How do we touch water? How does water touch us? 


(Intro) The water systems of India are governed by the cyclical, yet unpredictable logics of the annual monsoon. The monsoon, which begins from the western coast of the Indian Sea, splits the climate of India into dry and wet seasons. At its own time and pace, the monsoon continues to shape our relationships with the land.    

(0:05) The village of Godhavi is located 20 km west of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat. Traditionally, the settlement’s relationship to water has been defined by two adjacent lakes. These lakes provided human and non-human residents with water throughout the year, filling up in the monsoon season and recharging the groundwater for the dry season. 

(0:33) Beginning since 2008, the village’s relationship to water has changed drastically, shifting reliance away from their intimate and decentralized lakes to a regional scale system of canals. In addition, the village slowly replaced its usage of the surface level well with 3 deep bore wells around its lakes. While providing convenient access to water, these new infrastructures have severed the intimate human ties to water and land.

(1:00) These infrastructures are not only changing Godhavi's landscapes and its relationship with water but also are the materialization of global capital and the next frontier of the urbanisation process. The village of Godhavi is among a multitude of small settlements in peri-urban Ahmedabad to feel the effects of urbanization. Although on paper, its jurisdiction/borders remain untouched, the increasing demand for land has turned the village into a contested space between institutional and real estate development, and the traditional practices of agriculture and subsistence farming.

(1:47) The latest large scale project to be developed in direct proximity to Godhavi has been the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, a 1,506 km long high speed railway system linking Delhi to the western ports of Mumbai. This infrastructure is part of a larger set of corridors that plans to connect all of India with its major cities and ports and position the country at the geopolitical scale.

(2:15) The project was announced in 2005, and by 2018 agricultural land surrounding Godhavi began to be encroached by the footprint of the freight corridor. In addition to this infrastructural encroachment, real estate development on the eastern side of Godhavi is beginning to rapidly cut up agricultural land in favor of urban housing. 


Who is this land and water for?
Can environmental logics and capital logics coexist?