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“If we can’t have any clean
water you can’t either”

In Baglung Municipality, ward no.5, Dhaulagiri Community Resource Development Centre (DCRDC) encouraged a group of Dalit women to establish ‘Deurali Mahila Samuha.’ Within a period of five years the women have taken action to change their life in vital areas. Clean drinking water and a clean environment are among the concrete results of the women’s efforts.

Parvati Kisan explains how the group started to revise the way they and their families were living: “Before DCRDC started coming here we did not know anything. We had no toilets and no clean drinking water. It was very dirty here and we and our children were often sick from contamination. The social mobilizer from DCRDC gave us advice and told us that it was better for our environment and our health to make a hole in the ground. Later they encouraged us to make real toilets with the help of the municipality who arranged the water pipe. We were given concrete slabs from another drinking water and sanitation programme. The labour work we did on our own. We brought stones from the river and cut them to smaller pieces. Three or four women worked at every house to make a toilet. We spend eight to nine thousand rupees ourselves. Had we not got the support each toilet would have cost us fifteen to twenty thousand rupees.”

After making the toilets the women began to consider how to solve the problem of clean drinking water. This was quite a complicated matter. The water to the Dalit families comes from the top of the hill where the upper caste Bahun and Chettri families live. According to Parvati Kisan the upper caste people refused to provide drinking water to the Dalits. They argued that they needed the water for irrigation. This meant that the water coming down for drinking was waste water full of rice and other left overs. This water was evidently not suitable for others to drink.

“This was very unfair. At one time our husbands went there but it only resulted in discussions and no clean water for us. Then DCRDC gave us women the idea and the courage to go there ourselves. So, one day we all went up the hill. We brought sickles and spades and were very firm as we put forward our demand: ”If we can’t have any clean drinking water, you can’t have any water either. There is plenty of water for all of us.”

“It helped. They agreed to share the water and now we do not have problem any longer. We even have enough water for our vegetables,” says Parvati Kisan. Being able to grow vegetables and sell them in the market has meant economic relief to many of the families. A crop can be sold for eight to nine thousand rupees and the families are now able to buy goods and eat food they could not afford to buy before: tea, sugar and a variety of green vegetables.

“Thanks to trainings and support from DCRDC we can now grow and sell our vegetables and keep goats and chicken. Our environment is clean and we do not suffer from vomiting and being sick anymore,” Parvati says.