Nitya Rao

Technological innovations in agriculture and fishing have been thought to increase production, productivity, and income, alleviate poverty and reduce workloads. However, they can affect men and women differently by reinforcing gender inequalities, restrict access, and displace women as newly mechanised tasks become the domains of men.

The water sector remains male dominated at different scales, from engineers and technocrats responsible for designing irrigation systems, to upper caste and upper class men who decide on the location of canals, borewells, tanks, and other water systems at the grassroots level.

Tamil Nadu is one of the most water-vulnerable states in India that depends heavily on groundwater for irrigation. As high as 56 percent of land in the state is currently irrigated by groundwater and the remaining by tanks and canals.