Productive Water Use

Domestic piped water supplies are used to water livestock and kitchen gardens, and by potters and blacksmiths in their daily livelihood activities. These are termed small-scale productive water use, and is a "missing" sector in water resources planning taxonomy. There is water for domestic purposes, for irrigation, industry and institutions. But productive water use has remained an "invisible" drain on water supplies.

What is wrong with productive water use? Nothing, really. It is just an expensive input into a process that does not require water cleaned up to drinking water quality. But once started, it is difficult to stop using water for these needs.

Livelihoods are affected by a lack of water: Perhaps more important is what happens when water is not available for productive uses. During scarcities, for instance, human consumption is reduced (by having baths and washing floors less frequently and cleaning utensils with mud or ash). But the livelihoods suffer.

Livelihoods may yield more than water! When women are engaged in some productive activity (e.g., embroidery, as in the Kutch district of Banaskantha in Gujarat), they sometimes will pay for someone to get water from the far off taps, in the event of a failure. Why? Because taking time away from work to fetch water costs more money (in terms of foregone output) than the price of getting water fetched.

Water can stimulate livelihoods: A new water supply system can reduce the time spent by women in collecting water from more distant sources. So what do they do with this time? In many instances, they will simply take it a little easier - and work slightly less hard. But if there was an economic opportunity - say, embroidery, or forestry or NTFP collection - these women could earn income using their newly-released time to work on these new opportunities.

Womens' savings from livelihoods helps the family during crisis: Young women in SEWA's rural development programme in Banaskantha said they hold on to savings as much as possible as a hedge fund against disaster (including droughts) - since the men almost always do not.

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Swajaldhara / Start-up / Planning / Implementation / Operation & Maintenance / Tools and Resources (India)

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