A news report on Wednesday night on water crisis in Madhya Pradesh was particularly striking. Chattarpur village in MP is facing drought for the third consecutive year. Wells, as deep as 400 ft, have dried out. The village’s crisis has led to a singular situation “ its youth aren’t getting married. “No water, no wife,” say neighbouring villages while refusing to give their daughters away in Chhatarpur.
Indeed, women are the main water bearers in rural areas. A sexist saying in many Indian languages refers to the indignity of having men to fill water; implying that in having to do so, their masculinity is wasted. So, in drought-hit areas across India, it is usually the women folk who walk up long distances daily, four-five times a day, to fetch water in pots atop their heads and in jerry cans in the hand that is free.
The Wives, a short film “ all of five minutes “ is an eye opener on the pervading social ramifications of acute water crisis. Available on YouTube and produced by ActionAid, this film shows an elderly man in a drought-prone village marrying for the third time to get an extra hand to fill water for the household. He tries to placate the younger wife, who is pregnant, by saying, “I am only doing this for both of you.” The film ends with the third wife reconciling to her duty “ that of filling water for the entire family now that the two older wives are in no position to do so. The film is based on real stories from Maharashtra.
According to news reports, Madhya Pradesh has already declared 60 percent of its districts as drought-hit. Satanwada village of Shivpuri district, where water is reportedly supplied once a week, even witnessed water violence. In Madhya Pradesh’s Tikamgarh, in the Bundelkhand region, the city’s municipal corporation has hired armed security guards to stop farmers from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh from getting the Jamuniya river water from its Bari Ghat dam.
Clean, potable drinking water is every citizen’s right. May we assume that a huge nexus of multinational giants, RO companies and bureaucrats are working hands in glove to further the manipulative economy of clean, sweet water? Few years back, MP Hema Malini got in a soup over a written question asked in parliament that gave away a clear conflict of interest with a water purifying brand she was endorsing (and still does). Hema’s question suggested that the equipment used for purifying water through reverse osmosis be given tax cuts.
We, in cities, do not feel the brunt as much because we can buy water when it runs out. The reliance on bottled water and tanker mafia is keeping a large part of urban India still in the bubble that all is well. We have the means to solve the water problem temporarily but we cannot afford to ignore the crisis permanently. Our time of water woes will come, sooner if not later. There was a time when the all the homemakers did was to tie a clean cotton cloth on the tap and fill water in earthen pots straightaway. Some boiled the water meant for drinking, some used filters, but that was about it. This was before an organized campaign to promote mineral water and costly water purifiers brainwashed the better of us.
True, water quality was deteriorating. As the bore-wells plunged deeper and deeper, the water got harder, fluoride content increased and health concerns rattled out in water-purifier ads began to seem too real to ignore. We all got a purifier instead of holding the system accountable of cleaning up. Guilty. But, what about those who couldn’t afford an easy solution? They still walk miles for a can of murky water. The divide between the rich and the poor is the worst when it comes to water crisis.
There is huge reliance on bottled water at public functions, but is it really necessary? Advertorial propaganda has convinced us that it is the right thing to do. In a Down to Earth article “Bottled Water Costs Us the Earth” published almost a decade back, environmental activist Sunita Narain had warned about the looming crisis and its exploitative offshoots. The article mentions how the mayor of San Fransisco banned the use of bottled water in government buildings and how the mayor of Salt Lake City asked public employees to stop supplying bottled water at official events. Narain said, 'But in India, bottled water is growing as an item of necessity: private industry is meeting the drinking water demand left increasingly unfulfilled by public utilities.'
In his article, “Everybody Loves a Good Drought “ Water problems, real and rigged” published in a book with the same name, journalist P. Sainath articulates the water economy with heart-breaking clarity. He writes, “A great deal of drought ‘relief’ goes into contracts handed over to private parties to lay roads, dig wells, send out water tankers, build bridges, repair tanks “ the works. The money that goes into this industry in a single year can make the withdrawals from Bihar’s animal husbandry department look like so many minor fiddles.”
Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Orissa, West Bengal, Telangana, Andra Pradesh, Karnataka “ all states have reported cases of acute water shortage. Farmers are committing suicides because lands lay parched, government irrigation schemes function only on paper and they cannot repay the loans they took to buy a water pump. Water is life and death, indeed.
