How water scarcity is leading to exodus from villages, women risking their lives for each bucket

The first photograph shows how women are risking their lives for water.

It is scary, how these women are balancing themselves, as they get down to the bottom of the well to fetch water.

The water level has gone down in the region and there is no option. This is a well in Betul. The women get down, sometime hand over pitcher to the lady who is in the middle and later water is carried home.

When a newspaper here or there publishes a report, sometime the local administration takes cognisance and an electricity motor is installed or some temporary arrangement is made--few tankers to the village.

But this is not a long-term solution for water crisis. The water table has receded, water bodies drying up, hand pumps and tube wells fail in summer and there is still no focus on how to save water.

As a result, vast areas in rural MP (as in other states) are suffering. People are leaving villages, as there is no water source. How long can they spend entire day--getting water from another town on bullock-cart and then guarding it?

Sadly, the policy-makers, planners, politicians remain oblivious to the situation. The administration feels that once there is rain, things would improve. But the situation has reached an extremely worrying situation, and if we don't wake up, the situation would be impossible to deal with, in a few years.

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Water scarcity in India: Does this picture scare us, prompt us to save rivers, ponds, water bodies?

This is a photograph from Chhattisgarh.

It is a shocking picture that leaves you stunned.

This happens when a water body that caters to scores of villages, dries up.

Agar river is barely a stream now. The kid sat down, cleared the sand, waited for the water to gather and then quenched her thirst.

Across India, water bodies are being killed. In cities, due to the pace of construction, ponds are being filled up in order to build houses over them.

In rural areas, it is illegal mining that  has disturbed the ecology, completely. Entire rivers are drying up and dying. Yet, this it not something that has alarmed us enough.

We have been told repeatedly by environmentalists about the scary future. We have heard that the next world war could be over water. Alas, water conservation is not a priority for us.

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