One of the major changes in the water sector over the last few decades has been the enhanced thrust on institutional reforms, including the increasing recognition of the bottom-up approach to management as against the techno-centric top-down one. At the heart of this lies the concept of greater inclusiveness of all stakeholders, including women and people lower in socio-economic hierarchies. Hence the greater need of understanding their differential needs. A need to integrate gender and equity concerns in the water policy discourse stemmed from two facts: first, that women are the primary collectors of water and also responsible for health, hygiene and sanitation at the household level; second, that historically the above work has been seen as non-productive and women have not had adequate representation in decision making around water. So when water becomes a scarce good, the more privileged inevitably find ways to maintain access. In scarcity situations, access becomes tightly controlled whether it is food or water.
This paper deals with the ways in which gender and caste identities marginalise particular groups from access to water in a village in periurban Hyderabad, India. It shows how the intersection of gender, caste and water issues determine allocation and access to water at the household level, in a village influenced by rapid urbanisation. Relying on a primary survey that collected gender and caste disaggregated data, this paper shows socially differentiated perceptions for water access and use and how they shape vulnerability to water insecurity and adaptation. The gender and caste inequity in access to water in the village is not an isolated case but part of the larger process of ‘apolitical’ water reforms in India that chooses to ignore gender and caste inequalities and therefore misses to reach the last person.