Managing Toxins and Making Water ‘Safe’: Consumer Buffering Practices in Contexts of Chemo-Uncertainty

AbstractWhen it comes to water quality, seeing is not believing; even clear-looking water can harbour nefarious elements that are harmful to health. To protect against water’s hidden toxins, Indian consumers are adopting technologies designed to filter and mechanically ‘heal’ the waters they consume. This paper ethnographically examines the use(s) of household water management technologies based on ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Kochi, Kerala. It contemplates the socio-economic and anthropological significance of measures to filter and alkalinise tap water and to transform ‘dead’ municipal waters into healing waters with the power to ‘cure cancer’. Technological and infrastructural innovation is a means to an end in these safeguarding efforts; it enables what I argue are ‘buffering practices’ that allow a potentially dangerous element to feel restorative and wholesome once more. These insights add to scholarship exploring the rise of middle-class solutions for water safety in contemporary urban India.Keywords: Water SafetyToxinsConsumer TechnologiesBuffering PracticesMiddle-Class ConsumptionKochi (Kerala)Urban India AcknowledgmentsThis work would not have been possible without the help of two research assistants, Anupriya S. and Joseph Shyam. The author extends additional gratitude to Matt Barlow (who was present on the bridge in the opening vignette) and Jaye Litherland-De Lara for their careful reading of an early draft, and for their valuable suggestions for improvement. Thanks also go to the blind reviewers for their helpful comments.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In the work of Farhana Sultana (Citation2007, 499), toxic exposure intersects with class, caste, and religious prejudice when women subjected to arsenic poisoning are forced to suffer thrice from physical disfigurement, a lack of marriage prospects, and the shame of being a ‘burden’ on their families.2 During the course of fieldwork, I heard of at least five cases of ‘extremely rare’ cancer diagnoses. The observation received a range of morbid efforts at tension-dissipating humour, with one person saying that, in Kerala, ‘extremely rare cancers are now quite common’.3 In Kerala, cancer purportedly inflicts 135.3 people per every 100,000 (Timesofindia Citation2021).4 At roughly 600,000 people based on a 2011 census, the urban centre is relatively small for an Indian city. The population of the Kochi metropolitan area, however, is estimated at 2.2 million.5 This shorthand refers to the ‘Kochi Municipal Corporation’, an entity that partners with the Kerala Water Authority (Kochi Municipal Corporation Citation2015).6 ‘The Dirt Cheap Protocol for Cancer Stage IV’, https://websterkehr.com/dirtcheapprotocol, (accessed 15 January 2022).7 This is not medical advice. As Cancer.net (Citation2021) states, ‘To date, no studies have shown that drinking alkaline water prevents or treats cancer. This may be because the human body naturally does an excellent job at keeping our blood at a steady 7.3 to 7.4 pH level’.Additional informationFundingFunding for this research was provided by Australian Research Council [grant number DE160101178] and in-country administrative support was generously provided by Amrita University (Kochi and Amritapuri campuses), through which the author received visiting affiliation status while on a research visa in India.