River of Life, River of Death by Victor Mallet

Author:Victor Mallet [Mallet, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Rajesh Kumar Tiwari, a 48-year-old farmer who grows wheat and chickpeas, says there must be at least ‘eighteen to twenty guys’ in his neighbourhood who cannot get married due to the water crisis:

Since the time I was a child, I have seen this problem in our village. There is no provision for irrigation here, no tube-wells or canals. You can see the shortage of drinking water. You have just seen that hole that has been dug to provide for bathing water—animals, humans are all bathing in that dirty water. About three years ago Mr Rahul Gandhi [the Congress party politician and great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister] came here. He spent a lot of time studying the problem. I had told him the same thing then—that if you really want to solve our problem, we should have tube-wells or canals. So many state and central governments have come and gone. They have done nothing to resolve our problem. There are three or four other villages in this Hamirpur district facing acute water crisis like us. The main problem here with the groundwater is that at about 160–70 feet, the ground is rocky and we do not have equipment to dig deeper. Even if we get water at that level, it’s so salty that it cannot be used . . . Farmers in this area are on the verge of starvation, forced to commit suicide.

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