There seems to be no end to the drinking water crisis in the Giridih district in Jharkhand. It is only becoming worse with every passing day. More than 40 per cent of all the hand pumps installed in the district have run dry due to the depletion of groundwater level, said sources.
This situation has been going on since the month of April with Bengabad, Birni and Pirtand blocks in the district being the worst affected. As per the district data report, in 2018, Bengabad received only 75 per cent (788.92 mm) of the expected rainfall (1037.2 mm).
Mostly villages in Bengabad are a fitting example of the mismanagement of water by the district administration. “It has been two decades since Bengabad has begun supplying water two hours a day to mostly villages under the group water scheme. But the water supplied per household per day is not more than 20 litres. The women of the village have to walk more than two km daily to bring drinking water,” said Jagarnath Prasad a social activist at Bengabad panchayat.
As per the villagers, the women in the village have expressed their frustration more than once. Recently, they met the district commissioner to register their grievances. “We complained about the failure of the reverse osmosis (RO) plant in our village and also requested the commissioner to provide household water connections,” says Bengabad resident Champa Devi.
Recently, the Central Ground Water Board conducted an aquifer mapping study in mostly blocks in the district to understand the groundwater potential in the area and recommended groundwater recharging through rainwater harvesting at places where the water level is more than five metres in the post-monsoon period. As per the officials, the geological terrain of the Birani panchayat is ideal for groundwater recharge with harvested rainwater due to the presence of shale, dolomite and limestone rocks in the region. But so far, no work has been done to implement it.
Birani villagers say that most of the existing borewells in the village are unusable due to excessive salt and hardness of the water. The villagers, however, are left with no choice but use the water for irrigation and domestic use. “Our main problem is the lack of clean drinking water. We agree that groundwater recharge through rainwater harvesting can help, but that alone cannot solve the drinking water crisis. There is a need to address the water quality also. There are other ways to get pure drinking water to the villages, for example, by installing reverse osmosis (RO) units and rainwater harvesting storage tanks,” says Dhaneswar Mahto of Birni.