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Peri-urban water (in)security in India: A review

Vishal Narain
Management Development Institute Gurgaon, Gurgaon, India; vishalnarain@mdi.ac.in

ABSTRACT: This paper provides a review of the literature on peri-urban water (in)security in India. Articles were selected using a mix of a Google Scholar search and snowball sampling. The literature is dominated by the experience of peri-urban water insecurity in a few large cities that grew in response to the neoliberal expansion policies of the early 1990s. Peri-urban water insecurity is experienced in a variety of ways including: weakened access to water commons such as lakes, tanks, ponds and wetlands; increasing competition for groundwater; the physical flow of water from peri-urban spaces to urban centres; uneven access to safe drinking water; and declining water quality. Social and power relationships mediate how residents of peri-urban spaces experience changing access to water sources. A wide variety of approaches to improved peri-urban water security have been put forward by actors such as academics, NGOs, corporations and civil society groups. A gender and intersectionality lens should be used in further research that focuses on the peri-urban dynamics of water insecurity around smaller towns and urban centres.

KEYWORDS: Peri-urban, political ecology, urbanisation, water security, India