Before hand pumps and taps, drinking water came from the village well and was carried by women in a stack of pots on the head, twice a day.
The well was a social institution: the point at which women of the village met daily, and one of very few places outside the household where they were regularly together in public.
A great deal of Punjabi folk song is set at the well for that reason, and the imagery of the pot, the rope and the walk is everywhere in the poetry.
The well also enforced caste. Who could draw, who could touch the rope, and who had to wait for someone to pour, were fixed and are documented, and separate wells for Dalit households were normal.
The hand pump, then the tap, ended the walk and ended the meeting and ended that particular enforcement of caste at the same time.
A tap in the courtyard was an unambiguous improvement and it removed the last routine collective institution the women of a Punjab village had.
Water was carried from the well in a ghara on the head, several times a day, and the carrying was women's work and took hours.
The jhiwar or water carrier community did it for households that could pay, and the mashak, the leather water bag, was the town equivalent.
The hand pump and then the piped supply ended it inside two generations. It is the single largest change in the daily working day of Punjabi village women in the last century.