As Karnataka witnesses the harshest summer in decades and rivers run dry, villages suffer the most. Many villagers are buying drinking water to escape the effects of drinking flouride-laced water pulled out from the depths of the drying up earth. While in some villages women have started queuing up to fetch water from the cattle's trough elsewhere, the residents may be left with no option but to migrate. Express does a reality check and finds that the situation is indeed grim.
Mysuru
The village with over one thousand heads of cattle including bulls, cows and other livestock, has to depend on tanker water as the Kallahalli lake has dried up. The lifting of sand from the lake bed and feeder canals is also one of the major reasons for the falling water level and drying up of water bodies.
In this village of 200 households, about 25 km from Mysuru, plastic drums line the lanes to collect water from tankers. School- and college-going children line up before daybreak to fetch water. “I get up at 3 am to accompany my mother to collect water from pumpsets. Sometimes, I skip school to collect water,” said Jyothi. Click to read full story
Chitradurga
Simmering heat, depleting groundwater and severe shortage of fodder... This has been the situation in Chitradurga district that has been facing drought for five consecutive years now.
People and cattle are facing severe hardship to get potable water as depleted groundwater has led to scarcity.
The district administration has taken steps to supply water through tankers in eight villages Click to read full story
Tumakuru
The water situation at Pavagada taluk is particularly grim as it has no surface water resource because no live river flows through it and it has no drinking water project either. As a result, its groundwater has impermissible levels of fluoride and fluorosis which continues to haunt people. Potable drinking water is a luxury here.
Kalaburagi
The sight of old women and children trying desperately to collect drinking water from a leaky pipe in a small ditch in the scorching heat speaks volumes of the severity of drinking water shortage in Hittala Shirur village of Aland taluk.
Sixty-five-year-old Syedabee said that even during the 1972 drought, they had not witnessed such a critical situation. In some pockets of Hittala Shirur, water is supplied only when the village has electricity supply.
Karwar
Facing one of the worst droughts in the last two decades, Uttara Kannada district is struggling to meet drinking water needs of its people. “Ground water is depleted in our village and the situation will get worse in the days to come,” said Darshan Naik, a resident of Avarsa village in Ankola taluk. Depletion of ground water and contamination of sea water into the water sources are the major problem that are causing scarcity of water in the district.