ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the eco-feminist emphasis on women's innate relationship with the environment and its translation in development, to the positioning of women as an attractive source of willing labour for repairing the environment. It analyses discourses around policy reforms in the drinking water sector to ground realities of diverse women–water experiences to argue on the superficiality of gender claims and blames in evolving policies. The chapter illustrates the equity benefits of welfare-based and supply-led approaches as well as the neoliberal one have shown a poor understanding of complex gender–caste–water realities. It outlines women's experiences around domestic water in the Kumaon region illustrating how these experiences are nuanced locally for Dalit women. The chapter also outlines how water governance and management has changed several hands in Chuni since India's independence, but there has been little progress in Dalit women's access to water. The project's demand-responsive approach was based on underlying assumptions of community homogeneity and shared water needs and demands.
