"Water wife" is a special term for an Indian woman whose fate is very miserable.
Most of them are widows, have no economic income, cannot live independently, and can only be "water wives" in order to survive.
In this land of "widows buried in the fire", being a "water wife" for Indian men is the end of this life.
Husbands are often unscrupulous and use their wives as "faucets", which is simply "squeezed" to the extreme.
However, India's strange habits are much more than that.
What will happen to the "water wives" in India?
The barren and backward environment gave birth to a group of "water wives"
India is a large country with a population about the size of China, but many places still maintain traditional customs.
For example, the racial system in India is completely a feudal remnant, but they still preserve.
In some remote areas, laws, civilized etiquette and morality do not exist, and many Indian men default to "polygamy".
And their wives, also known as "water wives", no matter how beautiful they are, no matter how gentle and virtuous they are, they are worthless in the eyes of their husbands, and they are completely an emotionless tool for "taking water".
In fact, "water wives" are nothing new in Indian society, and these women are often from poor backgrounds and are older.
There are many women who are helpless widows, who are socially discriminated against, unable to find a job, and have to rely on men to survive.
In ordinary life, the "water wife" often plays many roles, washing and cooking at home, cleaning, and taking care of the children.
He is also a servant and a nanny, and when appropriate, he will even become a bag for his husband, and all the things that do not go well at work will be sprinkled on his wife when he comes home.
The husband is dedicated to going to work to earn money, and he doesn't care about anything in life except for work.
When the husband gets off work, the "water wife" also has to do a good job of service, helping the husband wash his feet, shave, and even massage.
Some countries have reported on this backward social phenomenon in India, and have described Indian water wives as "talking animals".
They work hard and complain, and if they don't do well, they will be beaten and scolded by their husbands, even the women of our old society.
In India, male power can be said to crush women, and society acquiesces to the existence of this phenomenon, and even in the subconscious of some women, they believe that women are inherently accessories of men.
Although Indian law does not favor men or women, their homestays have always been like this, and women have almost no rights.
Even so, there are still a lot of women lined up to be "water wives", maybe they don't like this kind of life, but they don't have a choice.
We know that India is a vast country, and the environment and climate vary greatly from region to region, and it is often drought and waterlogging.
The western and southern coastal areas of India receive more rainfall during the summer monsoon and floods occur every year.
But in the desert region of northwestern India, compared to Rajasthan, there is a perennial drought and particularly low rainfall.
The same is true in the central states of Madurai and Chattisgarh, where locals have to travel long distances to fetch water in order to get water.
Bangalore, known as India's Silicon Valley, is home to 13 million residents.
Due to prolonged drought, climate change and overuse of groundwater, there has been a water scarcity crisis recently, which will escalate as the Indian summer approaches in April and May.
The unusually hot city of Bangalore in southern India in February and March, combined with a lack of rainfall over the past few years, has dried up thousands of wells.
Indian authorities are supplying water to the city's residents by water tankers, and the Karnataka state government has set a cap on the fees charged by tanker truck suppliers to prevent price gouging.
Water scarcity has a particularly severe impact on poor areas in Bangalore, with some public residential buildings without water supply for eight hours a day.
The family of nine currently has only five buckets of 20 litres of water a week, the only water they can afford to cook, bathe and go to the toilet.
Pachuri, a man who works for a multinational technology company in Bangalore, said that as the number of immigrants grew, so did water consumption and construction projects, and more wells were dug everywhere to overpump groundwater, leading to an accelerated depletion of water.
This photo was taken in the village of Tangamal in the Indian state of Harashtra, just 140 kilometers from Mumbai.
People have to go to the ancient well at the foot of the mountain to get water, and the time required for the road alone can take several hours.
There are a lot of people fetching water, and they have to queue up, and it takes almost a day to go and go back and forth.
Recently, there has been a major drought, and there may be no water when you go late, so many Indians set off before dawn, not only in the morning, but also to avoid the scorching sun at noon.
Men never fetch water, because there are "water wives" in the family, and some cable television (CNN) in the United States reported that local men often get married several times.
They did not do this to covet dowry or beauty, but simply to fetch water, and three or four wives in the family were the norm in the local area.
Indians believe in religion, and in some religions, polygamy is against morality and against the law.
However, there are still a large number of local women who are willing to be "water wives", and if they want to fetch more water, they must marry more wives, which is the consensus of all men in the village.
In the summer, when the weather is terrible, the women go out to fetch water with clay pots on their heads.
If the child is small at home, you can't leave the child alone at home and carry the child out to fetch water.
If the water is not enough that day, it is inevitable that the husband will scold him, so the "water wives" would rather go far away to fetch water than stay at home and see out of sight.
These women often do not have the right to have children, and at the end of each menstrual holiday, they kneel to wash their husbands' feet.
There are even "water wives" who have been married for several years and have not stayed in the same room with their husbands, they can only sleep on the sofa or squeeze into a cubicle alone.
For the water wives, they can only fetch water for the rest of their lives, and exchange their labor for a chance to survive.
This is obviously a trampling on human nature, and the bottom line of civilization lies in the way ordinary people are treated.
It is hoped that the Indian authorities will pay attention to such bad social habits and step up the construction of urban running water so that the people do not have to suffer.
Now it seems that this day is still far away.
Text: Uncle Luo Ying
Edited by Uncle Luo Ying
Resources:
China News Network reported on "It is popular to marry a "water wife" in a dry city in India to fetch water for her husband's family (pictured).
China Youth Daily reported that "in Indian villages, the lack of water has given rise to a group of 'water wives'."