'Water Wives': How Lack Of Water In This Maharashtra Village Led To Polygamy

A banned social practice in India is thriving in a small village in Maharashtra, where polygamy is seen as the only solution to water scarcity.

Denganmal is a small village in western Maharashtra, located some 185 kilometres away from the capital city Mumbai.

The village is situated on rocky terrain and has a population of 500. The houses here have no water pipeline connections and the area experiences drought in the hot summer months.

The only source of water in this village is the Bhatsa dam on a river and a well. Both are so far away that it takes about 12 hours to make the journey to and fro.

The journey is an arduous one that leaves no time for household chores.

Marrying for water

It is common for Denganmal men to have more than one wife. They started the practice of polygamy just to make sure their households have enough drinking water.

Most men in Denganmal are farmers. While they tend to the fields, women run the house, cook, clean, feed, and bathe. The problem? There's no water.

In the summer months, the heat is so severe that wells run dry and cattle die.

Leaving daily chores and children alone for so long are risks a lone woman with a house to run is unwilling to take.

So, they came up with a novel yet despicable solution. Marry one more woman.

Reuters

The second wife's only task is to fetch water for the house. Some men in the village have up to four wives, one legal, and the rest three "paani bais", according to an Open Magazine article published in 2015.

In summer especially, they leave home at sunrise, carrying empty vessels on their heads. They walk through fields and mud tracks, up and down the hilly terrain, to a river from where they fetch the water. Each vessel carries approximately 15 liters of water and each woman usually carries two vessels on her head.

In monsoons, the walk is shorter because a well nearby fills up.

Sakharam Bhagat, who has the largest family in the village, married three times. His second and third wives ensure that his household has water to drink and cook. ¡°I had to have someone to bring us water, and marrying again was the only option,¡± said Bhagat, who works as a day labourer on a farm in a nearby village.

¡°My first wife was busy with the kids. When my second wife fell sick and was unable to fetch water, I married a third,¡± he told KalingaTV.

Why do women agree to such marriages?

Water wives have no legal rights over the man they marry. They do not sleep with the man, have no say in household affairs, and do not reproduce any children. So why do they enter such marriages?

Only for respect in society.

Becoming ¡°water wives¡± or "paani bai" allows the women in this village, often widows or single mothers, to regain respect in conservative rural India. When the water wife, who does not usually share the marital bed, becomes too old to continue, the husband sometimes marries a third and younger spouse to fetch water in metal pitchers or makeshift containers.

Reuters

They get a place to stay. They get a separate room and bathroom and are entrusted with fetching water while the first or legal wife manages the household.

Whether it is a boon for them or not is something that does not cross their minds, as long as they are provided for and accepted in the family.

The life of a paaniwali bai is arduous. Despite the scorching sun setting a temperature of an oppressive 40¡ã Celsius and above, a steady stream of women walks to the dam with aluminum pots perched on their heads.

Three kilometres from Denganmal village is also a dam on the river whose reservoir has abundant water.

But pipes take all the water to Mumbai and none is left for the village.

Maharashtra is the third largest state in India. Under the Hindu Marriage Act, polygamy is illegal but Denganmal village has defied this law.

Maharashtra has a history of droughts and the state also reports the highest number of farmer suicides in the country.

Maharashtra has witnessed a seven-fold increase in drought events and a six-fold rise in the frequency of flood events in the last 50 years.

A study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water found that in over 80 per cent of Maharashtra districts (home to 78.41 million), people were vulnerable to drought or drought-like situations, and 10.23 million people were exposed to extreme flood events annually.

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