"The Color of Water" Keynote Talk

About

"The Color of Water" P. Sainath, Founder and editor of People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) Thursday, November 5, 2026 4:30pm ⋅ Lewis Auditorium (G76), Goldwin Smith Hall and Zoom Reception and book signing to follow. Open to all.

Abstract: Water-stressed India accounts for about 18% of the world’s population, while possessing only 4% of the planet’s renewable freshwater resources. This talk addresses systems of water transfer --who controls it, who pays for it, and who goes without—which are critical to understanding water scarcity. Transfers occur between classes, as affluent households secure reliable supply while poorer neighborhoods queue at tankers. It moves between castes, where access to wells and taps is governed by hierarchy rather than need. It moves between regions, as dams and canals serve cities and favored districts at the expense of drought-prone villages. It moves from agriculture to industry, as farmers lose allocations to factories and power plants. And it leaves the country entirely as virtual water, embedded in exported crops and goods. Almost no one discusses who carries the burden of collection: rural women who spend about 150 million working days fetching water, by one widely cited estimate. A new transfer is spreading quickly: data centers, more than half of which sit in water-stressed regions with some states like Maharashtra and Telangana classifying them as essential services, which would put them ahead of households in a shortage. The question we ask is how to forge better paths for the color of future water in India.

An A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program keynote public talk. Cosponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

P. Sainath s an award-winning writer, investigative journalist, educator, photographer, and public advocate based in Mumbai, India. As founder and editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), he advances a body of journalism, archival work, and public storytelling that foregrounds rural experience and interrogates the urban and elite biases embedded in dominant media narratives. As an investigative reporter, he has authored more than 150 in-depth reports on India’s agrarian crisis, published primarily in The Hindu, forming the largest sustained journalistic body of work focused on India’s farming communities.

Sainath’s seminal work Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996) examines the human dimensions of India’s post‑liberalization era through rigorous rural field reporting. Continuously in print and designated a Penguin Classic in 2012, it is widely taught across journalism, economics, sociology, development studies, and South Asian studies, and is regarded as a cornerstone text in rural and investigative reportage. The book earned Sainath the Ramon Magsaysay Award (2007), often described as Asia’s “Nobel.”