How Fares the Well? A Study of the Interstices of the Welfare State: Bharati Sarabhai’s The Well of the People (1943), Mahasweta Devi’s Jal/Water (1976), and Vinodini’s Daaham/Thirst (2005)

Tutun Mukherjee

SAGE Open, 2017, vol. 7, issue 3, 2158244017723953

Abstract: The essay examines India’s journey from “colonialism†to “post-colonial awareness.†It also explores the ideals of the Republic and their fulfillment as seen in India as a nation founded on the principles of a welfare state. Discussion of three selected texts explores the connections between water management and social welfare to instantiate the obstacles in India’s aspirations as a functioning welfare state as well as narrativizing resistance built in the interstices of society against caste hegemony and power politics. One instance is access to or denial of the life-sustaining element, water. Interestingly, Rabindranath Tagore’s 1922 play Muktadhara/Free Current conveyed a percipient warning about politics of control over water. The chosen texts, Sarabhai’s The Well of the People , Mahasweta Devi’s Jal/ Water, and Vinodini’s Daaham/ Thirst, besides highlighting the politics of “hydro power,†also portray the deep and mystical relationship between water, ecology, and gender. I argue that India as a welfare state would obviously benefit from gender sensitization of its developmental policies, especially regarding water management if women’s views are taken into serious consideration.

Keywords: republic; water; ecology; gender; caste; Bharati Sarabhai; Mahasweta Devi; Vinodini; Tagore (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017723953 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:7:y:2017:i:3:p:2158244017723953

DOI: 10.1177/2158244017723953

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().