In Indian village, residents scale deep well without rope to fetch water

SUMMERS in India can be brutal and nobody knows it better than the residents of Ghusiya village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

They are facing such an acute water crisis that they are not hesitant to even risking their lives to fetch the live-saving liquid.

News agency Asian News International has recently posted a video in which the villagers of Ghusiya are seen covering long distances to reach a well which doesn’t have much water in it. And then, unlike the fairy tale crow that dropped pebbles to bring up the water level, they scale the well’s wall down without any equipment to get the water.

The bottom of the well has small puddles of water and the desperate villagers fill their buckets suspended by the rope with small bowls from whatever little source they have. They have to do it even in the night to meet their requirements, it was learnt.

Water crisis has become a major challenge for the people of Ghusiya which is located in Dhindori district of the state, a tribal one, for many years now. The angry villagers now have decided to boycott the village elections till every household in the village gets a potable water connection, ANI reported.

The local people expressed their anger with the political leadership over the water crisis while speaking to ANI.

Kusum, a local villager said, “We have been facing a water crisis for a long time. The administration has been paying no heed to our crisis. Government employees and political leaders only come during elections. This time we have decided not to give votes until we have a proper water supply. Our only demand is water supply from the government.”

Another villager named Rudiya Bai said the wells are almost dry in the village.

“Be it day or night, we have to go down into the well to collect water. There are three wells in the village and all are mostly dry. No hand pumps have water. The situation remains like this for twelve months,” she told ANI.

The government of Madhya Pradesh, which is under India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has implemented the Nal Jal (tap water) scheme to supply drinking water to every household.

However, local administrative reports reveal that the scheme is far from seeing the daylight in Ghusiya even though the Narmada river, which is a major source of water in the state, is just three kilometres from the village, the ANI report added.