Being a girl in the so-called male dominated society, she has the routine work of collecting drinking water before going to school and after coming back from school. This is a common picture in most of the parts of rural Orissa. And in many cases, girls of rural Orissa are also not allowed to schools to meet the water requirement of the family.

A woman with a massive, 20-litre aluminium pitcher full of water placed firmly on her head along with holding another 15-litre bucket full of water and crossing kilometers on the odd trek to her village is a picture often encountered in the rural Orissa. But we just can not imagine a picture that ‘a man putting even a small pitcher on his head and walking just meters to his residence’. It is just a joke and our mind is not permitting us to think it as a reality. This is just a snapshot of the derisory of women in Orissa, who have to go to collect such an elementary need like water.

When the so called developmental voices are raised on issues like ‘gender equity’, the obvious mindset of our society is yet to think of an alternative that will at least help towards ensuring gender equality. We all know that it is the duty of female member of the family to meet the water requirement for drinking and domestic purposes. And when we talk about reducing the burden of women in this regard, we always think of reducing the distance of the source and we advocate for provisioning of water source at accessible location. But we never think of bringing change to so-called social practice and breaking the trend that ‘collection of water is a designated task of female – irrespective of age and physical ability’. It is so obvious in our society that even women are not able to imagine that male will collect water for drinking and domestic purposes. They say that ‘male are not made to work by bending their waist and fetching of water is such a task’. So it is naturally the duty of the female members of the family.

But when collection of water for drinking and domestic purposes has some commercial aspect, we can find male are doing that and nobody bothers about ‘bending the waist’. [Depletion of ground water and draw-down of tube-wells is now a days a common picture in Orissa. In many parts, people walk kilometer to collect water. But in upward mobility of our society and mushrooming of the semi or peri-urban areas, it is just not easy and a matter of shame for many up-warded families. Here a business has grown substantially – selling of water to those families.]

Looking at this picture, we just can not say that it is not acceptable to reverse the role in collection of water for drinking and domestic purposes.

In countries like China, where density of population and economic conditions are identical to India, male members of family are well engaged in collection of water for drinking and domestic purposes. But when the same thing is visualised in India, we just can not see any reality in it. When we look the difference in both the countries in terms of drinking water collection, we can see that the technology adopted for drinking water provisioning maintains gender equality. What ever the dressing may be, in China everybody can fetch water. But in India, a person wearing jeans cannot pump the tube well. If he can pump, then can not carry the pitcher… and so on.

In India, starting from the design of the source to vessels used for collection, storage and consumption of water for drinking and domestic purposes are designed for females, not males. If we really mean to bring gender equity, we have to be sensitive at each step – starting from installation of the source to operation and maintenance and end use of water.