Technologies of water control and social management in flooded coastal Bangladesh

This research explores how people of the Gabura Island - a Union of Shyamnagar subdistrict under Satkhira district in Southwest delta of Bangladesh - deals with water scarcity. More specifically, how the social management, infrastructures, technologies and market are shaping fresh water distribution among the Islanders. The southwest delta of Bangladesh is ecologically fragile and socially vulnerable. Climatic hazards like cyclone, tidal surge, salinity intrusion, flood, and river bank erosion are very frequent and these aggravate fresh water scarcity day by day. Adopting political ecology, science and technology studies, anthropology of infrastructures as theoretical framework and based on qualitative interviews, this research provides an analysis of how fresh water scarcity is produced, and how socio-economic differences play a role in accessing fresh water in the community and household level. It also raises questions about the way development agencies like NGOs provide water service to the community. The findings show that NGO driven projects and development assistances sometimes do not bring any genuine change, rather, they reproduce the existing socio-economic differences.