Socio-spatial Infrastructures: Drinking Water Supply and Formation of Unequal Socio-technological Relations in Rural Southern Bihar

This paper explores the social and spatial implications of drinking water infrastructures in rural southern Bihar. Hardiya, a multi-caste and multi-religion village, has a complex social arrangement. This village consists of original households, households resettled due to dam construction, and households resettled due to excessive fluoride contamination in groundwater. Excessive fluoride produces incidences of fluorosis among households, and historically, households have low access to clean drinking water. In response to the drinking water and public health crisis, multiple state, non-state, and transnational institutions intervened in Hardiya to provide safe technologies and infrastructures for clean drinking water. These twenty years of interventions have brought different technologies, institutions, and actors together to supply drinking water. However, these schemes are functioning inadequately on the ground, and access to clean water remains a big question amidst the development of drinking water infrastructures in Hardiya. This paper explores the dialectical relationship between drinking water infrastructures and social spaces, how both shape each other, through which assemblages, and what it renders. It explores the uneven outcomes of this technological intervention across different socio-spatial groups in Hardiya. Firstly, it examines how drinking water infrastructures arrange social spaces at the village, settlement, cluster, and household level. It further examines the changing nature of drinking water services and infrastructures in Hardiya and how various drinking water programmes incorporating multiple institutions, organizations, actors, and social groups arrange and settlement patterns in the village. Moreover, it examines how different social groups, with variable access to power, access water for their daily needs in the face of diversity in technologies, infrastructures, and responsiveness of local state actors. Using Political Ecology and Critical Geography frameworks, this paper argues that drinking water infrastructures and services, mediated by institutional and social actors, produce uneven access, power arrangements, and socio-technological relationships.

本研究探讨印度比哈尔邦南部农村地区饮用水基础设施的社会与空间意蕴。哈里亚（Hardiya）是一个多种姓（caste）、多宗教的村落，社会结构复杂。
该村住户涵盖原生定居户、因大坝建设搬迁的移民户，以及因地下水氟化物超标而搬迁的移民户。地下水氟化物超标会引发氟中毒（fluorosis）病例，且长期以来当地居民获取洁净饮用水的途径十分有限。
为应对饮用水安全与公共卫生危机，国家、非国家及跨国机构先后介入哈里亚村落，为其提供洁净饮用水相关的安全技术与基础设施。
二十余年来的各类干预举措整合了多元技术、机构与行动主体，为村落提供饮用水供给服务。
但此类项目在实地落地时运行效果欠佳，即便在饮用水基础设施建设推进的背景下，当地居民获取洁净饮用水的问题仍未得到妥善解决。
本研究探讨饮用水基础设施与社会空间之间的辩证关系：二者如何相互形塑、依托何种组合体实现互动，以及该互动催生了何种结果；同时探究此次技术干预在哈里亚不同社会空间群体中产生的不均衡发展结果。
其一，本研究考察饮用水基础设施如何在村落、聚居区、片区及住户层面重塑社会空间格局。
其二，本研究进一步剖析哈里亚地区饮用水服务与基础设施的演变特征，以及整合多元机构、组织、行动主体与社会群体的各类饮用水项目如何塑造村落的聚居格局。
此外，本研究还考察在技术、基础设施各异，且地方政府行动者响应程度不一的背景下，拥有不同权力禀赋的社会群体如何获取日常用水。
本研究采用政治生态学（Political Ecology）与批判地理学（Critical Geography）的分析框架，提出：在机构与社会行动者的中介作用下，饮用水基础设施与服务会催生不均衡的用水获取途径、权力结构以及社会技术关系。