India's Conflicted Relationship With Its Water Resources Via Kaveer Rai's Telling Photos

Water is one resource that is both uniting and dividing, it just depends on how you look at it. As human beings, our reliance on water for survival is universal, and unites us all on a basic level. On the other hand, the water resources that are made available to us are cloaked with such disparity that water can easily be considered one of the largest dividing factors in society.
Our country is currently facing one of the worst water crises in a decade, which points to the urgent need to conserve and protect our lakes, rivers, ground water, and so on, as well as be conscious about our daily usage. Highlighting these resources and the vital role they play in our lives, from drinking, bathing, and washing clothes and utensils to irrigation and more, photographer Kaveer Rai’s lens captures the many varying yet unique aspects of human beings relationships with both urban and rural water.
As he sees it, “Today we live in an overpopulated society and have hands on all acquirable water resources, hence there is nowhere to go, and if this does not scare you and force you to act on over usage and contamination of water, then the future is just a myth.”

Statistics and numbers are one way to go to highlight this problem, but a visual narrative on the same is equally important to make it real and relatable for people. As Rai explains, “Humans seem to have this tendency of not being cautions of things that don’t hurt them immediately, we don’t seem to realise how closely we are knit with water and that is probably one of the most primary relationships we have with nature.”
Rai’s black-and-white photographs showcase the extremely close relationship that people share with the water bodies around them with a glaring simplicity, bringing into focus the extent of human dependence on a resource that is fast-depleting. And while the images themselves don’t portray the many layers that make up the issue as directly as one might imagine, the range depicted is undeniable right from water pollution, boating and fishing to rain water and even portable water in matkas. Scroll down for a look at his take on the country’s water resources, and the conservation need of the hour this ‘World Water Day’.