We aren’t heading for a water emergency. We’re in one. A look at drought-hit Ramanathapuram where the ubiquitous anju-kudam vandi (five-pot wagon) is given as an essential part of dowry. Down to dregs, water is collected in small scoops from the bottoms of sand pits and filled painstakingly into pots that are then loaded onto the five-pot wagons.
The vicious drought gripping all of Tamil Nadu, particularly the southern district of Ramanathapuram, has already thrown up some dramatic syndromes. One has been of perfectly grown men dancing naked in front of Parliament or eating rats in full public view. Out in the parched acres of Sayalgudi, Kuruvadi, Mudukulathur, we see some equally deep, if not as dramatic, effects of this mother of all droughts. We see not only signs of distress — which is serious enough — we also see a people backed up to the edge but coping, enduring and waiting it out.
In large parts of the dry district, the people’s response to the drought has been to devise a contraption that is a testament to their spirit of jugaad. It’s called anju-kudam vandi, a wheeled trolley fitted with rings to hold five pitchers of water. Hitched to a moped, or pushed or dragged with a rope, the vandi eases a family’s toil. The vandi is so prized in Ramanathapuram, it is a must item in a girl’s dowry.
An entire ancillary industry has taken root in these dry tracts to rig up such contraptions. Its cost of `4,000 is a prince’s ransom in a season when farmers have made zero money from agriculture this season, but then every drop of sweat conserved is a blessing.
The other great effect of this drought is that fetching water is no longer a woman’s work alone. Everyone has to do it, man woman and child. So it is not odd that 75-year-old Muthuvelu of Adhankothangudi spends every waking hour keeping an eye cocked to the tap. As her neighbour said, “If you let her, she’ll sleep here.”
The only thing thriving in Ramanathapuram is the water trade. With hefty premiums available for every pot of water, private water tankers are rumbling around for 15 hours a day, filling up at private bore wells, illegal holes dug in dry reservoirs, busy making a buck while the sun blazes.
Tanker operators say every truckload fills 320 pots and fetches a profit of a thousand bucks at `3 per pot. No wonder there are queues in the dead of night at back-of-beyond water holes.
RAMANATHAPURAM: When Pullani M’s youngest daughter got married, her family raked together their savings and bought an anju-kudam vandi as her dowry.
It’s essentially a trolley with five rings to carry five pots of water. Attached to a two-wheeler, it ferries water from waterhole to household and makes the toil a tad easier. In Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram district, enveloped by a vicious drought, every drop of sweat saved is a blessing.
In Pullani’s village of Kilapalayenthal you can’t do without an anju-kudam vandi. It has become an essential part of the dowry list demanded of girls’ families alongside the scooter and the gas stove.
“What to do? It has come to this,” said the 55-year-old housewife.
In rural Ramanathapuram, there’s not a house without a water trolley parked outside the door, securely fastened.
To most of the households, it is the priciest possession. Pullani herself doesn’t have one. “It costs Rs 4,200. We can’t buy one for ourselves but I didn’t want our daughter to suffer in the faraway village she was going to,” she said.
The anju-kudam vandi is Ramanathapuram’s jugaad, as the district endures a drought following its worst monsoon in 140 years. What to do, it rained 61 per cent less than normal of 491 mm this season against the Tamil Nadu average of 925 mm and the Ramnad drinking water scheme, inaugurated in 2009, has disappeared into the sands.
An entire ancillary industry has sprung up in the district to go with the water trolley. A welder at MKT Welders in Surankottai Colony broke out in a smile when asked if business has been good lately. This month, Balu has sold over a dozen carts which he makes in his workshop and maintains a ready inventory of six at any time.
His range starts at Rs 4,000. Balu charges Rs 500 for extra fittings like the extension on the side for women to keep their mootai (gunny bags). Rs 1,000 extra for a longer cart that can carry seven pots.
If you don’t have a motorcycle or a scooter, you push or drag the wagon. In Sevoor, I found two young mothers, Priya and Manimekalai, doing so in tandem.
They do the 6 km water run to the drinking water pipeline on Nainar Koil road every few days, with their husbands’ old lungis covering their heads from the 38 degree Celsius sun.
“My daughters won’t drink the brackish water that comes in home,” explained Manimekalai.
The road to Nainar Koil is not safe, the women said. There have been many cases of thaalis being snatched by motorists. So, many women ask a man to come along.
It’s not easy for men either. Laden trolleys are vulnerable to speeding motorists. A year ago, a shopkeeper of Melpalayenthal, L Kalaimani, was hit by a biker coming round a blind bend. He stopped using the anju-kudam vandi since then and prefers to buy drinking water from private trucks at Rs 6 per pot.