The Women Carrying Water and the World

At Peer Ki Gali, a mountain pass in the Pir Panjal range connecting Poonch and Shopian districts of Jammu and Kashmir, 20-year-old Asima Chaudhary tends her family’s herd of sheep and goats. The spring behind her dhoka (a stone-and-mud shelter her family migrates with each season) dried up five years ago. Now, she walks for hours across steep terrain, twice a day, to fetch enough water for cooking and drinking.

“Sometimes it feels suffocating,” she says. “We keep asking ourselves, why do we have to live like this?” Asima is Gujjar-Bakarwal, one of 1.49 million members of the nomadic pastoral community that undertakes seasonal migrations between Jammu’s plains and Kashmir’s high-altitude meadows. Women manage households, herds, and children across these journeys. Drying springs, erratic snowfall, and the loss of grazing land have further exacerbated their daily routines. In addition to this physical toll, the article documents the mental health consequences these environmental disruptions have: anxiety, sleep deprivation, and chronic stress that accompany the exhaustive labour the women undertake to secure a livelihood. The climate crisis compounds reproductive health concerns, complicates menstrual and natal care, and increases care work for the women, all of which affects their mental health negatively. Lack of access to institutional care and stigma often means that their mental health needs go unaddressed. The article points to a policy-based lacuna at the intersection of gender, the climate crisis, and the health of non-sedentary populations.