlorine) in our tap water, which tastes 

bitter, so we do not use it much. 

The location of infrastructure and local state actors, therefore, socio-

spatially determines the uneven provision of tap water supply and grievance 

redressal. The location of infrastructure configures the varieties of service 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [226] 

provisions available for different clusters and settlements. Moreover, the 

spatial arrangement of social groups determines the varieties of tap water 

supply available and grievance redressal. Therefore, location and 

accessibility create hydrosocial processes (Banister 2014; Björkman 2015) in 

Hardiya, wherein people, institutional actors, and technologies are arranged 

around the control of water in daily life (Boelens et al 2016). Furthermore, 

drinking water infrastructures embody dualistic political assemblages (i.e., 

formal–informal, legal–illegal) (Loftus 2006; Truelove 2020), where power 

is produced through informal practices and negotiations (Truelove 2019). 

These negotiations produce uneven social and political relations, further 

shaping access to drinking water infrastructures (Mcfarlane and Rutherford 

2008; Appel, Anand, and Gupta 2018). 

Households across different settlements interact with dysfunctional tap 

water daily. This dysfunctionality emerges through the irregular 

maintenance of pipe connections at the household and administrative 

levels. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand how the problems of 

leakages, disruptions, and repair enable or restrict interactions between 

households and local state actors in everyday life (Appel, Anand, and Gupta 

2018). Even though most of the clusters and settlements have tap water, 

damage, disruptions, leakages, and pressure lead to grievances redressal, and 

negligence of the same pushes communities to shift to other drinking water 

sources. For instance, in resettled area S5, where 72% of households are SC, 

only 14% of households use taps as their primary source of water. Most of 

the tap connections in S5 are broken, uprooted, and leaking, and the 

residents use shared or individual hand pumps (63%) and borewells (32%) 

(Figure 7). A resident of S5, who uses a shared hand pump, said, 

At the time of connection, the plumber fitted pipes adjacent to small 

sewages outside our homes. This pipe has no use because it is leaking 

now, and the sewage system brings filth and contamination into the pipes. 

Households in resettled area S4 face a similar problem. However, 57% of 

households belong to dominant social groups and have strong social 

networks within the village. In many incidents of leakages and disruptions, 

these households called the pump operator and asked him to send a 

plumber to fix their taps. Some households only use borewells for their 

domestic water requirements. For instance, a resident said, 

We do not like the taste of this water (tap water). Sometimes it does not 

taste good. Many times we saw these pipes producing white-coloured 



[227] Srivastwa and Kabra 

powder in the water. I think they (the pump operator and other actors) 

put excessive chlorine in the water.  

However, SC households do not have a similar network. For example, a 

resident, who is located at the end of S4, said, 

Our taps have received dirty water for the last six months. I do not know 

where to register my complaint. If you have that information, please 

explain our situation to them (JWIL officials).  

Figure 9: Broken Taps and Uprooted Pipes in Different Settlements 

Source: Amit Kumar Srivastwa 

Leakages and disruptions seem common across settlements, but grievance 

redressal impacts a household’s access to functional taps. Interactions and 

negotiations with local state actors vary between households and 

settlements. These interactions produce uneven provision of tap water 

supply at the inter-settlement, intra-settlement or cluster, and inter-

household levels. Accessibility to local state actors depends on whether the 

household has cluster- or settlement-level representation in the water 

treatment plant and the household’s relationship with them. Moreover, a 

strong socio-political network at the village, settlement, or household levels 

influences access to local state actors. Social groups spatially arranged near 

the water tank or treatment plant at the settlement or cluster level can easily 

access local state actors to register complaints. Households in resettled areas 

S2, S3, S4, and S5 have few interactions with local state actors. Their 

narrative explains that many households either do not know the grievance 

redressal process or do not have access to local state actors. In both cases, 

these households shift to an immediately available water source, which can 

provide them with a stable water supply for their daily requirements. 

Finally, uneven access to safe drinking water infrastructures and local state 

actors constructs multiple hydrosocial territories (Björkman 2015; Boelens 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [228] 

et al 2016) at the village, settlement, cluster, and household levels. These 

territories consist of heterogeneous infrastructures, both functional and 

abandoned, which provide or restrict safe water access to social groups 

based on their spatial conditions and relationship with local state actors. 

6. UNEVEN HYDROSOCIAL TERRITORIES AND INTER-

HOUSEHOLD SOCIO-TECHNOLOGICAL RELATIONS 

Social groups are not just defined, constituted, and bounded by space, 

culture, identity, or class- and caste-based distinctions, water technologies 

existing historically in a society shape them into diverse socio-technical 

groups (Bijker 2012). Drinking water infrastructures are a physical signifier 

of how powerful actors territorialize a specific landscape, where social 

identity is formed and performed through socio-technological relations 

(Dixon and Whitehead 2008). Heterogeneous infrastructural configurations 

are spatially spread through the constitution of different socio-technological 

relations (Lawhon et al 2018). In this section, we discuss how households 

from different social groups negotiate water access when state provision of 

piped water supply fails or is inadequate.  

Household dependence on many water sources in Hardiya is a stark 

indicator of precarity among households belonging to vulnerable sections 

of society (Meehan and Strauss 2015). Water unavailability at the household 

level and disruption in the tap water supply force people to cover long 

distances for their drinking water needs. Dysfunctional and inadequate 

water sources create heterogeneity in water access among households. How 

vulnerable households negotiate with more powerful households and other 

sources for water access is critical to our analysis of hydrosocial territories. 

The uneven ability of different households to obtain the attention of local 

state actors pushes underserviced households to return to conventional 

sources of water or find new alternatives through inter-household 

negotiations, which have wider ramifications. 

A cluster of SC households in S2 from the Turiya community was resettled 

on the banks of Dhanarjay and traditionally fetched water from the river. 

However, water availability in the river has declined over time, pushing 

these households towards other water sources. A Turiya woman, who made 

wooden baskets (a traditional caste-based livelihood), pointed to a 

dysfunctional hand pump and said, 

It is a government (public) hand pump that has stopped functioning for a 

long time. Our household also has a tap water connection, but it gets no 



[229] Srivastwa and Kabra 

water. Not once have we gotten water from the tap. We have no other 

option but to fetch water from the river. We fetch water early in the 

morning and late in the afternoon. However, the river seldom provides 

enough water; sometimes, we have to go to a nearby well to collect water. 

We have registered several complaints about our disrupted tap water 

connection to the person who works in the water tank. He said that the 

government will fix our connections soon, but it has been a year, and no 

one has come to help us. 

Drinking water infrastructures have temporal lives (Anand 2011), where 

minor disruption or damage leads to infrastructural dysfunctionality and 

further pushes households to adopt other strategies. Unlike the Turiya, in 

other social groups, households without adequate drinking water access 

depend on other households or community-level sources to access water. 

The ownership of these technological artefacts is diverse—they can be the 

private property of households, community-level structures, and 

infrastructures belonging to the state and large external non-state actors 

(including NGOs and corporate entities).  

Heterogeneous infrastructure regulates the behaviours of households and 

social groups. Because of their dependence upon other households to 

access domestic water, many residents of Hardiya are constrained in their 

social actions vis-à-vis other community members. According to a resident 

of resettlement area S5, 

We cannot access water from the taps, as last year, the state government 

started constructing a flyover, which damaged the main pipeline outside 

the cluster. Our pipe got damaged six months after the installation, so we 

never utilized it. Now, we share a common hand pump. Sometimes it 

produces a bad quality of water or low pressure; then, we seek water from 

households with borewells. We do not have enough money to install a 

new hand pump. 

Apart from large-scale water infrastructures like the Phulwariya dam, these 

small-scale technological artefacts also shape inter-household material and 

social relations in Hardiya. Some households in Hardiya depend on multiple 

drinking water sources by managing social relations, while others depend on 

one or two water sources by managing their spatial location. Access to 

water infrastructures depends upon the household’s location and how many 

well-managed relationships households have within the village. Access to 

drinking water, therefore, becomes a contested space where households’ 

social relationships form their access to water infrastructure—technology 

becomes a tool to generate power and a hierarchy among the households in 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [230] 

their everyday lives. These social relationships are performed through 

human bodies, spaces, gendered subjectivities, and emotions (Sultana 2011). 

These relationships produce specific moral economies (Trawick 2001, 2002) 

as well as emotional and imaginative geographies (Dixon and Whitehead 

2008; Sultana 2011) within and across socio-spatial groups.  

7. CONCLUSION 

This article brings historical, geographical, developmental, bureaucratic, and 

everyday forms of infrastructure together to understand everchanging 

socio-spatial arrangements and relationships. It uses historical and 

geographical features as a methodological tool to understand infrastructures 

as a socio-spatial process that generates uneven access and power 

arrangements among households and with local state actors at the cluster, 

settlement, and village levels. Infrastructural development in Hardiya came 

as a promise to eliminate absolute scarcity (Scoones et al 2019), but 

inadequate technological regulation worsened the situation, and inadequate 

tap water supply produced a dependence on heterogeneous infrastructures. 

These inadequacies are shaped by dysfunctionality in drinking water 

infrastructures and irregularities in services. By addressing the question of 

resource access and conflict, this article examines the conditions of 

leakages, disruptions, no or low pressure, breakage, repair, maintenance, 

and ruination. These conditions manifest partial or complete suspension of 

tap water supply daily. 

Moreover, suspension or disruption affects the everyday schedule of people 

and opens the scope for negotiations among households and between 

households and the local state. Over time, these negotiations produce 

various relationships and contestations, further rendering socio-political 

networks, hydrosocial territories, and uneven drinking water access and 

power arrangements. The location of infrastructures and local state actors 

further shape the material geographies of power, enabling access to some 

households while restricting it for others. In a complex social arrangement, 

the entanglement of communities, institutions, and infrastructures produces 

unequal socio-technological relationships between actors.  

Scholarship in critical geography (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Mosse 2008; 

Dixon and Whitehead 2008; Meehan 2014; Gupta 2018) views technology 

and space as inseparable characteristics that configure spaces and linkages at 

different scales. This article contributes to this methodology by examining 

infrastructural processes. Oral narratives further help trace household 



[231] Srivastwa and Kabra 

dependence on, and struggle over, spatially bounded heterogeneous 

infrastructures. The existing literature on the political ecologies of drinking 

water infrastructure (Bakker 2012; Anand 2017; Truelove 2019, 2020; 

Björkman 2015; Appel, Anand, and Gupta 2018) mainly discusses the 

uneven power constellation of infrastructures in the urban realm. This 

article examines the assemblage of infrastructures, institutions, and local 

communities in manufacturing uneven access to safe drinking water in the 

rural sphere. It unpacks the divergent outcomes of a state scheme aimed at 

providing universal access to safe and clean drinking water. It finds that 

socio-political networks, infrastructure location, and local state actors 

enable or restrict tap water supply for different social and religious groups. 

This unevenness is multi-scalar and operates at the level of settlements, 

clusters/wards, and households within the same village, such that social 

groups like SC, OBC, and Muslims are impacted by these infrastructural 

processes. These groups often cope by returning to former or conventional 

drinking water sources. It further shows that apart from a household’s 

economic capability to purchase drinking water technologies and 

infrastructures, access to safe drinking water in rural locations can also be 

made possible by shifting back to conventional water sources. However, the 

socio-economic cost of this in terms of drudgery, water quality, and ability 

to resist oppression by more powerful counterparts tends to be high in the 

process.   

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and to 

the copyeditor for her meticulous attention to detail. We thank Dr B. R. 

Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) for providing financial assistance for 

conducting fieldwork. We are grateful to Akash Singh for help with QGIS 

mapping, and to our resource persons, Himanshu, Suraj, and Anurag, for 

their help and support during fieldwork. 

Ethics Statement: I hereby confirm that this study complies with 
requirements of ethical approvals from the institutional ethics committee 
for the conduct of this research.  

Data Availability Statement: The data used in this paper is not provided 
in a repository as the primary author of this research paper is currently 
pursuing doctoral degree. 

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [232] 

 

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