Amravati: "We keep hearing that there is a coronavirus, a deadly disease spreading. But corona or not, we will surely die of drinking this muddy water", rues Ramrati Sathe, a 60-year-old woman from Ekzira village in Chikhaldara taluk.
Her bitterness comes with a reason. Married to this village, it has been ten years since she drank a cup of good drinking water or had access to it. And, the amount of struggle Sathe and her folk undergo to fetch the whatever available water is unbearable.
Melghat in Amravati district was one of the first nine tiger reserves in the country notified in 1973-74 under the Project Tiger. Hidden amid nature, Melghat is known all over the country for its beauty.
However, things have not changed much in Melghat since independence.
Melghat reports a high rate of infant mortality, maternal mortality, malnutrition, and unemployment.
The area has around 80 villages and despite many governments came in the power in the state but the issue of water shortage is the same since the independence.
When the ETV Bharat team reached Ekzira village in Chikhaldara taluka to report the plight of residents during Coronavirus led lockdown, it was found that the women and young girls in this area need to cross mountains and valleys for a single vessel of water from a well which is half a kilometre away from the village.
In this village of one and a half thousand people, women wander for water starting from March month every year. At two o'clock in the afternoon, in the scorching sun, these women are wandering for one and a half kilometres to get the water by walking on rocks.
The well from which these tribal women fetch water belongs to the pre-independence time and all that available is muddy water for two feet. The village people did drill two borewells in the last four years for water supply for the village but no water was found in these wells. So these villagers start walking for water as early as 5 am.
Due to the daily use of this muddy water, 32 women of the village got various ailments, say the women at the well. They expressed their concern and said that they will die from drinking this muddy water from the well if not from Coronavirus.
According to villagers, a water tanker comes to the village every alternate day since there is not much water available in their only source of pre-independence era well. But the demand is so high, not everyone will get their share of water. If one manages to get, the other woman's pot will be empty.
Every year, it is said a lot of rupees are spent to alleviate the water crisis in Melghat. But the respite has not come to these women though there are two women MPs from the district.
For now, Sathe and other women grab whatever water they fetched from the well and return back to their homes, carrying two pots on their heads on a hilly terrain full of stones and rocks under the scorching sun.
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