Postcards From The Edge: Nepal - Water Scarcity
The streets of Kathmandu swell under the weight of the monsoon. As the water boldly surges down broken roads, rickshaws and motorbikes swerve in their trajectories, women hurry under vibrant umbrellas, and chess players become distracted by the cacophony of rain on their corrugated metal roofs. The streets are in a state of liquid transit and it appears visually ludicrous to imagine that in this moistened capital, women are queuing for hours for water, whilst young boys fill plastic bottles in filthy drains and the public taps are but mouths of arid stone.
But this apparent contradiction is the reality of Nepal and it reiterates one of the most tragic aspects of underdevelopment; the existence of plentiful resources and a lack of infrastructure to use them. 
In fact, Nepal is the second richest country in terms of natural water resources, a statistic which makes the present scarcity incomprehensible. I asked Dr Laxmi from my host family to explain why this has happened in Kathmandu: “The problem is that we do not have systems to collect and hold the water. There used to be enough water in Kathmandu, but because of rapid increase in population in the city, we do not have the water facilities to cope.”
Water scarcity primarily affects women. It is women and girls who have to collect water as they are responsible for ensuring that the family have sufficient supplies for drinking, washing and cooking. It is for this reason that many women in Nepal have to dedicate hours of their day to the task of queuing for water or collecting it from non-sanitised sources.
I had the opportunity to speak with a 12 year old girl called Rabita; she told me: “I have to go with my mother to collect water every day from a well in the city. We have to walk for over an hour. I have to miss some of my lessons at school because my mother cannot carry the heavy water alone. If we do not go, we will have nothing to drink and we can’t cook food.”
"Dalit women have been condemned to the lowest strata of Nepal’s wretched caste system and their access to water reflects the intolerable discrimination they face in everyday life."
The journey that women have to make looks agonising; they carry large amounts of water in containers on their heads which are held on by a scrap piece of material. Their backs are hunched over as they walk, and the strain is carved on to their faces as they look forcefully to the ground. But to further their struggle, many women do not have access to clean water at the wells and ponds that they visit. Some of the water supplies are near to septic tanks and waste pipes which contaminate the water. There was even a recent report of arsenic poisoning from a communal water supply in the Nepali media. It was said that many locals suffered from tragic and severe health conditions as a result.
Yet still, there is an ever more appalling case of suffering in the plight of water scarcity - that of the Dalit women. Dalit women have been condemned to the lowest strata of Nepal’s wretched caste system and their access to water reflects the intolerable discrimination they face in everyday life. Bandita Shresta works for an NGO in Nepal and explained that, “In Nepal the Dalit caste were known as the ‘untouchable’ caste… this is gradually changing, but the stigma still remains and even now, some people do not want any Dalit touching anything that they are to eat or drink. In some of the villages you still hear of Dalit women being denied water from wells and ponds that people from higher castes drink from.”
Some governmental efforts are being made to alleviate the effects of water scarcity on the population of Nepal. There is progress towards a pipeline which will supply water to Kathmandu from one of the largest natural supplies in the north of Nepal. This work at state level is necessary to ensure that people have a basic right to water and sanitation; but also, it must happen to prevent private water companies from dominating a market which is in devastating need of regulation. For private companies work on the basis of profit, and private companies can only ensure the facilitation of water access to those who can afford it; for those who cannot, there may be even further neglect since the role of the state in the supply will be minimised.
Words and photo: Chloe Boulton
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