Harda (MP): Ramkali Bai, 30, is busy tending a wood fire in the kitchen of her small hut in Savri village. It’s a warm Sunday morning and she’s just returned after collecting water in four buckets and an earthen pot.
The mother of three, who belongs to the Gond tribe, works part-time as a labourer to feed her family. She says that she walks a kilometre three times a day to fetch water for the family and in the coming days she expects she’ll have to walk a few more kilometres every day to get water.
“There is no water in our village and we have to go so far to bring water from the Syani River (a tributary of the Narmada River), which has dried up. There are only a few patches where water is left and it’s decreasing by the day with the rising temperature,” she says, wiping sweat from her face with the pallu (border) of her green sari.
“The village well has dried up, hand pumps are not working and the river has vanished. There is no water to drink anywhere in the village, there’s no water for anything,” she complains.
She also says the problem is not new in her village and the villagers have been suffering from drought-like situation since more than three years.
“The government is doing nothing for us. This is a vangram (forest village) and the irony is that there is neither water nor van (forest) in our village. This is a dry land full of stones and thorns,” Ramkali says.
Harda collector promises to provide water
Savri village lies in Sirali tehsil of Harda district of Madhya Pradesh, about 45 km from the district headquarters. Harda district collector Anay Dwiwedi says that the water problem here is expected to worsen with the onset of summer.
“With the increase in temperature the problem in likely to increase in coming days but the district administration will not let anyone suffer due to it,” he promises. “We have been arranging water tankers from other districts and soon we will start sending them to the affected areas.” He says he’s unaware of the acute water problem in Savri village but will ask his officers to visit the village and provide them with whatever is required.
Chotteram, who’s around 50 years old and is the village head, says the village has about 35 families with a total population of about 125, but no government official has ever paid heed to the water problem in his village.
“We are drinking poison in the form of water. The water left in some patches of the river is so dirty that even animals do not drink it. But we do not have any other option besides consuming that water,” says Chotteram bitterly.
Administration asleep, villagers dig river bed
“We made several complaints to the collector and minister but no one has ever tried to solve the problem. Now the situation has become so grim that we have to dig the river bed for few feet and then we get water,” he says. Chotteram says the villagers have been asking the public-health engineering department to construct a water tank fitted with a pump for a very long time, but nothing has been done so far.
“There is no arrangement for water in the primary school for children and teachers. Such is the situation in our village,” he says.
Shanta Gond, 24, another villager who works as an agricultural labourer says during summers it becomes very difficult for the people of this village to work. He says one has to get up very early in the morning to fetch water from the dry river bed as animals also start coming to drink water at sunrise.
“There are three hand pumps in our village. Two out of them are not working because there is no water below. One of them has been fitted with a motor but it too pumps a very limited quantity of water. This motorised pump last summer gave us water till the first week of May and this time too, we don’t expect to get much water,” he says.
Narmada now only a stream
According to the Harda district administration, more than 500 handpumps in the district have stopped functioning due to the fall in groundwater levels in the first week of April, while the Narmada River, which is the main source of water in Madhya Pradesh, has also dwindled to a stream.
It may be recalled that last November, the government of Madhya Pradesh declared 132 tehsils in 18 districts drought hit and arranged to transport water, using tankers.
Kusum Mehdele, Minister in charge of the public-health engineering department told NC24x7 that there has been scant rainfall in the state this year due to which a drought-like situation prevails.
“The department is trying its best to deal with the situation,” she says. In spite of the hardships faced by the villagers, the minister calls the situation “not so serious” adding that the government has been continuously working to control it. “Water is being transported through tankers and it will be very soon made available to these villagers also,” she adds.
(Naushad Khan is a Harda-based freelance writer and a member of 101reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters)