Water scarcity plagues villagers in Bankura LS seat

Tulsi Mondal wiped the sweat from her forehead as she struggled to pump out water from the rusty tubewell under the scorching sun at Subdamore village in Bankura Lok Sabha constituency of West Bengal. The tubewell is the only source of water for drinking and other purposes for the nearly 400 residents of the village located in the Saltora bloc of Bankura district.

The scarcity of drinking water is so acute that apart from the tubewell, the villagers don’t have adequate water for even for sanitation purposes. The only option for them is to defecate in the open.

“We don’t even have enough water to drink. Where will we get water to flush toilets? We have no option but to resort to open defecation most of the time,” Paresh Mondal, a resident of Subdamore told DH.

What has fuelled their anger is a pipeline for drinking water laid a stone's throw away from their village but the water does not reach them.

“Subrata Mukherjee rarely came here for campaigning as he knows that precious little has been done for this village. The previous Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP from Bankura Moon Moon Sen has also done nothing for us,” said Mondal.
No water to drink

As he led this correspondent to show the condition of the only well in the village, Mondal said all they want is a steady supply of drinking water from political parties as the well has dried up long ago.

Subdamore is just one among the hundreds of villages located in Saltora, Khatra and Taldangra blocs of Bankura constituency where scarcity of drinking water has become a major issue. Here villagers have to travel more than two to three kilometres a day to get drinking water.

Most of the ponds in these areas have either dried up or the water is unfit for drinking or bathing.

TMC candidate and senior Minister Subrata Mukherjee recently got a first hand experience of the discontent among villagers when he visited Lakhanpur village in Saltora bloc for campaigning. The villagers blocked his vehicle and started shouting slogans demanding that the drinking water issue be resolved. The Minister had a tough time convincing the locals before they allowed his vehicle to pass.

A similar incident took place at Inkata village in Taldangra bloc when TMC workers were driven away by villagers when they came for campaigning.

Mukherjee and CPI(M) candidate Amiya Patra could not come up with any convincing answer as to how they are planning to resolve the issue. While Patra said that since the groundwater level is extremely low in Bankura, the only solution is piped drinking water supply; Mukherjee got annoyed when asked about the issue.

“You have to remember that the situation here was not any better before TMC came to power. The Left Front government did nothing to address the issue in 34 years. We have taken several initiatives to resolve the situation. It will take time,” Mukherjee told DH.