“What water?” exclaims Naseema, about her experience with the Central government’s ₹3.6-trillion Jal Jeevan Mission that aims to provide free, piped water to every village home in India by 2024. Peeved, she waves her free hand — the other clutches a sack of rubbish – to point out her house in Supasi-Azadpur, Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh. A cluster of about 250 houses, Supasi-Azadpur is a segregated slum, or a ‘dera’, on the outskirts of Supasi village. The houses are single-storey, plaster-peeling shanties with the familiar sight of young girls hauling water pitchers from the nearest hand pump. Narrow channels of sewage — black and thick with muck — serve as markers to delineate one house from another. “During the monsoon, it is the worst. Water rises waist-high and we have to wade through all kinds of dirt to get to our houses,” says Naseema, who goes by one name, and makes a living as a rag-picker.
The dera, dominated by Nat-Muslims (U.P.’s Pasmanda Dalit community), as a resident describes it, has never been considered a formal part of the larger Supasi village. The most prominent public building in the hamlet is a mosque that also doubles as a madrasa. The nearest school in the village is 2 km away and the extremely informal nature of employment means that most children spend their day on its premises. “We are used to multiple visits by panchayat and district officials. They promise us water connections. Then there are visits by politicians during elections; that are never kept. What is Jal Jeevan?” queries Muhammad Khurshid Aalam, the imam at the mosque, while intermittently bellowing at the scores of children — some wailing, some laughing, some screaming, some memorising the Quran — to be orderly. “You mean we will get taps and water without paying for it?” he says, his eyes widening.
