KURNOOL: At least a half of the houses in Joharapuram village panchayat in Aspari mandal of Kurnool district, famous for its 16 th Century temples, have remained locked ever since summer set in.
Reason? The residents of those houses have migrated to Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Guntur, Vijayawada and other places in search of livelihood. Three consecutive droughts have left them jobless and the severe summer this year has caused an acute drinking water shortage.
“It is the worst summer in the last three years and this is only the beginning. We had been facing drinking water crisis and it had only worsened in recent weeks. We have walk several miles to fetch a potful of water,” says D Subhan of the village. The village, according to the official records, has 5000 plus population
It has now become a regular sight on the road leading to village to see bullock carts transporting several plastic cans of water from the mandal headquarters Aspari, located 10 km away. This water is bought at Rs 10 a pot. “It is not mineral water and not even clean water. It is bore water having a red tint and tastes salty,” Subhan says.
Since the water is not fit for drinking, he and five other families have pooled their money and are purchasing a water tanker once a week by shelling Rs 1600. However, there are people in Joharapuram, who cannot pay such huge amount. Subhan too was one of them. “Since I can not afford to purchase drinking water, I cycled my way to Vakkileru tank and collected the water from there. The water is both dirty and smelly. I filtered it, but the next day, there were germs again,” he said. With no option left, he too is shelling out money for the pot full of water. Sivalayam temple, located 10 km away from the village are giving water from their bore wells free of cost. But it happens only once in 15 days.
The village has 10 agriculture wells and 12 bore wells fitted with handpumps and Vakkileru stream flowing not far from the village. But all of them have dried up. A couple of hand pumps work, but one has to work them for couple of hours to get a pot of water and have to wait for another day before they can get another pot of water.
Given the scarcity of water for the last three years, crops have withered every season. Most of the farmhands have left the village hoping to earn livelihood somewhere else.
“I have seven acres land and my sons sowed red gram spending `3 lakh hoping to get good yield. But instead of 35 tonnes, they could hardly get 35 kgs,” Vadde Kishtamma, an elderly woman in the village, said. Stating that agriculture has become a back-breaking work with no income, she said she too plans to migrate.
The drought-affected village is also seeing increasing school dropouts, worrying the teachers of the MPP elementary school in the village.