Metabolized-water breeding diseases in urban India: socio-spatiality of water problems and health burden in Ahmedabad
Studies on urban metabolism have provided important insights in the material and socio political issues associated with the flow. However, there is dearth of studies that reveal how infrastructure as a hybrid of social and material construct facilitates disease emergence. The paper brings together urban metabolism, political ecology and anthropological studies to examine how the material flow of water is socially constructed and reconstructed through everyday water problems and its health burden in Ahmedabad city, India. The article geo-references the water problems and occurrence of diseases and through interviews documents the socio-spatial characteristics of water problems and health burden in two case study wards. The paper provides a situated understanding of the everyday practices that exposes the water infrastructure through leakages, reveals the citizens desire for better water quality and struggle to gain access to water using diverse‚ pressure‘ tactics. It is this social-material construct of infrastructure that gives structure and coherence to urban space, which spatially coincides with the occurrence of diseases.