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The Hindu Advance Booking in Osmanabad: The water won't run here for another few hours, but the women have started placing their pots in line for it. The women themselves are collecting water from other sources too, and will arrive when the water does. Photo: P. Sainath -
The Hindu On water duty, the cycle awaits its owner, who is on "full-time water duty" for his family. He will add a couple of pots more and journey two to three kilometres for water at least thrice that day. Photo: P. Sainath -
The Hindu Almost every vehicle you see on Osmanabad's roads is ferrying water somewhere. Photo: P. Sainath -
The Hindu Women in Takwiki explaining their recycling routine: "first we use the water to bathe. What's left we use to wash the clothes. What remains, we clean out the utensils with." Photo: P. Sainath -
The Hindu Bharat Raut in Takwiki with the ghaddas (plastic pots) he will strap on to his Hero Honda to fetch water for his family. Every family has one member on "full-time water duty." Photo: P. Sainath -
The Hindu In the villages of Osmanabad, every lane and gully has people moving about at all hours, collecting water as scarcity bites deeper. Photo: P. Sainath
If drought is making many in Osmanabad struggle for survival, it is also boosting a 24-hour trade that thrives on scarcity
Bharat Raut spends around Rs.800 a month on petrol —
just to fetch water that belongs to him. So do a lot of others in
Takwiki village in Osmanabad district in Marathwada. Almost every
household in Takwiki (and other villages) has one member locked into a
single task each day: fetching water from wherever they can. Nearly
every vehicle you see on Osmanabad’s roads is ferrying water somewhere.
That includes cycles, bullock carts, motorbikes, jeeps, lorries, vans
and tankers. And women carrying it in pots on their heads, hips and
shoulders. The drought ensures that most do it for sheer survival. Some,
for a neat profit.
Timings and distances
“Yes,
every household has a person on full-time water duty,” says Bharat a
small farmer with five-and-a-half acres. In his family, he is the one.
“I fetch the water that comes sporadically from the borewell on our own
fields. But it’s a little over three kilometres away from home.” So
Bharat hooks four ghadas (plastic pots) to his Hero Honda and
makes three trips a day to his fields to return with around 60 litres of
water each time. “I go there just for the little water the bore gives,”
he says. “The crop itself is dying.” There are some 25 motorcycles in
this village roving about on this task at any time.
Since
each round trip is over six kilometres, Bharat clocks close to 20 km
each day, or 600 km a month. That takes up 11 litres of petrol, or
around Rs.800 a month for just this task alone. “The water timings
alternate each week,” explains Ajay Niture, who visits a
government-controlled source. “This week we have power from 10 a.m. to 6
p.m. so we get water during those hours. Next week it will be from
midnight to 10 a.m.” He does his two-three kilometre trips on a bicycle
mounted with seven plastic pots. And he’s been to the local hospital
twice — “it really hurts your shoulders.”
Landless
workers run into trouble with employers. “Some days you turn up late.
Some days you don’t make it at all,” says Jhambhar Yadav. “That delays
chores like feeding the animals, which is bad. And this has been on for
five months now.” Jhambhar has already made two trips with six ghadas on his cycle this morning.
Impacting women
Yet
their efforts are eclipsed by the women of Takwiki who do multiple
trips daily on foot, carrying two to three pots with them. “That’s 8-10
hours a day on the job,” they explain at one of the water sources where
they’ve congregated. They also tell us of their recycling of water:
“First you use it for your bath. Then you use that same water for
washing clothes. And finally for cleaning out the utensils.” The
distances the women walk are often greater than those covered by the men
on motorbikes. They do far more trips and log over 15-20 km in a day.
The stress causes several to fall ill.
Women like
Phulwantibai Dhepe have it worse. She is a Dalit and so excluded from
many water sources. Even at the government-acquired well from where she
fetches her water, “I am always last in the line.”
Sugarcane and rain
Scarcity
impacts on livestock too. With little water and less fodder, “those
like me who sell milk are in a bad way. My cows are suffering and so am
I. I used to make Rs.300 a day selling milk,” says Suresh Ved Pathak.
“Now the yields have fallen and I make just a third of that.”
Takwiki
is a microcosm of Osmanabad’s built-in problems. The village has less
than 4,000 people, but maybe 1,500 borewells for irrigation needs. “The
ones being drilled now are going to 550 feet and beyond,” says Bharat
Raut. And the main crop in this drought-prone district is sugarcane. “We
got 397 mm of rainfall least season, as against our normal average
rainfall of 767 mm,” says Osmanabad Collector K.M. Nagargoje. “In
itself, 800 mm is not at all bad rainfall. And some regions get by on
400 mm, too.”
But you can’t get by, even on 800 mm,
if your output is 2.6 million metric tons of sugarcane. A crop that
demands roughly 18 million litres of water per acre. (Enough to fill
seven-and-a-half Olympic swimming pools.) And the number of farmers who
can afford to save on water by using drip is very small, just a handful
in Takwiki.
Collector Nagargoje
has serious trouble on his hands. And having had a stint with the
Groundwater Department, he knows it. Almost all the district’s big or
medium water projects are at dead storage level. That’s when water is
below the point from where it can be pumped out or controlled. At that
stage, it serves to keep the fish alive. He does have around 3.45
million metric cubic feet left in the district’s small projects. That
can’t last too long in this district of 1.7 million people. He also has
169 water tankers presently serving two towns and 78 villages. And a
district where private borewells for irrigation are spreading rapidly.
“The
ground water table this January was at around 10.75 metres. That’s five
metres below the five-year average in this region,” he says. “In some
blocks, it’s even lower.” He remains optimistic about the district’s
capacity to handle the crisis this year. But knows the existing cropping
patterns will thwart rescue plans in the next one.
Private trade rules
Back in Takwiki, indebtedness grows as income falls. “The sahucari (money
lending) rate here is now anything between Rs.5 to Rs.10 per hundred
per month, explains Santosh Yadav. (That’s 60 to 120 per cent annually.)
Yadav’s own family spent nearly Rs.10 lakh in laying down pipelines —
all of which have run dry — to their fields. And summer isn’t far away.
Yadav asks: “Who can think of that? We’re focused on getting past today.
One day at a time is all we can handle.”
But if the
drought makes many struggle for survival, it also boosts a trade that
thrives on scarcity. This is visible everywhere. “We spend whole days on
cell phones trying desperately to buy water from those who have it
because they own borewells or some other source,” says Bharati Thawale, a
social worker. “I struck a deal with one of these water-sellers. He was
to give me 500 litres for Rs.120. But on the way he got offered Rs.200
for it and sold out. Many frantic calls later, he brought me the water I
needed, at 9 p.m. the next night.” After that, she’s been buying water
from a neighbour.
The brisk trade in water is on
around the clock across the district. Scarcity drives the rates upwards.
The government has requisitioned 720 wells of water. It pays the owners
of each of these Rs.12,000 a month. Water from these is free for the
public. But the long distances and the huge crowds at these points can
be daunting. Which means privateers rule. With them, you bargain by the
litre. The price can go well above Rs.200 for 500 litres. The rate
spikes sharply if you are buying small quantities. And it will all get
worse in coming days. Every colony now has someone with a borewell or
other source, milking the scarcity. Here, water flows like money.
sainath.p@thehindu.co.in
