RECLAIMING WATER AGENCY: A MEDIUM DESIGN TO DE-WEAPONISE WATER
Water is interlinked, and because of this, many periurban areas, including Rampur, falls prey to the impacts of urban metabolism and wastewater. My creative research project looks at this puzzle and aims to enable periurban residents to reclaim and weave water through new landscape practices, design, material and spatial elements.
Through our field work, we understood that the state provides water sparsely for domestic and sanitation use. However, irrigation, a purpose of water essential for Rampur Residents’ livelihood, is not given the same priority. Additionally, since the priority of resource distribution lies with the ‘urban’, water has become a political weapon to control and encroach on rural boundaries. On the flip side, while the local farmers in Rampur can feel the impact of degrading water quality, they fail to realise that they contribute to it through their farming practices.
Furthermore, waterlogging is a seasonal issue for the residents due to their location in the West Bengal Gangetic Delta, especially in the southern part of the district. This has caused many to migrate closer to the city for better homes and opportunities. Thus, as a resource that is so readily available, the irony of water poverty lies not in its absence but in its access.
The goal is to use existing practices and imagine how residents might create a more novel periurban water-culture for social, economic and ecological wellbeing for humans and non-humans. The first strategy cleans the canal water. It relies on the pre-existing water siphoning methods from the canal (a socially acceptable
middle-ground for water access due to legal pluralism). The water channel is armed with a new two-way infrastructure created by farmers. This new infrastructure includes filtering methods such as sand and plant-based filters, and agricultural waste to provide cleaner water for farming. Due to the cropping cycle, the water inlet and discharge happen through the same armature by changing the slope of the channel, removing agricultural pollutants in the process.
Secondly, new farming practices are proposed to increase crop productivity and ecological sustainability. The farmlands are used for rice growing (during Aus and Boro) and fishing (during Aman). One of the practices is crab-rice co-cultivation, which is enabled through dykes and trenches. The crabs act as guardians of the rice fields, reducing the farmers’ reliance on chemical pesticides. They double as an additional source of income.
Finally, rainwater harvesting infrastructures are proposed. Instead of a traditional RWH, it is combined with a social space that builds on the existing pond-sharing behaviour in the locality and quality of farms as a community centre. It uses rain chains and terracotta pots as filters for rainwater purification. The overflow is channelled through the structure into the tanks, ponds, and farms.
In sum, this project mitigates the reliance of periurban areas on the state for water. It instead facilitates the residents of Rampur to use the existing landscape and terrain and sculpt it to reclaim water agency.
01_Field Sketches
What I Thought and What I Found
Before the visit, I had spent much of my time tracing what I assumed were unmarked waterways, mapping the paths of rivers and distributaries that once flowed through the site. I expected to find structured channels—concrete conduits serving as the primary water sources for farmlands. But that was not the reality. Even the waterways marked on Google Maps were often dry, choked with overgrowth, existing in name alone.
The proliferation of water hyacinths—infamously known as the Terror of Bengal—was striking. The plant, whose cultivation has been outlawed in Kolkata under The Bengal Water Hyacinth Act of 1936, has taken over these channels with little resistance. Its removal is arduous, and its ability to multiply is relentless. I spent part of the visit tracing its origins, unsurprised to find the answer was rooted in colonialism. More pressing, however, was the present: the issue remains unaddressed. The study area sits outside the jurisdictional concerns of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and beyond the priorities of the local panchayats. What happens to a place when it exists in the blind spots of governance? Who, then, is responsible for its landscape?
How It Advanced My Understanding of Architecture and Landscape
Kolkata feels unlike any other Indian city I have experienced, especially for a metropolitan. In India, the term metropolitan is defined by population, but density alone cannot define a place. Here, time folds in on itself. The city exists in a vortex, resisting the polished urbanization seen in other metropolises. It carries a rawness, a history etched in its streets, its architecture, and its people. The peri-urban landscape, in particular, revealed an aspect of architecture I had not fully grasped before: self-built infrastructure. I have always understood its presence, but through site visits and conversations, I realized how much I still lack in the craft of architecture. As students, we work with pen, paper, and theory. We deliberate over design concepts, imagining structures that exist only in our minds. But here, people build their own walls, their own homes, with a directness that is both humbling and daunting. Would I be capable of doing the same? Could I translate my theoretical knowledge into something tangible? This question lingers in my mind. Thinking like a landscape architect in Kolkata is different from doing so in Singapore. The frameworks of greening and landscaping do not translate in the same way. Here, nature is not just cultivated—it is worshiped. And that worship is political. Each tree, each crop, each plant becomes a symbol, a tool of resistance. In discussions with my classmates, I came to realize how sacred landscapes are often used to prevent government intervention. Sacredness becomes a form of protection, a means of holding onto land in the face of encroachment. The geography of the site also intrigued me. The duality of land use—the same plots serving as rice fields and bheris —made me wonder about their coexistence. Do these systems support one another, or do they create additional labour for those who maintain them? This is a question I hope to explore further.
02_Research
02_01 Map of Water in Kolkata
HooglyRiver
H
River
Champahati
Champur
Bishnapur
Calcutta
Howra
Bidyadari River
Legend:
Beyond the water-land binary in geography: Water/lands of Bengal re-visioning hybridity
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
About how the water-land binary is not as clear cut as it is made out to be. Especially in the case of Bengal due to its perinial river, East Kolkata Wetlands and the Sundarbans Delta
Governance of Water and Sanitation Services for the Peri-urban Poor: A Framework for Understanding and Action in Metropolitan Regions
Speaks to the weaponization of water for Political agenda using care studies in Periurban areas.
Mediation and State interference often leads people to rely on external drivers and infrastructure for water
Muddling Through Waste: Self Governance and Collective Action in the Wastewater Commons
Water as commons- how despite urban metabolism, waste water is disposed to the periurban areas. Uses a case study in Gurgaon to bring up the creative problem solving of water issues for irrigation.
Adriana Allen, Julio D Dávila, Pascale Hofmann
Vishal Narain
02_02 History of Water
The Hoogly river is a perennial tributary of the Ganges. It is also a part of the National Waterways in India.
The Canal system was deviced with the river and its branches as the guidelines. However, it was also built to control the fluidity of the landscape that water created in the area (Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, 2014). In attempting to draw maps, they needed Kolkata’s waters to have rigid boundaries.
However this system that was created in and around the Hoogly river at the city centre, affected the periurban
The result of changing use of the canals, decisions to let urban waste water and storm water into the same channels, paired with the existing heavy sedimentaion of the Hoogle river and its distributaries, eventually caused the water to disappear from the 10km x 10km study area selected for the studio.
Thus the water network currently seen in the study area looks very different, and is unreliable for domestic or agricultural purposes.
Unbuilt Railway Lines Study Area
Legend: Rivers/ Waterways Railway Lines
02_03 Unmapped Canals in Periurban Kolkata
Source: Google Earth
A map showing all the water channels in the the site area which is connected to Tolly Nala (to the North). This is the water primarily used for irrigation in the farmlands around the area.
Pollution in Tolly Nala Waste Disposal in Tolly Nala
02_06 Seasonal Farmland Behaviour
Source: Google Earth
Depending on the season, the farmlands are either used to grow crops (like rice and vegitables) or used as bheri (ponds for fishing and crab rearing). This dual use of farmlands is a common practice in Kolkata because of its location in the West Bengal Gangetic Delta.
Aus: Dec - May
Aman: Jun - Dec
Boro: Apr - Aug
02_07 Crop Cycles and Timelines
Water Siphoning
Water requirement for Rice changes from shallow water during the first few weeks, and subsequntly increases to 5-10cm, drained a week before harvest
Rice Growing
Monsoons
Bheris (Ponds)
Fields get converted into Water Ponds for Fish and Crab Rearing
Water Siphoning
Mapped timeline of the different cropping seasons practiced in West Bengal. There are three different types of rice grown in the region- Aus, Aman and Boro, determined primarily by the cropping and harvest season.
Typically, Boro rice has the most production followed by Aman, and then Aus which has the lowest cultivation. This is mostly because of the monsoon in the area. The rainfall is enough to water the rice, but doesn’t create ponds like they do in July and August.
03_Projections
03_01 Design for Water Reclaimation Timeline
Water requirement for Rice changes from shallow water during the first few weeks, and subsequntly increases to 5-10cm, drained a week before harvest
Rainwater Collection and Use
Rice-Crab Co-Cultivation
Rice Growing
(Ponds)
03_03 Rice Crab Co-Cultivation
Field Draining during Rice CultivationChange in the Direction of Water Flow
The crabs act as guardians of the rice fields, reducing the farmers’ reliance on chemical pesticide. They also airate the soil and provide nutrients for the rice to grow.
03_05 Rain Water Collection and Overflow
To Ponds/Fields
Azadirachta indica Neem Tree
Terracota Pors
Bamboo infrastructure for easy construction and dismemberment
Fine Sand
Coarse Sand
Gravel
Filtered Water Filter
Floating Barriers to control spread
Alternate Cropping Cycles
Gravel Filters and GPT
Water Hyacinths
Raddishes
Carrot
Rice Variety
04_References
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