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This article presents findings of a large-scale field survey related to various challenges faced by the Scheduled Castes while accessing drinking water in rural India. The study, undertaken in five states, shows that ideas of purity and pollution and discrimination play a decisive role in access to public water bodies and structures. Many villages still lack a communal well or hand pump. And, even if available, these sources of water are either defunct or their use is restricted to certain dominant castes. Being the most socially disadvantaged groups, the Scheduled Caste women suffer triple disadvantage, as they are poor, they are women and they are Scheduled Caste. They regularly face several problems while fetching water and are subjected to inhumane living conditions and human rights violations; they face segregation, discrimination and violence in their everyday struggles to access water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]