Cries for help fail to reach Cyberabad

By Kalpana Sharma

PEDLIPAKAL GUDI TANDA (NALGONDA DIST). ``If I walk to and fro continuously from six to 10 in the morning, I can collect 10 pots of water,'' says Ms. Jijabai, a Lambada woman, in a village with no potable source of water. The water available is undrinkable. I am asked to try it. It's bitter.

(What is the Government doing, ask Lambada women at Pedipakal in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. - Photo: Kalpana Sharma)

``What is your Government doing?'' asks Jijabai. ``We don't have drinking water. How will we live? The motor in the borewell is burnt. We took the motor for repairs but no one is prepared to repair it. Even if the sarpanch complains to the MRO or the MDO, nobody is prepared to help.''

These are the voices heard just 60 km outside Hyderabad, projected as Cyberabad by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu. Somehow are not heard in the State capital where multiple plans to launch development-related campaigns are being cooked up.

The primary concern of the women you speak to in any of the drought-affected villages is to have a source of water within carrying distance. The Government dug borewells in most parts but many of them have fallen into disuse. The crisis afflicting the driest districts is the steep fall in groundwater levels due to overdrawing. And this has been done not by the landless or small and marginal farmers but by the bigger ones who could afford several agricultural borewells.

The result - in villages like Pedlipakal, the borewell is yielding water full of fluoride. The effects of fluorosis are visible in the teeth of the women who smile despite the adverse conditions.

At Harijanapuram, a resettled village of Dalits from surrounding villages in Nalgonda and the neighbouring Mahaboobnagar district, Ms. Gopamma describes vividly what women like her go through because of the fluoride content in water. ``We feel as if we are been beaten up with a lathi if you drink that water''. Fluorosis affects the joints and in acute cases could immobilise the person.

Also, while attention has been drawn to the controversy surrounding the increase in electricity tariff, people in villages are more worried about the reliability of ``current''. In every village I visited, one of the main complaints was erratic power supply. Even where villages had pumps attached to borewells, they could not pump water. Either the pump had been damaged or it just did not have enough power to function.

Lack of irrigation facilities for the small and marginal farmers means that the majority of the poorest in villages have to turn to ``coolie'' work. This ranges from cutting stone to weeding on fields to transplanting and harvesting. On an average, women earn Rs. 10-15 a day, way below the minimum wages. And men begin at Rs. 20 and earn at the most Rs. 30. There is no guarantee that there will be work every day.

With these earnings, they must feed families of eight to 10 people. Rice is available at the fair price shop at Rs. 5.50 a kg. Most of the families need three kg a day. The ration quota is not enough. The Government has provided them with coupons for ``drought rice'' sold at Rs. 6.40 a kg. Many keep the coupons unused because they do not have the money to buy. Some borrow from the moneylender at an interest ranging from 3 to 5 per cent a month to buy provisions.

As a result, in every village where I spoke to women, the story about food intake was the same. The children are fed first, then the men, then the women eat. And the old are the last because they are considered ``unproductive''. On an average, women go hungry three times a week.

Ms. Lakshmanamma from Govindarajapalli, Hathnoor Mandal in Medak district, described the food choices before women: ``When there's no work, there's no money and there's no food. In the afternoon, if there's no food, we will have to send the children back to school without food. We women eat leftovers, usually ganji, twice a day. If there is no food, I just lick a little bit of chilli powder, drink water and go''.

What are the long-term nutritional and health consequences for these women and the children? The planners know. Plenty of studies have established these. But the ``cure'' for this disease, which is to give people sustainable livelihood, has not been addressed.

Emergency measures to deal with drought only tide over the immediate crisis. But the voices of people in the drought- affected areas underline the reality which all Governments know - that the problem is one of developmental neglect, not the failure of monsoon.

(Concluded)

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