Shraddha Agarwal

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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In March this year, while carrying
three pots of water in the scorching sun one afternoon, 24-year-old Manta Rinjad
fainted on the deserted pathway from the well to her house. “Nobody even saw me
on the street lying like a dead person,” she says. “When I woke up after 20
minutes [I saw that] I’d spilled all the water. Somehow, I walked back home and
woke up my husband who made namak-sakhar [salt-sugar] water for me.”

This year, Mamta, like the other
women of Galtare, has had to begin her gruelling daily summer treks to a dug well,
located three kilometres away, much earlier than in the past. The two dug wells
in Galtare village of Vada taluka (also spelt as Wada) in Palghar district of Maharashtra, completely dried up in February. In
previous years, the people here say, the water in the village’s dug wells –
which they use for drinking and cooking – has lasted till the beginning of May.
After that, the women have to walk to the distant well  which usually has some water left. But in
2019, the scarcity began months earlier.

&quot;We have suffered water
problems every summer, but this year all our sources of water are going
dry,&quot; says 42-year-old Manali Padwale, who, like Mamta, works at a large
temple complex near the village as a cleaner for Rs. 155 a day, where her
husband works as a driver. “We have not once been supplied with water tankers and we don&#39;t have
enough money to buy them,” she adds.

The Vaitarna river, which passes at a distance of around
half a kilometres from the village, is one of the major sources of water for
Galtare’s 2,474 residents (Census 2011), most of them from the Koli Malhar and Warli (listed as Varli in the Census) Adivasi
communities. By May this year, the river had only a pile of rocks and barely
any water. In previous summers, the people of Galtare say, the Vaitarna has had
more water. “The little water [now] left in the river is used to wash cattle and
then the same dirty water flows into the village taps,&quot; adds Manali.

A poor monsoon is one of the reasons for the
receding water. Data of the India Meteorological Department shows that in 2018 Palghar recorded its lowest
rainfall in three years – 2,390 mm (from June
to September) compared to 3,015 mm in 2017 and 3,052 mm in 2016 during the same months. &quot;The
rainfall has kept decreasing, the summers are starting early, the river is
drying, and due to more heat we need more water to drink as well,&quot; says
Pradip Padwale, who works as a driver at the temple complex, earning Rs. 250
a day ferrying guests and visitors.

“Due to excess deforestation in
the region the rivers are drying up,” says Stalin Dayanand, an environmentalist
based in Mumbai. “They have turned into a seasonal river from a perennial
river. This happens when the relationship between the forests and rivers are
broken.”

The water from the Vaitarna is supplied to Galtare’s 449 households
through 12 community taps, for which the panchayat charges Rs. 30 a month from each
house. These taps ran dry two weeks ago. In the past, the children of the
village have sometimes become ill after drinking the contaminated tap water.  “Small children don&#39;t understand that it’s
dirty water,” says Pradip’s wife, 26-year-old Pratiksha Padwale; they have two
sons, Pratik, 10, and Pranit, 8. &quot;Two months ago, around 11 p.m., Pratik got
very sick. He kept crying and vomiting. We had to go and knock on an autowala’s
home in the next lane to take us to the hospital,” she adds, referring to the
nearest primary health centre in Hamarapur village, eight kilometres from Galtare.

The Padwale family owns three acres of land
right outside the village, on which they grow paddy and millet. “Many families
in our village own 2-3 acres, but without water it&#39;s useless. Even though I am
a farmer I work as a driver during the summers,” says Pradip.

There is only a trickle of water
from the two old borewells in the village, and the hand pumps break down
frequently. In 2018 and during panchayat elections in 2015, the people
of Galtare recall, the panchayat surveyed the village land and dug
five more borewells, but did not install hand pumps. &quot;I even got the stamp
papers ready, stating my land can be used for for the hand pump. The panchayat
still hasn&#39;t started the construction,&quot; says Pratiksha.

“We get funding of only Rs. 10
lakhs per year. It costs 80,000 rupees to dig one borewell. We have to use the
funds for other necessities too,” says 32-year-old Yogesh Vartha; his wife and Galtare’s
sarpanch,
29-year-old Netra, stands silently while he responds to my queries. When the water sources dry up, the women and girls of the village usually bear the increased burden of fetching and storing it for their families. “Bring us  tankers from the city, we are exhausted,” shouts Nandini Padwale, while trying to scrape water from the bottom of that dug well three kilometres away. It’s now her family’s only source of drinking water.  She is standing on top of the 100-feet deep well’s three-feet surrounding wall and pulling out a plastic bucket with a rope. One misstep and she could fall right in.

It
takes Nandini around 50-60 minutes to go to the well and return home, and she
makes at least four trips in her day – twice starting at 6 a.m., once around
noon, and then again in the evening at 6 p.m., before it gets dark. &quot;I
can’t stop mid-way to rest,” she says. “It&#39;s already hard to balance the pots.
It will take all day if I keep putting them up and down from my
head.&quot;  

This daily labour of collecting clean water – across
a total of 24 kilometres in four trips – has caused her severe knee pain.
&quot;It has ruined my knees,&quot; says 34-year-old Nandini. So instead of
carrying nine litres of water in three metal pots, she now hauls eight litres
in two plastic pots. Her husband Nitin owns two acres on which the family
cultivates rice and chickpeas, and he occasionally also works as a driver.

Mamta Rinjad, who fainted that day in March, also makes 4-5 trips a day to the well, carrying two pots on her head and one at her waist, each containing four litres of water. The 25-30 kilometre daily walk for water is even more difficult for her because of a disability. “One of my legs is shorter than the other since birth,” she explains. “My leg goes numb when I carry water on my head every day.”

In desperation, over the years, some
members of around 20 families from Galtare have moved permanently to a hamlet
on forest land around eight kilometres from the village, where they cultivate
crops on forest land plot. “We have a well in our pada [hamlet] with clean water
in it,” says Deepali Khalpade, who belongs to the Warli community, and shifted
to the pada
five years ago. “Even though it takes me an hour to walk to the temple [where
she works as a gardener], it’s better than living in the village without water.”  

Every summer, for five years, the
women of Galtare have participated in a morcha to the house of Vishnu Savara in Vada town, around 30 kilometres
from Galtare. Savara is a Bharatiya Janata
Party leader and former minister for Tribal
Development. Every time, they are turned away with false
hopes.  “Even though Vishnu saheb
belongs to our village he has done nothing to help us,” Yogesh says.

It’s noon on a Sunday as we speak, and the women
and young girls are stepping outside their homes yet again, carrying several
empty pots “Clean water is a luxury we cannot afford. I have learned to balance
two handas on my head. It saves us time,” says Aasmita Dhanva,
15, while rushing to join a line of women waiting near the hand pump for their
turn to fill water. “My chest and back hurt from using the pump. The pressure
of the water is so low that it takes 20 minutes of pumping to fill one six-litre
handa,
says 27-year
-old Sunanda Padwale. Her 10-year- old daughter Deepali
takes over the task from her mother. She tries to work the pump only to realise
the water is over.

‘Clean water is a luxury we cannot afford’

சுத்தமான குடிநீர் என்பது கூட எங்களால் அனுபவிக்க முடியாத ஆடம்பரம் தான்

‘साफ पानी हमारे भाग्य में नहीं’

’صاف پانی ہماری قسمت میں نہیں‘

‘साफ पाण्याची चैन आम्हाला परवडत नाय’

ચોખ્ખા પાણીનો  એક વૈભવ  અમને ના પોસાય

‘বিশুদ্ধ পানী আমাৰ সাধ্যৰ বাহিৰৰ বিলাসিতা’

‘ସଫା ପାଣି ଏକ ବିଳାସ ଆମେ ତା’ର ଦାମ ଦେଇ ପାରିବୁନି’

Galtare

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‘Clean water is a luxury we cannot afford’

A poor monsoon last year added to longer-term causes and dried up the water sources of Galtare early this year, forcing the women of this village in Palghar district to walk 25 kms a day to collect drinking water

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