Political ecologies of water capture in an Indian 'smart city'

Abstract

The historical water catchments of India’s capital city were foundational to the flourishing of settlements that spanned centuries. Today, those water features are held up as ‘wise’ models of water stewardship for the people who criticise the Indian government’s water management shortcomings. This article investigates historical imaginations of infrastructures past with attention to how their example leads to demands for ‘smart(er)’ water management regimes. It also shows how efforts to revive past water catchments can make meaningful contributions to water stewardship, but that they still risk perpetuating the water access inequalities and middle-class priorities that are identified in a growing body of scholarship on India’s water politics. Since the existing scholarship predominantly focuses on exploitative rural-to-urban and inter-urban water flows, this text argues that water politics – including political ecologies of water – are also poignantly revealed in the study of seemingly proactive solutions such as the expansion of urban water catchments.